Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 123

What Does Europe’s Record-Breaking Heat Wave Tell Us About Climate Change?

As countries across Europe continue to shatter temperature records — Germany hit 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, an all-time high since records began in 1881 — scientists around the world are beginning to wonder: what role is climate change playing in this most recent heat wave?

The answer, according to an international group of scientists at the World Weather Attribution Center, is “a significant” one. According to an analysis conducted last week, “it is virtually certain that climate change increased the likelihood of the ongoing heat wave stretching across much of Europe.”

The scientists looked at temperature records from a few different European cities — Madrid, Zürich, and Paris, among others — and, using a combination of observed and forecasted data, compared the temperatures seen this summer to temperatures from the beginning of the century, “before global warming played a significant role in our climate.” They found that in every case, a three-day period of temperatures as high as they have been this month would have been quite rare at the beginning of the 20th century — but is much more common now. In Madrid, for instance, a three-day period with temperatures like the ones seen during this heat wave would have been “exceptionally rare in the 1920s” but is now “likely to happen roughly 1 in 40 years.”

The kinds of conditions that are conducive for heat waves to occur, those are most likely in the future with higher temperatures

As part of the analysis, researchers at Oxford also simulated the likelihood of seeing temperatures as high as have been seen recently in Europe both with and without climate change. Of the five cities analyzed in their simulation, they found that the current heat wave conditions were at least twice as likely to occur due to climate change.

So does this mean that the current European heat wave, or the deadly heat waves seen recently in India and Pakistan, were caused by climate change?

For some, that’s a more difficult connection to make than saying that climate change made the heat wave more likely, or made the heat wave worse. Scientists agree that human activities — such as the burning of fossil fuels — have altered the composition of the atmosphere, creating a new kind of climate backdrop against which weather events occur. But they’re more hesitant to say that climate change caused a particular weather event to occur in the first place.

“I don’t think you can ever say that,” Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told ThinkProgress. “Even without climate change, there has always been heat waves. It just relates to the right meteorological setup.”

That doesn’t mean that scientists never confidently attribute weather events like heat waves to climate change. In 2014, five research groups, each using different methods, concluded that the Australian heat wave of 2013 was almost certainly a result of man-made climate change. The study, which was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was touted as one of the most conclusive links between an extreme weather event and climate change, because it involved several different models coming to the same conclusion.

In the long-term, climate models confidently show the potential for heat waves increasing. Two meteorological factors in particular influence the formation of heat waves: anticyclonic conditions (high pressure weather systems that create settled weather conditions) and relative dryness. Warmer temperatures are expected to lead to an intensification in the hydrologic cycle, meaning that any rain that falls will evaporate more quickly, leading to more surface dryness that in turn can lead to anticyclonic conditions.

Once the stage is set, exactly how glamorous the show is — that’s the thing that is determined by … climate change

“The kinds of conditions that are conducive for heat waves to occur, those are most likely in the future with higher temperatures,” Moetasim Ashfaq, a scientist at the Climate Change Science Institute at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, told ThinkProgress. “When we talk about the present, what’s happening today, that may be because of climate variability.”

One type of climate variability that can lead to prolonged heat waves is known as blocking. It’s when a high pressure system remains stagnant over a region, blocked by two areas of low pressure. Blocking was what caused the 2003 heat wave across Europe that killed more than 70,000; it was present during the 2010 heat wave in Russia that killed more than 50,000 people; and, according to Ashfaq, it’s what scientists expect caused the recent deadly heatwaves in India and Pakistan.

Are blocking patterns becoming more common because of global warming? Ashfaq wagers that they are, but cautions that, in the short term, it’s difficult to say with certainty whether a particular event was caused by climate change, or climate variability. Andrew Freedman, at Mashable, uses the analogy of a baseball player on steroids hitting a home run — do you know for certain that the player was able to propel the ball over the fence because of the steroids? Was it a single instance of good contact, or did the steroids make it more likely that he could hit the ball harder, and farther? If you’re just looking at one run — one single event — it’s hard to tell. But over the long-term, the data will show that the steroids make the baseball player more likely to hit a home run.

Trenberth phrases it another way: at this point, with existing climate models, it’s very difficult to know whether a single event was caused by climate change, or natural climate variability, like an El Niño pattern. What’s not hard is figuring out whether climate change made a weather event worse.

“It’s always the natural variability — that is, the weather — that sets the stage,” he said. “But then once the stage is set, exactly how glamorous the show is — that’s the thing that is determined by the climate change aspect.”

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Bernie Sanders’ Plan To Make Solar Power More Accessible

On Tuesday, Vermont Senator and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders introduced legislation aimed at making it easier for low-income families to take advantage of solar power. The bill, called the “Low Income Solar Act,” came the same day that the Obama Administration announced a similar program aimed at installing 300 megawatts of renewable energy in federally subsidized housing by 2020.

The Sanders bill would aid in this effort by providing $200 million in Department of Energy loans and grants to help offset the upfront costs associated with installing solar panels on community facilities, public housing and low-income family homes, according to a press release. The projects would also have to prioritize loans for female- and minority-owned businesses, as well as target specific regions including Appalachia, Indian tribal lands, and Alaskan native communities.

“The scientific community tells us very clearly if we’re going to reverse climate change and the great dangers it poses for the planet we must move aggressively to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy,” Sanders said in a statement. “We can achieve this goal, save families money and protect the planet for future generations.”

According to the bill summary, homeowners with suitable roofs would receive grants to help them afford solar panel installation while renters or others without appropriate siting options would get connected through alternative means such as community solar gardens. Solar gardens are designed for those without rooftop access as a way to connect to a shared solar system that guarantees their electricity comes from solar power. Usually these community solar gardens are one or two megawatts in size and operated by third-party solar providers and local utilities.

Environmentalists are pleased that Sanders is running for president, as he is one of the climate change action leaders in the Senate.

Environmental activist and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben recently praised Sanders as “the ultimate what-you-see-is-what-you-get politician.”

“Bernie’s been in the forefront of all the crucial environmental fights of recent years, always willing to knuckle down and do the hard work of fighting the big corporations,” McKibben told the Burlington Free Press.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, after the 2014 election that put the GOP in charge of the Senate, Sanders pushed the chamber to go on the record as to whether climate change is happening, caused by human activity, and resulting in “devastating problems in the United States and around the world.”

In 2015 he attended the People’s Climate March in New York City and told Democracy Now! that climate change is “a huge issue. It’s a planetary crisis. We’ve got to act, and we have to act boldly.”

He has also consistently opposed the Keystone XL pipeline and has talked publicly about the potentially disastrous environmental effects.

While Sanders entered the race an extreme long shot, his popularity has swelled in the early days of the campaign. On a recent visit to Iowa, one of the early caucus states, Sanders drew big crowds as well as the attention of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Sanders is gaining major traction in Iowa polling, and has surpassed Clinton among very liberal voters.

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It’s Been Two Years Since This Deadly Oil Train Explosion. What’s Changed?

Church bells in Lac Megantic, Quebec, rang 47 times on Monday to honor each person killed by a runaway oil train just two years ago.

It was the second anniversary of what’s become the town’s defining tragedy, when a unit train carrying 72 tankers of highly volatile crude oil derailed and exploded. There were fires, fumes, and an approximately 1.5 million gallon oil spill — emergency responders described a “war zone.” A “river of burning oil” ran down city streets and engulfed buildings in flames. Today, there are still scars on the soul of the town.

Though it happened in Canada, the explosion forced a fierce discussion in America about whether we were doing enough to prevent similar incidents at home. The volatile oil that caused the explosion, after all, came from North Dakota. And, safety advocates pointed out, that North Dakota oil was being shipped across America by train at a rate 40 times greater than just five years prior to the accident. Worse, there had been no upgrades in federal safety regulations to account for that increase. Canada had just experienced a major tragedy — it seemed like America was vulnerable to one as well.

The American public is still being kept in the dark

What’s happened in those two years? For one, we’ve had more derailments of oil cars — at least six in 2015 alone, averaging about one per month. The latest one was just last week in Tennessee, causing the evacuation of 5,000 people.

But in May, we also got new and final safety standards for trains that carry oil and other flammable materials. Those standards include a new maximum speed of 50 miles per hour, and 40 miles per hour through urban areas. They also include updated braking systems for trains, and better classification of materials.

But according to some rail safety experts, the most worrisome thing about the new regulations is what they don’t include. Fred Millar, a rail safety consultant who has spent more than 30 years lobbying for accident prevention, told ThinkProgress on Tuesday that Americans still lack information about when trains are coming through their neighborhoods, what those trains contain, and what the worse case scenario would be if one derailed.

“The one thing that hasn’t changed [since Lac Megantic] is that the American public is not being granted the right to know the risk they’re being exposed to,” he said. “The American public is still being kept in the dark.”

It’s true that rail companies are not required to let communities know when or how much oil is being shipped through their backyards, and the new regulations do little to change that. Under the new standards, rail companies have to share that information with some emergency responders, but the general public cannot access that information. Companies often cite the risk of terrorism as the reason why.

But it’s not just routing and volume data that is being kept secret. According to Millar, railroad companies keep documents that outline what the “worst-case accident scenario” would be if a unit train carrying oil or other hazardous material derailed near an urban zone.

“That’s not a radical thing to ask of a railroad — please tell us what your cargos could do in an American city,” Millar said. “Tell us what you know.”

Millar argues that if the public is equipped with the knowledge about what could happen in a worst-case scenario, it might empower people to act and prevent those trains from coming through their neighborhoods. There is precedent for that — last year in Albany County, New York, local officials issued a moratorium on a crude-by-rail project, citing the risk of a dangerous derailment.

And as Lac Megantic showed, derailments near population centers can certainly be dangerous. But under the new rules, unit trains — trains with 100 cars or more of the same cargo — are not required to avoid urban areas.

If they do go through urban areas, those trains have to be operating under 40 miles per hour under the new rules. Millar has taken issue with that speed limit before, noting that 40 mph is still pretty fast for a 100-car oil train.

He’s not the only person who has raised the concern. In fact, the staff director of the Federal Railroad Administration has admitted that train cars would be punctured if derailed at that speed.

“When you begin to look at cars that are derailing at speeds of 30, 40 miles an hour, it’s very difficult, it’s a big ask, to expect that a tank car get hit [and] not be breached,” the FRA’s Karl Alexy said at a the National Transportation Safety Board forum last year.

But just slowing down may create more problems. An unprecedented amount of oil is being produced in the Bakken Shale region, and there is not enough pipeline infrastructure to handle transportation. The only way for it to go is by rail — or truck, which no one wants — and there’s too much traffic on the rails. Anything slower than 40 miles per hour would bottleneck the system, the railroad industry argues. The United States Postal Service also operates on railroads, and if oil trains slow down, the industry argues that mail shipments might go back to truck.

With the final regulations already in place, Millar notes there’s not much else that can be done if the public wants stricter limits on speed, or more access to information. Except, of course, “civil disobedience.”

That seems to be the strategy environmentalists are taking in the wake of the two-year anniversary. As reported in the Hill, environmental groups are undergoing a week of protests against crude-by-rail this week, reportedly planning more than 100 events ranging from blockades to peaceful vigils. Four activists have already been arrested for suspending themselves from a railroad bridge to hang a banner protesting oil trains.

Millar says that’s the right idea. At the very least, safety advocates should be acting to stop oil train accidents now, instead of responding to them when they happen.

“Emergency response is a distraction. It’s hopeless. These accidents are way too big. ” he said. “All you can do is step back and watch it burn.”

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An Unprecedented Number Of Canadian Wildfires Send Smoke Pollution Across The United States

Fueled by unusually high temperatures, hundreds of wildfires are burning across Western Canada — and they’re sending their smoke south across the United States border.

Wildfire danger throughout Western Canada is “very high,” according to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), with the majority of fire activity taking place in three provinces: Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and Alberta. “Nationally,” the CWFIS’ most recent report reads, “fire activity has increased dramatically and is now well above average for this time of year.”

According to Mashable, more than 13,000 people in the province of Saskatchewan have been evacuated because of the fires, making it the largest wildfire evacuation in history for the relatively underpopulated province. The province’s premier, Brad Wall, told CBC News that the fires are “unprecedented” for the region, noting that the area currently burning is about 10 times the average. As of Monday, there were 112 fires burning across the province.

In Alberta, some 1,200 fires have burned more than 740,000 acres since April 1. Hundreds of residents have been put on evacuation alert as fires continue to burn throughout the province.

British Columbia is also seeing an unusually early and active start to the wildfire season, with roughly 200 wildfires burning across the province as of Monday. Officials in the province issued warnings to residents as smoke from the wildfires caused a drop in air quality; residents were told to avoid strenuous outdoor activity and to remain indoors.

John Innes, dean of the University of British Columbia’s faculty of forestry, told CBC News that climate change is helping to exacerbate Canada’s wildfire situation by creating more warm and dry areas across which wildfires can quickly spread.

“Longer term, we will see more fires. We will see the fire season extending, it will start earlier, it will go on later, and the fires that we get will be more intense,” Innes told CBC News.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the wildfires up north are causing a “tremendous amount of smoke,” and it hasn’t stopped at the border: smoke from Canada’s wildfires has been seen across Midwest and as far south as North Carolina, bringing a haze to the sky and turning sunsets fiery red. But the smoke also brings dangerous fine particles, which can diminish air quality and, in high concentrations, pose a public health threat.

Because of the path of the smoke — which moved primarily east-southeast, according to NBC News — air quality in Minnesota was particularly hard-hit. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said Monday that the wildfire smoke was responsible for the worst air quality levels in nearly a decade — at times, the air quality in the Twin Cities was equal or worse than air quality in places like Beijing, China or Sao Paulo, Brazil, cities known for their high levels of pollution.

Late Monday afternoon, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment also released a smoke advisory for most of the state, warning residents that live east of the Continental Divide that smoke from Canada’s wildfires could impact air quality in those areas. The Denver International Airport also cautioned travelers that the thick haze created by the smoke could cause flight delays.

Smoke from wildfires contains a number of pollutants, including small particles that can enter the lungs through the mouth, nose, or eyes, and can aggravate existing health conditions like lung or heart disease. The elderly and the young — as well as those with respiratory or heart problems — are especially vulnerable to the health impacts associated with particle pollution. During a large-scale fire in 2007, six hospitals in the San Diego area saw a 25 percent increase respiratory illness diagnoses, and a 50 percent increase in asthma diagnoses, according to a CDC analysis.

The harmful impacts of wildfire smoke aren’t just limited to the areas directly surrounding the burn — according to a 2013 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report, 32 states were impacted by wildfire smoke conditions in 2011. The same analysis found that while 22 states experienced no wildfires during 2011, eight of those still had to contend with medium-to-high density smoke conditions for a week or more.

“Wildfire smoke can pose serious health risks to people hundreds of miles away from the sources of fires,” Kim Knowlton, a senior scientist with NRDC, said in a press statement when the report was released. “Wildfire smoke already clouds the skies of millions of Americans and because climate change will fuel more wildfires, that danger will rise.”

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This Major World City Is Running Out Of Water

In Thailand, every year has a hot season, a dry season, and a monsoon season. But authorities are saying the most recent dry season — which should have ended in June — has turned into a full-fledged drought, and drinking water reserves in the nation’s capital of Bangkok only hold enough for another 30 days.

More than 14 million people live in the Bangkok metropolitan area. The city gets most of its drinking water from the Chao Phraya river, which runs through the center of the city into the Gulf of Thailand a few miles downstream. During a drought, seawater can flow upstream, turning the river brackish, Reuters reported this week. The local water company is not equipped to purify salty water.

Not only was the hot season extra hot this year, the country also started the dry season with below-normal reserves. Last November, when the rainy season ended, the three major dams used for water storage had about 60 percent as much water as usual for that time, Thanasak Watanathana, governor of the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority, told Reuters. The water level in some city canals is more than a meter below the “alarm level,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

“Right now, there is only enough water in the dams to distribute for about 30 more days — if it doesn’t rain,” Thanasak said. Reuters also reported that the water service has asked Bangkokians to limit their water use.

Two Bangkok residents, though, told ThinkProgress they have not heard anything about water conservation efforts.

People aren’t worried enough, said Bangkok resident Narut Sutakawatin. “Then again, I’m not an expert. This might eventually be nothing,” he wrote on Twitter. He pointed to data from the government’s water-tracking app. The first shows Pasak dam, in central Thailand. The second is Kundan Prakanchol, in Nakhon-Nayok province, northeast of Bangkok.

Water level in dams doesn’t look that dramatic when compare to year before, … #ThailandDrought pic.twitter.com/cLHi7HTbpl

— Ruud (@s_narut) July 7, 2015

It’s true that low reservoirs are certainly not a new problem for Thailand, which has long proposed improving its water system to prevent catastrophic flooding and to preserve more water for the dry times. But it’s getting worse, experts say, and climate change threatens to exacerbate the issues.

Drought and flooding are two sides of the same climate change coin. As temperatures increase worldwide, water evaporates more quickly and dry spells become worse. At the same time, warm air can hold more water vapor, so rains can be heavier. In the past five years, Thailand has experienced its worst droughts and floods of the past few decades.

As if that weren’t enough, Bangkok, built on marshland and originally crisscrossed with canals — which are now mostly filled in — sinks nearly 4 inches each year, according to the Climate Institute. Coupled with rising sea levels, this means Bangkok could be underwater within 10 to 15 years, the group reported.

And cycles of intense drought and flooding can exacerbate that process. Just last week, Thai newspaper the Nation reported that roads are sinking and collapsing in the drought-stricken province just north of Bangkok.

While drinking water in the capital is running low, the whole country is facing damaging effects of drought. Thailand is the rice capital of the world, and the crop is expected to be low this year, after farmers have already been asked to delay their planting in central Thailand. The disruption could lead to protests and economic woes, farmers have said.

Thailand’s electricity system also depends on water supplies. The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) issued a warning this week that the letting too much water out of dams would be problematic.

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The Media Is Still Confused About Whether The Paris Climate Deal Will Limit Warming To 2 Degrees

Right now, the global climate is a patient that has no plausible chance of survival if left untreated. The climate is not merely in “critical” condition — with vital signs that are “unstable and not within normal limits.” It is getting wildly inadequate care.

The big international Paris climate talks in December are crucial to saving the patient. But, by design, they can at best slow the bleeding and get the patient upgraded to serious condition: “Vital signs may be unstable and not within normal limits. Patient is acutely ill. Indicators are questionable.” The patient is still very unlikely to survive without further aggressive treatment.

The widespread confusion on this point — some of which is intentional — leaves us with silly headlines from otherwise serious news organizations like Reuters: “U.N. climate deal in Paris may be graveyard for 2C goal.” I explained back in February that “Of Course Paris Climate Talks Won’t Keep Warming Below The Dangerous 2°C Limit.”

Paris is focused on stanching the bleeding with a tourniquet. The goal has always been to get firm global commitments from the big emitters to meet serious targets in the 2025-2030 timeframe so we can get off our current emissions pathway — a pathway that would blow past 4°C (7°F) warming, ruin a livable climate for centuries and make feeding 9 billion people post-2050 an unimaginably difficult task.

Avoiding the 2°C limit remains an essential goal. Indeed, the best science now makes clear we must say as far below 2°C as is humanly possible — a point the world’s top climatologists bluntly explained in May.

But for Paris to single-handedly achieve that goal, every major country would have to commit to specific and ever-deeper post-2030 carbon dioxide cuts all the way to zero emissions in the next half century or so (and possibly negative emissions after that). Such an outcome was never on the table.

As European Union climate chief Miguel Arias Canete has explained: “2C is an objective. If we have an ongoing process you cannot say it is a failure if the mitigation commitments do not reach 2C.”

Now it is entirely possible we won’t keep warming below 2°C. After ignoring scientific warnings for the last quarter century, the world is running out of time and many of our political leaders still don’t grasp the dire nature of the situation. To quote Winston Churchill once more, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

I am certainly more hopeful than I have been since I started blogging nine years ago — thanks to the Pope’s moral clarity, the stunning clean energy revolution, the game-changing U.S.-China deal and China’s desire to beat its climate, coal, and clean energy targets (see here).

We are still a long, long way from being able to upgrade the climate to “fair” condition: “Vital signs are stable and within normal limits. Patient is conscious, but may be uncomfortable. Indicators are favorable.” But at least we may avoid handing a climate to the next generation that is DOA.

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The Five-Year Plan To Save The Polar Bears

Nearly every headline about the U.S. government’s new report on polar bears echoes gloom and doom. One after another, they range from speculation of “the brink of extinction” to predictions of a “population crash” that will likely begin in about 10 years. One after another, they despair: “It may be even worse for the polar bears than previously thought.”

Unfortunately, these headlines aren’t wrong. But they do ignore a critical caveat: We can, at least slightly, improve the polar bear prognosis.

It’s unfortunate that [extinction] is the message that pervades all this.

“It’s unfortunate that [extinction] is the message that pervades all this,” Todd Atwood, a research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, told ThinkProgress. “Yes, that’s the most likely scenario if nothing happens on the mitigation front. But the subtext is that we have opportunities.”

Atwood is the lead author of this new report that seemingly predicts the polar bear’s hopeless demise. But the report, released Friday by the Fish and Wildlife Service, is actually called a “Recovery Plan” — a blueprint that the government believes “will contribute to the conservation and recovery of polar bears.” It’s a five-year, nearly $13 million plan, and it identifies ways the U.S. can create the best possible outcome for the species, which was listed as threatened in 2008.

The short version of the plan is that it won’t be easy. Even with enormous efforts, polar bears will still face high risk of being wiped out of certain areas. And that’s because the number one threat to polar bears’ continued survival is human-caused climate change.

According to the report, the “the primary threat to polar bears” is the decline of their habitat, which is sea ice. The second place threat is decreased access to marine mammal prey, which the bears get by hunting — on sea ice. Worldwide, sea ice has decreased by about 12 percent per decade since the 1970s, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The melt is fueled by climate change, a phenomenon caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

[image error]

CREDIT: Washington Post Graphic

So what to do? Obviously if climate change is the main culprit, that’s what needs to be stopped. But that requires swift and decisive action on an international level. Jenifer Kohout, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional program manager, admitted as much in comments reported by the Associated Press. In essence, Kohout said, all we can do is wait. “In the meantime,” she said, “the Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners are committed to doing everything within our control to give the bears a chance to survive.”

At first glance, it can seem like there’s not a huge difference between doing nothing about climate change and doing something, at least when it comes to polar bears. Atwood explained that if emissions are allowed to increase as usual (a scenario referred to in the science community as “RCP 8.5″) then there is a “substantial likelihood” that polar bears will be left in a “severely decreased” state. And if the world is able to stabilize its emissions and not increase them (the “RCP 4.5″ scenario) then there is still a “substantial likelihood” that polar bears will be left in a “severely decreased” state.

However, Atwood explained, there is an important differentiation between the two. If we allow emissions to increase as usual, there is an approximately 75 percent chance of “severely decreased” polar bear populations in most regions. But if we can stabilize emissions, the likelihood of “severely decreased” populations decreases by about 25 percent. That means there would only be an approximately 50 percent chance that polar bear populations would severely decrease. The remaining 50 percent would be spread out between the chance that polar bear populations are decreased, or stay the same.

Why is that important? According to Atwood, there’s a huge difference between “decreased” polar bear populations and “severely decreased” populations.

“When we’re talking about just ‘decreased,’ we’re talking about animals that are still present in the population in a region in a meaningful way — that they’re not on the verge of being highly vulnerable to events that would lead to their localized extirpation,” he said, referring to events like severe weather or disease outbreak that could wipe out remaining animals. “A decreased outcome is not necessarily vulnerable to extirpation,” or local extinction of a species.

We have to look at the Arctic as an early warning system of what’s likely to come for other parts of our planet.

Of course, a decreased population is still vulnerable to threats. And in many regions, even reducing emissions to the stabilized scenario still puts polar bear populations with a dominant likelihood of being severely decreased. But, Atwood said, the stabilized emissions scenario gives us time.

“If we can adhere to the RCP 4.5 trajectory, we can forestall the transition to a greatly decreased state by about 25 years,” he said. “That gives us time, then, to perhaps innovate, and further reduce greenhouse gas emissions below the 4.5 trajectory, and also manage the other threats that are much less important than greenhouse emissions but do buy you some time.”

In other words, if emissions can be stabilized, that gives the government more time to combat threats to polar bears that aren’t climate change. Those include hunting, parasites, disease, and exposure to pollutants like oil.

One things Atwood said researchers are particularly interested in is the future threat of human-bear conflict. As the bears in some parts of the Arctic face decreases in their sea ice habitat, he said, they’re exploring coming ashore for the first time in their lives — and they’re encountering humans. Indeed, scientists have warned about increases in human-bear conflict as ice melts and hungry bears come onto land to look for food.

But right now, “the primary threat is greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “We could stop all hunting and that’s not going to stop the decline in sea ice habitat and the decline in populations.”

If populations do decline the way they’re projected to in the business-as-usual emissions scenario, the effects will extend beyond the near-loss of a cuddly-looking creature. The Arctic, Atwood said, is the “canary in the cryosphere” — the early indicator what the rest of the Earth can expect if and when climate change worsens. Indeed, the Arctic warms approximately twice as fast than the Earth as a whole — warming that has serious implications for extreme weather, sea level rise, and permafrost melt.

“What’s happening is not going to stay in the Arctic, and not just going to affect the polar bear,” Atwood warned. “We have to look at the Arctic as an early warning system of what’s likely to come for other parts of our planet.”

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Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Groups Trying To Block The Clean Up Of The Chesapeake Bay

The future of the Chesapeake Bay looks a little cleaner Monday, after a federal appeals court struck down a case that sought to undermine an effort to clean up the bay.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ newly-released opinion upholds a decision made by a lower court that found that the Environmental Protection Agency-led cleanup effort, which involves all six states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, is legal. The plan, called the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint, establishes a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for how much nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment can enter the bay each year — limits that aim to cut these forms of pollution by 20-25 percent by 2025.

The EPA’s plan is being put in place by the states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. But a range of agriculture groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Fertilizer Institute, and the National Pork Producers Council, have taken issue with the plan, with the Farm Bureau suing the EPA over it in 2011. That lawsuit garnered the support of 21 attorneys general from states almost exclusively outside the Chesapeake Bay region, who claimed that the rule constituted EPA overreach.

Their arguments, however, didn’t stand up in the appeals court. The court’s opinion made clear that the EPA’s regulation of nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay under the Clean Water Act was valid, and that the Farm Bureau’s arguments against the plan were “unpersuasive.”

“Congress made a judgement in the Clean Water Act that the states and the EPA could, working together, best allocate the benefits and burdens of lowering pollution,” the court opinion reads. “The Chesapeake Bay TMDL will require sacrifice by many, but that is a consequence of the tremendous effort it will take to restore health to the Bay…a goal our elected representatives have repeatedly endorsed.”

As the court opinion points out, the Chesapeake Bay has been plagued by this nutrient and sediment pollution — the majority of which comes from farms in the region — for decades. This pollution causes “dead zones” — oxygen-free areas of the Bay that kill clams and worms, key food sources for the region’s iconic blue crabs — and algal blooms that can be toxic to wildlife and humans. The TMDL, which was created at the request of the six Chesapeake Bay states and the District of Columbia after numerous other attempts to clean up the bay failed, puts the states in the watershed on a “pollution diet,” but gives the states flexibility on how to reach reduction targets.

But the Farm Bureau has argued against the TMDL over the last few years partly because it thinks that the plan “eliminates state flexibility to make their own cleanup decisions, or to modify their plans based on new technologies or new information.” That’s something that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation — a defendant in the case — and the EPA dispute.

“Nothing in the TMDL dictates that agriculture do anything one way or another — much less that any kind of zoning occur that is not supported by local government,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William Baker said last year. “States and local governments worked together with a number of federal agencies to develop this Clean Water Blueprint for the bay. It’s hardly a mandate being imposed on high down to the states.”

The agriculture groups, along with the 21 Attorneys General, also worried that the plan could set the stage for similar EPA action to clean up watersheds like the Mississippi — a river that cuts through prime agricultural regions.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation praised the appeals court’s decision.

“This is a great day for everyone who cares about clean water and the Chesapeake Bay,” Baker said in a statement. “In a case challenging EPA’s Clean Water Act authorities, the Third Circuit Court in Philadelphia has spoken.”

Baker said on a press call Monday that the group hoped the Farm Bureau and other opponents of the TMDL would drop their legal opposition to the plan. Opponents could still petition the third circuit’s decision, or try to take the case to the Supreme Court.

A peer-reviewed report published last October found that, on top of the environmental benefits of the TMDL, the cleanup plan would also result in billions of dollars in economic benefits for the region. But not all states in the region are on track to meet the reductions laid out by the plan — Maryland and Virginia are, in general, making progress towards cleaning up their Chesapeake Bay tributaries, but Pennsylvania is “falling dangerously short” of meeting its commitments, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation reported earlier this year. Baker said on the press call that his organization will “continue to call” for accelerated efforts to implement the TMDL in the region.

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Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists Call For Action To ‘Minimize The Substantial Risks Of Climate Change’

Sixty years ago, Nobel laureates gathered on a tiny island in Western Europe and warned the world of the dangerous effects of nuclear weapons.

Last Friday, on the same island, 36 Nobel Prize winners took up another cause: climate change, which they said poses a “threat of comparable magnitude” to nuclear war.

“If left unchecked, our ever-increasing demand for food, water, and energy will eventually overwhelm the Earth’s ability to satisfy humanity’s needs, and will lead to wholesale human tragedy,” the Nobel laureates’ declaration reads. “Already, scientists who study Earth’s climate are observing the impact of human activity.”

The declaration marked the culmination of the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, a week-long gathering of 65 Nobel laureates held on Mainau Island, a small island in Lake Constance that borders Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

“Based on the IPCC assessment, the world must make rapid progress towards lowering current and future greenhouse gas emissions to minimize the substantial risks of climate change,” the declaration continues, highlighting the 2015 United Nation Climate Change Conference in Paris as a chance to take steps toward international climate action.

“This endeavor will require the cooperation of all nations, whether developed or developing, and must be sustained into the future in accord with updated scientific assessment,” the declaration concludes.

Thirty-five of the declaration’s signatories have been awarded a Nobel Prize in a scientific field, ranging from medicine to chemistry. The 36th signatory was Kailash Satyarthi, who was awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in children’s rights.

“I see this issue as the single greatest threat to human prosperity, and I believe it is important for the best scientific evidence to be used by policy [makers] in making their decisions,” Brian Schmidt, who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for physics, said in a press statement.

That sentiment was echoed by George Smoot, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize for physics, who said that “the evidence is very strong that the major portion of climate change is man made and that continuing business as usual presents great and increasing risk to humankind.”

But not every Nobel laureate present at the conference signed the declaration — or shared the signatories’ concerns about climate change. Earlier in the week, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and climate denier Ivar Giaever gave a lecture questioning the science and policies behind climate change, which in the past he has likened to a “new religion.” According to E&E News, Giaever — who at the 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting said that climate change was “absolutely” pseudoscience — explicitly criticized President Obama’s response to climate change, calling him a “clever person” that “gets bad advice.”

“I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong,” Giaever said. “Dead wrong.”

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Episcopal Church Votes To Withdraw Investments In Fossil Fuels

Leaders of the Episcopal Church voted to divest its holdings from fossil fuels on Friday, citing the fact that fossil fuel burning causes catastrophic climate change.

Calling it a “moral issue,” leaders of the 2 million member Christian denomination said fossil fuel investments would be purged from the church’s holdings, which total approximately $380 million. The vote, however, does not cover the denomination’s $9 billion pension fund, or the $4 billion controlled by parishes and dioceses, the Guardian reported.

Still, the divestment represents a victory for climate hawks, who equate divestment from fossil fuels to taking a symbolic stance against the primary cause of global warming. And symbolism does seem to be part of what the Episcopal Church was going for.

“The vote says that this is a moral issue and that we really have to think about where we are putting our money,” Betsy Blake Bennett, an archdeacon, told the Guardian. “At a point where we are losing species and where human life itself is threatened by climate change, the church, by acting on it, is saying that this is a moral issue and something that everyone needs to look at seriously.”

The vote is certainly timely. Since Pope Francis called for Catholics to act on climate change last month, more attention has been paid to how Christians in general view the human-caused phenomenon, which threatens to impact the poorest and most vulnerable populations in the world.

Leaders of the Episcopal Church have been in the news for their views on climate change before. Back in March, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said people who reject climate science do not appreciate God’s gift of knowledge.

“Episcopalians understand the life of the mind is a gift of God and to deny the best of current knowledge is not using the gifts God has given you,” Jefferts Schori said at the time. “I think it is a very blind position.”

But the Episcopal Church itself is not the first U.S.-based denomination to make a statement on the issue, nor it is the first to divest. That title goes to the United Church of Christ, which in 2013 voted to divest its pension funds from fossil fuel companies. The United Methodist Church also voted to divest its $21 billion pension from coal, but not all fossil fuels.

In addition, the World Council of Churches — a large umbrella group of churches representing more than half a billion Christians worldwide — announced last year that it would pull all of its investments in fossil fuels, saying it had determined the investments were no longer ethical. Also last year, the Unitarian Universalist Association voted to divest from any holdings in 200 fossil fuel companies, and New York’s Union Theological Seminary became the first seminary in the world to cut oil, gas, and coal investments from its $108.4 million endowment.

A growing number of Christians see preserving the climate and the environment as not only ethical, but spiritual — a way to respect God’s creation.

Some are even going so far as to advocate for those values in U.S. politics. At a hearing on proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules to reduce carbon emissions last year, numerous Christian leaders from different denominations spoke out on why limiting global climate change aligned with their values.

“Before man was asked to love his neighbor, love God, or care for the least of these, he was asked to love the earth,” Rev. Marjani Dele, the minister of missions at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, said at the time. “You could say that it was a type of first commandment.”

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