The latest IPCC climate report published yesterday at about 4pm [ed about 12 or 1pm] UK time is banished from the news – there’s not a mention of it this morning. It’s because it says that we have to just stop oil and gas expansion, we have to switch to alternative sources of energy now, that rich countries and energy companies have to dig into their pockets…
Original article by Ben Webster and Lucas Amin republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Airlines have been accused of using a “typical climate denialist” strategy after downplaying decades of scientific research on aviation emissions to block tougher regulations.
Campaigners said the lobbying tactics echoed those of the 20th century tobacco industry, which fought stricter measures by magnifying minor doubts on the health risks of smoking.
Documents obtained by openDemocracy show airlines and airports privately told the government there was too much uncertainty about the additional warming effects of flights to justify introducing new policies to tackle them.
But senior climate scientists contradicted the industry’s claims, saying the science is well established on what are known as aviation’s “non-CO2 effects”.
These are caused by emissions at high altitude of water, nitrous oxides, sulphur dioxide and particulate matter, with aircraft vapour trails, also known as contrails, a particular problem because they form clouds at high altitude that trap heat radiated from the Earth.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in a special report in 1999 that the total historic impact of aviation on the climate was two to four times greater than from its CO2 emissions alone.
Research in 2021 largely confirmed those findings and concluded aviation emissions were warming the climate at “approximately three times the rate of that associated with aviation CO2 emissions alone”. An EU study from 2020 also found non-CO2 emissions warm the planet about twice as much as CO2 emissions, but acknowledged there were “significant uncertainties”.
The Department for Transport considered regulating these non-CO2 impacts and asked for views on the issue in a consultation in 2021 on its proposed “Jet Zero strategy”.
Responses from airlines and airports, obtained under FOI by openDemocracy, reveal several used the same tactic of arguing the science was too uncertain to justify policies to address non-CO2 effects. Several recommended instead that the government should limit its action on the issue to funding further research into it.
Airlines UK, a trade body that lobbies for airlines including British Airways (BA), easyJet and Virgin Atlantic, told the DfT that “the science around these [non-CO2 impacts] is not yet robust enough to form reduction targets”.
When asked during the Jet Zero consultation what could be done to tackle non-CO2 impacts, Ryanair said it was “too early to say until impact is better understood”.
Low-cost airline Wizz Air told the DfT: “There is too high a level of uncertainty of non-CO2 emission contribution to climate change for a policy to be formed.”
Airlines UK, Ryanair and Wizz – alongside others across the industry – called on the DfT to instead fund further research into the science of non-CO2 impacts.
The tactic appears to have worked, with the DfT announcing in the Jet Zero strategy last year that more work would be done with scientists and the industry to understand the issue.
The DfT did, however, say the government was “exploring whether and how non-CO2 impacts could be included in the scope of the UK ETS (emissions trading scheme)”.
Professor Piers Forster, an atmospheric physicist and member of the independent Climate Change Committee, told openDemocracy it was “completely wrong” for the aviation industry to claim the science on aviation’s non-CO2 effects was too uncertain to address them.
He said: “It’s a bit of a joke to say the effects are too uncertain to do anything about. We see their contrails and we’ve known for over 20 years that they are warming the planet. The industry should not hide behind uncertainty.”
He added that “the non-CO2 effects absolutely have to be accounted for in some way and action should be taken to reduce them”.
Milan Klöwer, a climate physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said airlines were adopting a “typical climate denialist strategy” by overstating the level of uncertainty about non-CO2 effects.
“Even in the best case they roughly double the effect of CO2 emissions on the climate,” he said.
He called on airlines to start accounting for their non CO2 effects and invest more in solutions, such as alternative fuels, which reduced those effects.
Rob Bryher, aviation campaigner at climate charity Possible, said: “These documents show that airlines cannot be trusted to decarbonise on their own. Demand management solutions like a frequent flyer levy, introducing fuel duty, carbon pricing, or management of airport capacity are going to be crucial.”
Matt Finch, UK policy manager of campaign group Transport & Environment, said: “Aviation’s non-CO2 impacts are somewhere between huge and absolutely massive. But the industry doesn’t want you to know that. Instead of confronting its environmental problems head-on, the industry copies the tobacco industry of the ’50s and the oil industry of the ’70s in casting doubt and disbelief around the science.”
BA said it was working with academics and experts on non-CO2 impacts of flying while Sustainable Aviation, an industry group that includes airlines, said it was committing to addressing them but reiterated more research was needed. Wizz Air said it was already addressing the impacts through a range of measures.
Some airlines ignore non-CO2 effects in schemes they support to help passengers calculate and offset the emissions of their flights.
BA’s emissions calculator states a one way flight from London Heathrow to New York emits 348kg CO2E (carbon dioxide equivalent) and charges £3.97 for offsetting.
Atmosfair, a German non-profit organisation which supports the decarbonisation of flying, calculates the same journey on a Boeing 777-200 – an aircraft type used by BA – emits 896kg and charges 21 euros (£18.37) for offsetting. Atmosfair’s emissions total comprises 308kg of CO2 emissions and 587 kg equivalent for “climate impact of contrails, ozone formation etc”.
While the DfT has so far failed to act on non-CO2 effects, they are mentioned in official advice to companies from the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy on how to report their emissions.
It says: “Organisations should include the indirect effects of non-CO2 emissions when reporting air travel emissions to capture the full climate impact of their travel.”
A DfT spokesperson said: “Our Jet Zero Strategy confirmed our aim of addressing the non-CO2 impacts of aviation, by developing our understanding of their impact and possible solutions, and the UK is one of the leading countries working to address this issue.”
International Airlines Group (IAG), which owns BA, Vueling and Aer Lingus, told DfT’s Jet Zero consultation it could address non-CO2 emissions by supporting “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF).
SAF is a jet fuel made from sources which the industry claims are sustainable, including cooking oil and animal fat. It performs in a similar way to kerosene but can produce up to 80% less CO2 depending on how it is made. It potentially also reduces contrails.
IAG told the Jet Zero consultation SAF was “the only viable solution for decarbonising medium and long haul flights”, which account for about 70% of global aviation emissions.
But further documents obtained by openDemocracy reveal IAG then lobbied the DfT to water down its SAF mandate.
In response to a separate consultation, IAG argued the SAF mandate should only cover flights within the UK or to the EU, and not the long haul flights on which British Airways makes most of its profits.
IAG also lobbied against a proposal to ban airlines from dodging the mandate by filling their tanks with cheap kerosene at overseas airports – a practice known as “tankering”.
A BBC Panorama investigation in 2019 revealed tankering by BA and other airlines was creating small financial savings but unnecessary carbon emissions.
IAG also argued against a proposal aimed at building demand for “power-to-liquid” jet fuel, which is produced by combining hydrogen made by renewable energy with carbon captured from the atmosphere.
Unlike other so-called sustainable jet fuels, power-to-liquid fuel does not involve a feedstock needed by other industries to decarbonise, such as used cooking oil or animal fat.
IAG called it “a very expensive pathway to directly decarbonise aviation”.
Sustainable Aviation, an industry group that includes airlines, said: “We are committed to addressing [non-CO2] impacts based on the scientific evidence, but further research is key to developing effective mitigation solutions, for example the use of sustainable aviation fuels (which contain lower contrail forming particulates), alongside steps such as optimising flight routes to avoid contrail formation.”
BA, IAG’s principal airline, said: “We are actively engaging with academics, experts within the industry and the government’s Jet Zero Council to take proactive steps to look into non-CO2 impact.”
Wizz Air said it was mitigating non-CO2 effects “through route optimisation and jet fuel improvements” and by using Airbus A321neo aircraft which reduced NOx emissions by 50%.
Ryanair did not respond to a request for comment.
Original article by Ben Webster and Lucas Amin republished from openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Climate change has been accumulating slowly but relentlessly for decades. The changes might sound small when you hear about them – another tenth of a degree warmer, another centimeter of sea level rise – but seemingly small changes can have big effects on the world around us, especially regionally.
The problem is that while effects are small at any time, they accumulate. Those effects have now accumulated to the point where their influence is contributing to damaging heat waves, drought and rainfall extremes that can’t be ignored.
The most recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is more emphatic than ever: Climate change, caused by human activities like burning fossil fuels, is having damaging effects on the climate as we know it, and those effects are rapidly getting worse.
An excellent example of how climate change accumulates is Earth’s energy imbalance. I am a climate scientist and have a new book on this about to be published by Cambridge University Press.
The Sun bombards Earth with a constant stream of about 173,600 terawatts (that is 12 zeros) of energy in the form of solar radiation. About 30% of that energy is reflected back into space by clouds and reflective surfaces, like ice and snow, leaving 122,100 terawatts to drive all the weather and climate systems around us, including the water cycle. Almost all of that energy cycles back to space – except for about 460 TW.
That remaining 460 TW is the problem we’re facing. That excess energy, trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is heating up the planet. That is the Earth’s energy imbalance, or in other words, global warming.
In comparison with the natural flow of energy through the climate system, 460 TW seems small – it’s only a fraction of 1 percent. Consequently, we cannot go outside and feel the extra energy. But the heat accumulates, and it is now having consequences.
To put that in perspective, the total amount of electricity generated worldwide in 2018 was about 2.6 TW. If you look at all energy used around the world, including for heat, industry and vehicles, it’s about 19.5 TW. Earth’s energy imbalance is huge in comparison.
Interfering with the natural flow of energy through the climate system is where humans make their mark. By burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and releasing greenhouse gases in other ways, humans are sending gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere that trap more of that incoming energy rather than letting it radiate back out.
Before the first industries began burning large amounts of fossil fuels in the 1800s, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was estimated at around 280 parts per million of volume. In 1958, when Dave Keeling began measuring atmospheric concentrations at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, that level was 310 parts per million. Today, those values have climbed to about 415 parts per million, a 48% increase.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and increased amounts cause heating. In this case, the human increment is not small.
Measurements over time show that over 90% of this extra energy is going into the oceans, where it causes the water to expand and sea level to rise.
The upper layer of the oceans started warming around the 1970s. By the early 1990s, heat was reaching 500 to 1,000 meters (1,640 to 3,280 feet) deep. By 2005, it was heating the ocean below 1,500 meters (nearly 5,000 feet).
Global sea level, measured by flights and satellites, was rising at a rate of about 3 millimeters per year from 1992 to 2012. Since then, it been increasing at about 4 millimeters a year. In 29 years, it has risen over 90 millimeters (3.5 inches).
If 3.5 inches doesn’t sound like much, talk to the coastal communities that exist a few feet above sea level. In some regions, these effects have led to chronic sunny day flooding during high tides, like Miami, San Francisco and Venice, Italy. Coastal storm surges are higher and much more destructive, especially from hurricanes. It’s an existential threat to some low-lying island nations and a growing expense for U.S. coastal cities.
Some of that extra energy, about 13 terawatts, goes into melting ice. Arctic sea ice in summer has decreased by over 40% since 1979. Some excess energy melts land ice, such as glaciers and permafrost on Greenland, Antarctica, which puts more water into the ocean and contributes to sea level rise.
Some energy penetrates into land, about 14 TW. But as long as land is wet, a lot of energy cycles into evapotranspiration – evaporation and transpiration in plants – which moistens the atmosphere and fuels weather systems. It is when there is a drought or during the dry season that effects accumulate on land, through drying and wilting of plants, raising temperatures and greatly increasing risk of heat waves and wildfire.
Over oceans, the extra heat provides a tremendous resource of moisture for the atmosphere. That becomes latent heat in storms that supersizes hurricanes and rainstorms, leading to flooding, as people in many parts of the world have experienced in recent months.
Air can contain about 4% more moisture for every 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 Celsius) increase in temperature, and air above the oceans is some 5% to 15% moister than it was prior to 1970. Hence, about a 10% increase in heavy rain results as storms gather the excess moisture.
Again, this may not sound like much, but that increase enlivens the updrafts and the storms, and then the storm lasts longer, so suddenly there is a 30% increase in the rainfall, as has been documented in several cases of major flooding.
In Mediterranean climates, characterized by long, dry summers, such as in California, eastern Australia and around the Mediterranean, the wildfire risk grows, and fires can be readily triggered by natural sources, like dry lightning, or human causes.
Extreme events in weather have always occurred, but human influences are now pushing them outside their previous limits.
So, while all weather events are driven by natural influences, the impacts are greatly magnified by human-induced climate change. Hurricanes cross thresholds, levees break and floods run amok. Elsewhere, fires burn out of control, things break and people die.
I call it “The straw that breaks the camel’s back syndrome.” This is extreme nonlinearity, meaning the risks aren’t rising in a straight line – they’re rising much faster, and it confounds economists who have greatly underestimated the costs of human-induced climate change.
The result has been far too little action both in slowing and stopping the problems, and in planning for impacts and building resilience – despite years of warnings from scientists. The lack of adequate planning means we all suffer the consequences.
[The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories. Weekly on Wednesdays.]
Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Scholar, National Center for Atmospheric Research
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It occurs to me that this could be a dangerous time for politicians and others failing to address the climate crisis. We have the most recent IPCC report identifying necessary action including an immediate stop to all new fossil fuel use and it’s ignored. Climate change is seen and experienced, it’s beyond controlling the narrative. The people that have warned of the growing crisis will be gaining power and influence, [ed: in a few years … ] we may well have laws that are applied retrospectively – and why shouldn’t they be? [ed: Why shouldn’t they be held responsible for their actions or – potentially recognised as criminal – neglect? Had the power to address severe climate destuction but chose not to …]
U.S. President Joe Biden’s reported plan to protect old-growth forests—which help combat global temperature rise by storing planet-heating carbon—is “grossly inadequate,” one climate advocacy group said Thursday.
Biden will mark Earth Day in Seattle on Friday with an executive order on the issue, according to The Washington Post, which cited five unnamed sources briefed on the plan.
Responding in a statement, Food & Water Watch national organizing manager Thomas Meyer declared that “President Biden seems to think we’re celebrating the first Earth Day in 1970, rather than in [the] depths of the climate crisis in 2022.”
“Protecting forests without addressing the root cause of the climate crisis, namely the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels, will do very little to slow global warming,” he warned.
“The president has many effective tools at his disposal to address the climate and public health impacts of fossil fuels in a serious way,” Meyer added. “He should start by following through on his pledge to end fracking on public lands and stop offshore drilling, and directing his agencies to reject all new fossil fuel infrastructure.”
…
Over 20 advocacy organizations are planning a nationwide “Fight for Our Future” mobilization for Saturday to demand climate action from the Biden administration and Congress.
On the heels of Earth Day, demonstrators plan to gather in Washington, D.C., and communities across the United States to reiterate the necessity of pursuing bold policies to combat the fossil-fueled planetary emergency, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released earlier this month.
The organizing comes not only in the midst of the climate emergency but also as Russia’s war on Ukraine and price gouging by fossil fuel giants—in the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic—drive up the cost of gas.
Sierra Club president Ramon Cruz in a statement that “in this unprecedented moment of climate crisis, rising prices, energy insecurity, and racial and environmental injustice, it’s vital that our leaders fight to establish a livable, just, and healthy planet for all.”
“The latest IPCC report made clear that we not only have an imperative to address the climate crisis, but also the means to do so—doing so just requires the political will to make transformational investments at the scale and speed the crisis demands,” he added. “There’s a clear path forward for critical investments in climate, care, jobs, and justice, and Congress must seize this crucial opportunity to truly ensure the future we all deserve.”
…
The most recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN body) report published today tells us that some impacts of climate change are now irreversible.
[A] liveable future remains within grasp – just. But the window of opportunity for action is “brief and rapidly closing”. The response from UN secretary-general António Guterres was stark: “Delay is death.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/what-at-stake-climate-crisis-report-everything
The IPCC report says that we must act now while world governments continue to pursue climate destroying policies. The point is this: We tolerate and suffer these governments and their super-rich masters that they pander to but we don’t have to. We can instead obstruct business as usual, refuse to tolerate and suffer these climate-destroying bastards. We need to act in unity putting away any other differences we might have. Our planet is getting killed, we must act for the sake of our children, young people and future generations. Delay is death.
Instead of responsible government Boris Johnson’s UK government is pursuing climate-harming policies and has stuffed his cabinet with climate-denying ministers. UK Tory MPs are campaigning against climate policies through the Net Zero Scrutiny Group. Legitimate government should be concerned with protecting it’s citizens while Boris Johnson’s UK government is doing the opposite.
IPCC issues ‘bleakest warning yet’ on impacts of climate breakdown
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t understand climate change basics, and that’s a problem
Climate change causing widespread and irreversible impacts, says IPCC
Constituents set up ‘Steve Baker Watch’ over MP’s climate stance