How many climate disasters will today's children face? Scientists release estimate

Study finds next generation will face many times more heat waves, floods, droughts, crop failures

Thomson Reuters · Posted: Sep 28, 2021

Children hold placards during a global climate change strike rally in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 2019. Children will, on average, suffer seven times more heat waves and nearly three times more droughts, floods and crop failures due to fast-accelerating climate change, a new report finds.

 (Yiannis Kourtoglou/Reuters)

Children around the world will face a sharp jump in heat waves, floods and droughts in their lives compared to their grandparents, researchers said on Monday, with teenagers from Nepal to Australia urging leaders not to turn a blind eye.

Children will, on average, suffer seven times more heat waves and nearly three times more droughts, floods and crop failures due to fast-accelerating climate change, found a report from aid agency Save the Children.

Those in low- and middle-income countries will bear the brunt, with Afghan children likely to endure up to 18 times as many heat waves as their elders, and children in Mali likely to live through up to 10 times more crop failures.

"People are suffering, we shouldn't turn a blind eye... Climate change is the biggest crisis of this era," said Anuska, 15, sharing her experience of more heat waves, intense rain and crop losses in her country, Nepal.

"I'm worried about climate change, about my future. It will almost be impossible for us to survive," she told journalists.

A child sits on a makeshift raft on a flooded road following heavy rainfall in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China, on July 22, 2021. People in low- and middle-income countries will bear the brunt of climate impacts, the study found.

(Aly Song/Reuters)

Save the Children did not fully identify Anuska and others who spoke alongside her for protection reasons, it said.

The research, a collaboration between Save the Children and climate researchers at Belgium's Vrije Universiteit Brussel, calculated the lifetime exposure to a range of extreme climate events for children born in 2020 compared to those born in 1960.

On course for at least 2.6 C rise

Also published in the journal Science, the study is based on emissions reduction pledges made under the 2015 Paris climate accord, projecting that global temperatures will rise by an estimated 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times.

This would have an "unacceptable impact on children," Save the Children said.

"The climate crisis is a child rights crisis at its core," said Inger Ashing, chief executive of Save the Children. "We can turn this around — but we need to listen to children and jump into action. If warming is limited to 1.5 degrees, there is far more hope of a bright future for children who haven't even been born yet."

A boy runs at the bottom of a branch of the Lago Seco, which receives water from the Amazon River, in the city of Manaus, Brazil, in 2015. A severe drought had pushed river levels in Brazil's Amazon region to lows, leaving isolated communities dependent on emergency aid and thousands of boats stranded on parched riverbeds. (Bruno Kelly/Reuters)

The UN climate science panel warned in August that global warming is dangerously close to spiralling out of control and will bring climate disruption globally for decades to come.

National pledges to cut emissions so far are inadequate to limit global temperature rise to "well below" 2 C above preindustrial times, and ideally to 1.5 C, as about 195 countries committed to under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
1.5 C warming limit could make huge difference

Save the Children's report found that, if global warming is kept to 1.5C, additional lifetime exposure of newborns to heat waves would drop by 45 per cent and by nearly 40 per cent for droughts and floods compared with the current projected level.

"This is what's at stake when governments head to the COP26 global climate talks in Glasgow in November. These children's lives and future are all at stake," said Erin Ryan, a report author and Save the Children adviser.

Children from the Philippines to the Solomon Islands spoke of how increasing climate disasters left them vulnerable, affecting their mental health and disrupting their education.

"I was traumatized — it was really depressing," said Chatten from the Philippines, who was just eight when his home was destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones in history, which killed more than 6,300 people.

"Everything was at its worst during those times — I don't want anyone to experience that," said the teenager, now 16.

Others said youth should pressure governments for change.

"I really want to see world leaders take action, because this is putting everyone at risk," said Ella, 14, from Australia.

People under 40 will experience 'unprecedented life' of climate change disasters, study says

Christine Fernando
USA TODAY

Under current global climate policies, children born in 2021 worldwide face a dire future of climate disasters with disproportionate rates of flooding, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and crop failures compared to their grandparents, according to a study published Sunday.

The study, published in the journal Science, found that children born in 2021 will on average live on an Earth with seven times more heatwaves, twice as many wildfires, and almost three times as many droughts, river floods and crop failures as people born 60 years ago.

"This basically means that people younger than 40 today will live an unprecedented life even under the most stringent climate change mitigation scenarios," lead author Wim Thiery said in a statement. "Our results highlight a severe threat to the safety of young generations and call for drastic emission reductions to safeguard their future."

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a public university in Belgium, led the study, which included an international team of more than 30 researchers from universities including Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham in England.

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Children who will suffer through "climate extremes" unfairly face the consequences of the inaction of today's adults, study co-author Joeri Rogelj said in the statement.

Reducing emissions can make a difference, Rogelj added.

"With this study we lay bare the fundamental injustice of climate change across generations, as well as the responsibilities of today's adults and elders in power," he said.

These extreme climate events will also disproportionately affect children in developing countries, said researchers who computed lifetime exposures to climate events for every generation born between 1960 and 2020 in every country across the globe.

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In sub-Saharan Africa, 172 million children face a sixfold increase in extreme events over their lifetimes and 50 times more heatwaves. This compares to 53 million children of the same age born in Europe and Central Asia, who will face about four times more extreme events as their grandparents, according to the statement.

While current policies put the world on course for a warming of 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, according to the statement from the researchers, meeting the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would significantly reduce the burden of extreme climate events on the next generation.

Co-author Simon Gosling supported setting more ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Our research shows very clearly the responsibility that the current generation holds for future generations in terms of climate change," Gosling said in the statement, which praised efforts by the world's youth to increase climate change awareness through school strikes and protests.

Contact News Now Reporter Christine Fernando at cfernando@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter at @christinetfern.

Creating clouds may help save Australia's Great Barrier Reef

SYDNEY -- To slow the speed at which high temperatures and warm waters bleach the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, Australian scientists are spraying droplets of ocean water into the sky to form clouds to protect the environmental treasure.

Researchers working on the so-called Cloud Brightening project said they use a turbine to spray microscopic sea particles to thicken existing clouds and reduce sunlight on the world's largest coral reef ecosystem located off Australia's northeast coast.

The water droplets evaporate leaving only tiny salt crystals which float up into the atmosphere allowing water vapor to condense around them, forming clouds, said Daniel Harrison, a senior lecturer at Southern Cross University, who runs the project.

"If we do it over an extended period of time for a few weeks to a couple of months when the corals are experiencing a marine heatwave we can actually start to lower the water temperature over the Reef," said Harrison.

The project had its second trial in March, the end of the Southern Hemisphere summer when the Reef off Australia's northeast is at its hottest, gathering valuable data on the atmosphere when corals are at most risk of bleaching.

A combination of light and warm water causes coral bleaching. By cutting light over the reef by six per cent in summer, "bleaching stress" would be cut by 50 per cent to 60 per cent on the undersea ecosystem, Harrison said.

But the benefits of cloud brightening would lessen over time unless other measures slowed the march of climate change.

"If we do have really strong action on climate change then the modeling shows that the cloud brightening is enough to stop the reef declining and to actually see it through this period while we reduce our carbon emissions," he said.

One of Australia's best-known natural attractions, the Reef came close to being listed as an endangered World Heritage Site by the United Nations, although it avoided the designation following lobbying by Australia.

Reporting by Stefica Nicol Bikes writing by Byron Kaye; editing by Christian Schmollinger

This Dec. 2, 2017, file photo shows the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. 

Kyodo News via AP, File

Net zero is not the real issue: we need to focus on our carbon budget

Greg Jericho

Caring only about our emissions level in 29 years is a bit stupid. Any party worth its salt will stop putting things off and tell us what it’s doing right now

‘The end of the carbon price cost us precious time and didn’t deliver cheaper electricity.’ Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Mon 27 Sep 2021

As the whispers grow of the government setting a 2050 target, data from the parliamentary library shows that ending the carbon price has not led to lower electricity prices.

So not only has removing the carbon price failed to deliver this aim, it also has ensured the task of achieving net zero emissions is much harder.

Too many people in politics and the media have bought into the idea that achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is all that is needed to avoid a climate crisis.

Back in February, a report by the Climate Targets Panel highlighted that we need to think less about net zero and more about our carbon budget.

Carbon emissions don’t disappear once the year passes, they keep adding up. So, the issue is not really net zero but how much in total we can emit to limit temperatures rising.

The targets panel estimated that to limit warming to 1.5C Australia has a carbon budget from 2021 of 3,521 Mt CO2, and to remain under 2C a budget of 6,161 Mt CO2.

Emit more than that and it doesn’t matter when we get to zero: we will have already emitted too much CO2 to prevent temperatures rising by those levels.

For context, our 2019 emissions were 551.6Mt CO2 – enough to use up our 2C budget in 11 years, and the 1.5C budget in six.

Caring only what level we will be in 29 years is a bit stupid.

Alas, the stupidity continues, given the prime minister claimed yesterday that “we’ve already reduced emissions in Australia by over 20% since 2005. We committed to Kyoto. We met that target and we beat that target. We’re going to meet and beat our Paris target as well.”

We have only reduced emissions by 20% if you include land use, which allows Australia to claim cuts because in 1990 (the Kyoto base year) and 2005 (the Paris base year) there was massive land clearing in NSW and Queensland.

If graph does not display click here

Exclude land use and we have only cut emissions by 2% since 2005.

This is also the government that removed the carbon price – done nationally to lower electricity prices and supposedly ensure households did not pay for the cost of emission reductions.

Instead, the Liberal National party introduced direct action, which used taxes to pay companies to reduce emissions.

Thus, households paid via taxes to reduce emissions and yet, as new data commissioned by the Greens from the parliamentary library shows, we haven’t even got lower electricity prices.

If graph does not display click here


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Every state under the national energy market has had higher average electricity prices since July 2014 than existed when the carbon price was in force.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, argues that “after eight years of Coalition climate denial, pollution and power costs are now both higher than under the Greens/Labor/independents carbon price’' and that, by repealing the carbon price, “the Coalition has lifted electricity prices and let polluters off the hook”.

Yet this is not the worst of it.

Under the carbon price, emissions were falling steadily.

Had they kept falling at that rate, Australia would have emitted about 9% less CO2 in the past seven years and would have had about 330Mt CO2 extra in its carbon bank.

Click here if the graph does not display

The initial carbon price was meant to be just a start, but ending it made life so much harder because, if you don’t cut now, you have to cut much harder later to stay within your carbon budget.

Think of it like a car – would you prefer to slowly reduce speed 30m out to avoid hitting a pedestrian, or would you plan to slam on the brakes 3m away and hope for the best?

If we continue on our current path, all chance of remaining within our 1.5C carbon budget is gone, and to stay under the 2C budget we would need massive cuts after 2030.

Click here if the graph does not display

Those cuts would be harsh and crippling for the economy.

To stay within our 1.5C carbon budget, we need to get on a path to net zero by 2035 from now, not 2030.

To stay within our 2C budget we need to target 50% cuts by 2030.

Click here if the graph does not display

Net zero by 2050 is not enough – all it does is put things off until it is too late, under the guise of looking like action.

The end of the carbon price cost us precious time and didn’t deliver cheaper electricity.

Any party that wants to be taken seriously on the climate crisis needs to say what they will do not by 2050, but by 2025, 2030 and 2035.



Greg Jericho writes on economics for Guardian Australia

Electricity generation by U.S. state

U.S. states vary radically in terms of electricity generation. 

Vermont is the cleanest, while Delaware is the dirtiest.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The U.S. gets 60 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels, but plans are afoot to drastically reduce that share.

   

• 
  
  How? Look at the energy mix per state. As this map shows, some are way ahead of the curve. Others, not so much.
   

• Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware is America’s worst polluter – if only in relative terms.

SEE MORE Electricity generation by U.S. state - Big Think Energy mix per U.S. state

Our melting planet: James Longman reports from 'extraordinary' Arctic Circle

Sep 28, 2021

EU lawmakers vote to prolong fossil fuel gas subsidies until 2027

Campaigners voice dismay after rule permitting gas pipelines where energy is mixed with hydrogen

The committee also voted to allow natural gas projects, such as pipelines and storage facilities, to be eligible for special status that will speed up their approval.

 Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Tue 28 Sep 2021 

European lawmakers have voted to prolong subsidies for fossil fuel gas until 2027, opening a potential backdoor for pollution that campaigners said would be a disaster for the climate if it becomes law.

Members of the European parliament’s industry committee voted on Tuesday to allow the EU to continue subsidising natural gas pipelines until the end of 2027, as long as the energy is mixed with an unspecified amount of hydrogen.

Hydrogen, which can be made from fossil gas or renewable sources, is seen by policymakers as a vital stepping stone to net zero emissions by 2050.

The committee also voted to allow natural gas projects, such as pipelines and storage facilities, to be eligible for special status that will speed up their approval, although they ruled out access to EU grants for such projects. Campaigners estimate between 50 and 70 natural gas projects could obtain “project of common interest” status, an EU seal of approval that helps plans get off the drawing board, gain access to finance and exemptions from EU competition rules.

The campaign group Global Witness estimates that about 70 gas projects could be eligible, producing 213m tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, equivalent to Germany’s coal burning in 2018.

The two controversial amendments to the EU’s trans-European energy infrastructure regulation were approved by MEPs, barely three months after the European Commission said the world was entering “a make or break decade” to tackle the climate crisis. The commission’s original “Ten-E” text proposed sweeping away special status for all natural gas projects as part of the union’s effort to hit net zero emissions by 2050.


EU’s green deal plans launched with ‘make-or-break decade’ warning

In May the International Energy Agency said rich countries should decarbonise electricity generation by 2035, while calling for an immediate stop to the approval of new oil and gas fields.

The European parliament, which elected a record number of green MEPs in 2019, is usually the most ambitious player on the climate emergency in the world of EU law making. On this occasion, however, campaigners were surprised and disappointed when MEPs watered down the original plans, by allowing natural gas companies to continue competing for special status, and opened the door to subsidies for any gas company that claims to be “hydrogen-ready”.

Under the parliament’s compromise on blending, energy companies blending an unspecified mix of fossil gas and hydrogen are eligible for EU subsidies until 2027, as long as they have a plan to drop gas by the end of the decade. Even once EU subsidies are stripped away, the same gas/hydrogen pipelines will be eligible for fast-track approval until the end of 2029.

The MEP position was drafted by Zdzisław Krasnodębski, a member of Poland’s ultra-conservative Law and Justice party, who is vice-chair of the parliament’s industry committee.

He said: “The objective of this revision is to align the Ten-E regulation with the objectives of the European Green Deal. We should also bear in mind, however, that energy union priorities remain valid and should still be reflected in the rules governing the support for important energy infrastructure projects.” In addition to sustainability, he said projects would be evaluated based on their contribution to energy security, market integration and affordability for consumers.

His final compromise was supported by most MEPs in the largest political groups, including the centre-right European People’s party, the centre-left Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew group. Green MEPs abstained.

The parliament will now enter negotiations with EU energy ministers, who left much less room for gas projects when they agreed their negotiating red lines earlier this year.

“Today’s vote would be a disaster for the climate if it ends up being reflected in the final law,” said Tara Connolly, a senior campaigner at Global Witness. “The science is clear: we need to urgently phase out fossil gas to prevent the worst effects of climate breakdown. EU member states must not fall for this giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, and close the loopholes which would allow fossil gas subsidies when negotiations start.”

Erik Bergkvist, a Swedish Social Democrat MEP, involved in the compromise, said it was the best possible agreement. “What would the alternative have been? Of course we could have stepped off negotiations, but then we know we would have had a result that would have been much worse. The main thing that we have been asking for … is an end date for fossil fuel investment. It’s better to have an end date, otherwise there wouldn’t be a phase out.”

He voiced optimism that EU-subsidised fossil fuel gas would only exist in small quantities, when blended with low-CO2 hydrogen. “We have to remember that blending is low-carbon. The main proportion will be renewable hydrogen gas.”

While he acknowledged that the fossil gas/hydrogen mix had yet to be defined – a task for another EU negotiation – he insisted it would be “quite narrow and quite tough on fossil fuels”. The hydrogen/fossil gas blend “cannot be 95% carbon [dioxide]”.

Green campaigners do not share this optimism. They would reserve scarce and expensive renewable hydrogen for industries that are difficult to decarbonise, such as fertilisers. Mixing hydrogen with natural gas was like “mixing champagne with table wine,” said Connolly. “You want to use [hydrogen] where it is most valuable, otherwise you put a huge amount of costs on everyone”.

Energy crunch is 'revenge of old economy': Goldman Sachs

The prices of commodities need to be "much higher to get returns sufficient to start attracting capital," says Goldman Sach's Jeff Currie

Author of the article:

Bloomberg News
Todd Gillespie
Publishing date: Sep 28, 2021 • 

The energy crisis that’s sent natural gas and power prices to record highs is a sign of “revenge” from “under-invested” legacy energy sources like fossil fuels, according to Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

“Poor return saw capital redirected away from the old economy to the new economy,” Currie said in a discussion with Francine Lacqua and Snam Chief Executive Officer Marco Alvera on Bloomberg TV. “It’s not unique to Europe, it’s not unique to energy, it’s a broad-based old-economy problem.”

Gas shortages have exposed vulnerabilities in global energy supply chains in recent months, leaving small U.K. energy companies collapsing in their wake. European energy markets from natural gas to carbon permits reached records on Tuesday, signaling the supply shortage will worsen just as winter starts.

Investment in gas in particular needs to be increased to fend off more volatility during the energy transition, Currie said, dating the origins of the problem to when long-cycle capital expenditure was “shunned” after the 2008 financial crisis.

“In many parts of the world, you’ve overbuilt wind, you’ve overbuilt solar,” he added, pointing to a lack of investment in coal, metals and mining. “The new economy is over-invested and the old economy is starved.”

The prices of commodities need to be “much higher to get returns sufficient to start attracting capital,” Currie said. “People wanted a quick return, and now you’re paying the price for it.”

According to Alvera, Europe needs to increase strategic gas storage capacity to stabilize the global market and to overcome the intermittency of renewable energy sources. He said he expects gas prices to fall quickly during the summer.

“We have a lot of oil storage, a lot of oil inventory, but in the U.K. there’s hardly any gas storage, and in Europe the storage that we have is half-empty,” said the gas-infrastructure CEO.

Alvera, who recently published a book on hydrogen, said the fuel can act as a stabilizing force in energy markets.

“What’s been exposed is that you can have as many wind farms as you want, but if you have no wind then you have an issue,” he added. Hydrogen can be added to the energy mix, he said, because it means you can “absorb electricity when it’s cheap and you can turn it back into electricity when it’s expensive.”

A more orderly transition could come as the cost of renewable resources declines, said Alvera. But the pressures on global commodity prices aren’t going to evaporate anytime soon, according to Currie.

“This is the first inning of a multi-year, potentially decade-long commodity supercycle,” Currie said. “It’s driven by the war on climate change, the war on income inequality. All of these dynamics lead to a structural rise in commodity demand against this whole idea of the revenge of the old economy.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Texas Restricts Fracking Practice Because It Causes So Many Earthquakes

Texas is halting new permits for wastewater injection wells in a swath of the state after a wave of earthquakes were linked to the fracking practice.

By Audrey Carleton
28.9.21

The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) is halting new permits for the injection of wastewater from fracking in a swath of the state after a wave of earthquakes were connected to the practice.

In a release to fossil fuel producers published Friday, the state’s oil and gas regulator said it would no longer be permitting disposal wells around Midland, in the northwest region of Texas, because of earthquakes until further notice. The agency requested that an existing 76 wells reduce their daily injection volumes and ordered that permitted wells that aren’t yet in service refrain from starting injection. The announcement came the same day a 3.3 magnitude quake happened just 36 miles north, E&E News reported Monday.

“​​The Railroad Commission of Texas’ most critical mission is protection of public safety and the environment,” Andrew Keese, spokesperson for the agency, told Motherboard. “The RRC’s Seismologist and staff have been investigating recent earthquakes close to populated areas near Midland and Odessa, and assessed steps that could be taken by oil and gas operators to help mitigate the events.”

Wastewater injection is a common practice for the disposal of brine, which is produced in the fracking process. It involves shooting polluted liquid deep underground into containment zones in porous geological formations, where it is intended to stay indefinitely. That water typically includes a cocktail of chemicals used in the fracking process, which are at risk of leaching into nearby waterways, contaminating groundwater and ecosystems.

The practice is commonplace in the Permian Basin in Texas, the largest oil field in the country (an estimated five trillion liters were disposed of in the region between 1978 and 2016). It’s also well-understood to cause seismic activity. When fluid is injected at such a high pressure so deep (sometimes miles) into the ground, it runs the risk of hitting a fault line, counteracting existing friction between tectonic plates and spurring on a quake. In Oklahoma, also home to ample oil and gas drilling, the state geological survey tied a 900-fold increase in earthquakes between 2008 and 2019 to wastewater injection, a pattern that state seismologist Jake Walter told Scientific American is “unprecedented in human history.”

Known to some as “frackquakes,” the seismic disturbances are a common consequence of wastewater injection that have alarmed residents near the state’s petroleum-producing zones for over a decade.

In 2009 and 2010, researchers at Southern Methodist University linked a string of earthquakes in Cleburne, Texas to the injection of fracking wastewater underground after installing sensors near fault lines and pinpointing injection wells near the epicenter of a number of quakes. The same authors reported the same trend around a wave of earthquakes a few years later, between 2013 and 2014, in Azle, Texas, 50 miles north.

The practice, and the resulting quakes, have long disturbed nearby residents.

“They haven’t had earthquakes around here for 100 years, and to have this happen now — 32 within just the last couple of months — is crazy,” Darla Hobbs, a resident of Azle, Texas told NBC news about the string of earthquakes in her town in 2014. “And it’s not our fault for living here. It’s the gas well industry for drilling, and fracking, and the injection wells.”

As recently as March of 2020, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in west Texas, near the New Mexico border was tied to nearby wastewater injection. Located in an area of “known human-caused seismicity,” the United States Geological Survey reported at the time, it was the largest event recorded in the region in two decades, spanning 5.3 miles and triggering more than 1,000 reports from residents, despite its location in a sparsely-populated area.

The months since have seen another six earthquakes, including Friday’s, hit the area around Midland and Odessa. The RRC said in its release to operators that wastewater injection “likely contributes” to this activity.