Tuesday, 31 December 2019

Fact checking Angus Taylor: does Australia have a climate change record to be proud of?

On a day of extraordinary bushfires the energy minister argued that the country has ‘strong targets, clear plans and an enviable track record’ on reducing emissions. Is he right?

Graham Readfearn

@readfearn

Australians should be proud of the country’s achievements on climate change, energy minister Angus Taylor has argued in a newspaper column that claims “quiet Australians” don’t accept the “shrill cries” of the government’s climate critics.
The column, published in The Australian, makes a series of claims about Australia’s emissions and how they compare to other countries, as well as highlighting exports such as LNG that are “dramatically reducing emissions” in other countries.
So is Australia really a paragon of climate virtue – cutting emissions at home while helping the world to cut emissions?

As is always the case when it comes to climate and energy policy, there is much to check and understand in Taylor’s article.
Prof Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate and Energy Policy at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, told Guardian Australia: “I would characterise [Taylor’s article] as a selective use of statistics that make Australia’s emissions trajectory look good, when in reality it does not look good at all.”

Tiny footprint?

Taylor writes that Australia is “responsible for only 1.3 per cent of global emissions, so we can’t single-handedly have a meaningful impact without the co-operation of the largest emitters such as China and the US.”
In the context of global emissions, there is much that Australia can, and does, do that has a meaningful impact.
The 1.3% figure does not account for Australia’s contribution to global emissions from the fossil fuels we dig up and export.
If this exported coal and gas was accounted for, one analysis suggests Australia would be responsible for almost 5% of the global carbon footprint from fossil fuel burning.
When countries report their emissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, they only report emissions occurring inside their borders, so it could be argued that using this larger number is unfair.
But the problem is that elsewhere in Taylor’s article, he says Australia’s exporting of LNG is helping countries cut emissions.
Jotzo says: “If we are going to talk about impacts on global emissions of Australia’s energy exports, then we need to consider all fuels, including coal. Any exporting of coal will result in higher global emissions because it increases the availability and lowers the price of coal, and encourages the use of coal.”

"It is not clear that the availability of Australian LNG decreases emissions internationally."
While Taylor admits that LNG processing in Australia has pushed domestic emissions higher, he claims that “our LNG exports are dramatically reducing emissions in customer countries such as Japan, South Korea and China — the equivalent of up to 30 per cent of our emissions each year”.
But Jotzo says this claim depends heavily on what the LNG displaces.
He says the “lion’s share” of the exports will actually replace gas from other sources, rather than displacing coal generation. There is also a risk, he says, that increasing LNG exports also encourages countries to build more gas infrastructure, making it harder to move away from the fossil fuel.
He adds: “It is not clear that the availability of Australian LNG decreases emissions internationally.”

Easy target

“Australia meets and beats its emission-reductions targets, every time,” writes Taylor. “We beat our first Kyoto targets by 128 million tonnes. We expect to beat our 2020 targets by 411 million tonnes.”

"The key reason why Australia has easily beaten its targets, is that they were very low to begin with."

The key reason why Australia has easily beaten its targets, is that they were very low to begin with.
Australia’s first Kyoto target allowed it to increase emissions by 8% between 1990 and 2010. The second target period required a 5% cut below 2000 levels by 2020.
Much of Australia’s cuts to emissions in recent decades, says Jotzo, has been achieved through drops in land clearing, rather than reductions in other parts of the economy the government could have influence over.
Australia wants to use some 411 million tonnes of CO2 “credits” amassed over the Kyoto periods against future targets under the separate Paris agreement, even though it admits it is probably the only country looking to use these “carryover credits”.
Using carryover credits would cut the amount of emissions reductions Australia would need to find to meet its Paris target by about a half.
At the latest UN climate talks in Madrid, Australia came under harsh criticism from more than 100 countries for its desire to use the credits, which some analysts say is a proposal with no legal basis.
Australia was accused of “cheating” at the talks, but refused to back down on the carryover issue, leaving it unresolved.

Better than Canada and New Zealand

In his article, Taylor says “when you compare Australia’s emission-reduction track record with nations such as Canada and New Zealand”, Australia comes out on top.
While Australia’s emissions have dropped 12.9% since 2005, writes Taylor, New Zealand’s have risen by 4% and Canada’s have dropped only 2%.
Jotzo says the 12.9% figure Taylor is using includes changes to land use, such as land clearing, which are not major issues for other developed countries.
As an example, Australia’s reporting to the UN shows that in 2005, emissions from land use, land-use change, and forestry (known as LULUCF) were +88mt. In 2017, LULUCF emissions were -19mt. That’s a net drop of 107mt.
Using the same periods for New Zealand, the difference is a net increase of 4.8mt.
A fairer global comparison, says Jotzo, is to use figures that remove these LULUCF emissions.
This, he says, turns Australia’s 12.9% drop between 2005 and 2018 into a 6% rise.

Clean hydrogen

In his article, Taylor repeats a point that he made during his official speech to the Madrid climate talks that technological innovation would be a key to fighting climate change.
In the article, Taylor points to the new national hydrogen strategy as an example of innovations with “enormous potential” for cutting future emissions.
Jotzo says there is potential for an Australian hydrogen export industry to have a positive impact on global emissions.
However, he says this comes with large caveats. Hydrogen can be produced using renewable energy, but also by using fossil fuels.
If Australia was to use coal or gas, it would need to be able to capture most of the waste CO2 to claim the fuel as green.
But analysis by Jotzo and colleagues shows that while rates of up to 95% carbon capture might be “technically possible” they have not yet been achieved.
Only two plants – in Canada and the UK – currently capture CO2 when producing hydrogen from fossil fuels. The best capture rate is 80%.
If the carbon capture rates were at 60%, then Jotzo says the net greenhouse gas footprint of hydrogen would be the same as just burning gas.

Proud and quiet Aussies?

According to Taylor, “Australia has strong targets, clear plans, an enviable track record” on climate change, and Australians should be proud of it.
But when overseas groups look at Australia’s record compared to the rest of the world, the assessments come out differently.

"The most recent analysis ranked Australia as the sixth worst country on climate change overall."

An analysis by Climate Action Tracker says Australia’s Paris targets are “insufficient” and inconsistent with the Paris goal of keeping global warming well below 2C.
Australia has been placed consistently towards the bottom in the annual Climate Change Policy Index analysis of the world’s top 57 emitting nations.
The most recent analysis ranked Australia as the sixth worst country on climate change overall.
Jotzo, who attended the Madrid climate talks as an observer, said: “Australia was highly regarded at the talks for its technical competence, and it always has. But Australia is not highly regarded at all for its policies or for its efforts to water down effective ambition of the Paris agreement.”
He said speaking with observers from other countries, Australia’s position was seen “with quite some bewilderment” especially with the backdrop of the current devastating fire season.
Jotzo adds: “They are flabbergasted that Australia is digging in to its stance of getting an easier deal when it would so obviously be in its national interest to encourage strong global action.”

When Greta Thunberg met Sir David Attenborough

Podcast from BBC

The teenage activist and veteran naturalist talk to each other for the first time (via Skype).

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-50904881/when-greta-thunberg-met-sir-david-attenborough

30 December 2019

Sydney lord mayor says climate change is the issue, not New Year's Eve fireworks

Sydney

Clover Moore claims Angus Taylor, who says that Australia should be proud of its emissions reduction efforts, has failed at his job

Follow Tuesday’s Australia fires live blog: Mallacoota fire in Victoria turns sky black as NSW faces bushfires threat - latest updates

Australian Associated Press

Sydney’s lord mayor has issued a scathing assessment of the federal government’s climate change record amid thwarted calls for the city’s New Year’s Eve fireworks display to be scrapped.
The Sydney foreshore fireworks will ring in 2020 despite the closure of popular vantage points, and political and community opposition.
The NSW Rural Fire Service has granted the fireworks display – seen by 1 billion people across the world – an exemption to the total fire ban.
A similar exemption for fireworks at Parramatta Park was not granted.

Temperatures around the state were expected to peak on Tuesday, with forecasts of more than 40C across western Sydney and in regional NSW.
Moore on Tuesday reiterated much of the event’s budget has already been allocated and the event generates $130m for the NSW economy. The council has donated $620,000 to bushfire and drought-affected communities.
“The compelling issue here is climate change,” she told reporters.
“Australia is burning – our national parks and our native animals are being decimated and our communities are being devastated. People have lost homes, people have died, firefighters have been killed defending communities.
“As the driest continent on earth we’re at the forefront of accelerating global warming. What is happening is a wake up call for our governments to start making effective contributions to reducing global emissions.”
The lord mayor said climate change action has been the council’s top priority since 2008 and pointed to its movement on emissions reduction.
“Cities around the world are doing their bit to address global warming – it’s our national governments that are failing us,” Moore said.
Federal energy minister Angus Taylor wrote an opinion piece in The Australian newspaper on Tuesday arguing that Australia’s emissions reduction performance was something for which to be proud.
However Moore said Taylor was “the minister responsible for addressing global warming, and he has failed”.
At 10am smoke haze had already settled on Sydney Harbour, which Moore said was a message to the government to “start getting their act together and start taking effective action on accelerating global warming”.
Fire danger ratings for Sydney, Newcastle and the state’s south – where several emergency-level blazes are burning – range from severe to extreme.
NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, told reporters earlier on Tuesday that the death of expectant father Samuel McPaul on the Green Valley fire ground at Jingellic – where a “fire tornado” lifted and flipped his fire truck – would cast a pall over festivities.
McPaul is the third volunteer firefighter to die this bushfire season.
“Many of us have mixed feelings about this evening but the important thing we take out of this is that we’re resilient as a state,” Berejiklian said.
“We’re a state that’s optimistic about the future and I don’t want to take a second away from the deep sense of loss and tragedy many people are feeling.
“You can’t think about more difficult circumstances than that.
“But as a state, we always need to think about the future, and given the RFS has said it’s safe for the state to proceed or for the City of Sydney Council to proceed with those activities tonight, that’s what will happen.”
The NSW deputy premier, John Barilaro, had earlier called for Sydney foreshore fireworks to be scrapped and funds redirected to drought and bushfire relief, echoing calls from a petition signed by more than 275,000 people.
“If regional areas have had fireworks banned, then let’s not have two classes of citizens. We’re all in this crisis together,” he said on social media from his holiday in London.
While the harbour will have fireworks, revellers will be unable to use the forested Balls Head Reserve or Bradleys Head as vantage points due to the fire risk.
The city’s famous celebrations are expected to attract 1 million people to the harbour foreshore and generate $130m for the NSW economy.
The RFS has urged residents to shelve any private fireworks plans while police have encouraged revellers to take care in the heat and remain hydrated.

An estimated 3,000 police officers will be on duty around the harbour foreshore.

'It's nice to meet you': Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough speak over Skype – video

Podcast from The Guardian

Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough thanked each other for their climate activism when they spoke for the first time in a Skype call. The discussion was part of the Swedish activist's guest-editing slot on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Attenborough praised the teenager for raising awareness of the climate crisis, to which Greta said nature documentaries inspired her to take on the cause

Greta Thunberg: climate activism has made her 'very happy', says father

Source: BBC Radio 4 Today

Victoria bushfires: hellish wait for those who fled – and those who stayed

Many visitors and residents left homes and campsites in East Gippsland ahead of a terrifying fire day, but others ignored warnings and stayed behind

Follow Tuesday’s Australia fires live blog: multiple properties lost in Victoria as NSW faces fresh bushfires threat - latest updates

by Calla Wahlquist in Bairnsdale

Marilyn Withers packed a sun tent and a camping chair when she fled the bushfire threatening to engulf her home. But when she arrived at Howitt Park, an area outside the immediate danger zone, the blistering temperatures made it too hot to sit outside and the hairdryer wind kept blowing down the tent.
“I’ve just got the air conditioner on to try and cool the dogs down a bit,” Withers, 77 and recently widowed, said from the driver’s seat of her 4WD. The passenger side was taken up by a bed cover and bowls filled with water for the dogs, Majic and Puku, who were panting under wet towels. The back seat contained photos of her late husband and the home they built together at Nicholson 15km away – a home that her son had stayed behind to try to save from the inferno being blown towards it.
“I did not want to leave the house,” Withers says. “[My son] knows I am capable but I think he also knows that I am a bit erratic and emotional at the moment. It’s really hard – I didn’t think it would happen like this.”
Nicholson is just inside the area earmarked by the Victorian emergency management commissioner, Andrew Crisp, on Sunday as at very high risk from four out-of-control bushfires burning steadily toward the coastal holiday towns of Lakes Entrance and Orbost.

Marilyn Withers of Nicholson takes refuge in 4WD at Bairnsdale.

Crisp ordered all tourists and residents who could not defend their home to leave the area by 9am on Monday, but only the town of Goongerah was issued with a formal evacuation order.
Many locals viewed the order to leave East Gippsland as a directive for tourists. Some tourists also ignored the warning, or did not know about it.
By 3pm on Monday, the Princes Highway to Lakes Entrance had been cut off, trapping any tourists who left it too late on the wrong side. The Great Alpine Road has been closed by fire for weeks.
Ben Rankin, who is managing the fire for the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, said holidaymakers would probably be safe if they stayed in Lakes Entrance proper, but they would not be able to get out.
Craig Anderson did not want to take that risk. He and his family, along with his friend Brendan Gaffey and his family, left their camp ground at Kalimna, just outside Lakes Entrance, on Monday morning. “If the highway is closed we would rather be on this side of it.”
Irene McCarthy and her partner, Hugh Hunter, live at Metung, west of Lakes Entrance. They decided to take the caravan to Bairnsdale after firefighters at a community meeting on Monday morning told them they would not attempt to protect the Metung yacht club, which had been identified as the safe place to which they could flee.

Photograph: Chris Hopkins/The Guardian

“When you are not safe you don’t sleep,” she says. “We have enough clothing and water to keep us going for a few days.”
The couple moved to Metung from the UK 12 years ago and “most of the time we absolutely love it”, Hunter says. “Last night was not one of those ‘love it’ nights.”

Plumes of smoke 12km tall

The wind blows hot through East Gippsland, the temperatures in the low 40s, 16C above average. It is what distinguishes a really terrible fire day from merely a hot day in summer – a wind that heats rather than cools the sweat on your back, as though it has blown directly from the fire itself.
The heat began to build at East Gippsland at 10am, the wind from midday.

The smoke plume from the merged W-Tree and Barmah Spur fires

By 4pm, the plume of smoke had quadrupled in size and loomed over the town, growing taller and blacker by the minute and burning toward Lakes Entrance, just east of Bairnsdale.
At a pull-off spot on the way out of town, residents park their cars and take photos of the smoke. “That’s not a thunderstorm,” says one woman. “That’s a bushfire.”
Another local is more succinct. “Fuck,” he says.
Thunderstorms are coming too – a warning of gusty winds and dry lightning, which will start more bushfires, was issued mid-afternoon.
The wind change is not forecast to hit until midnight. It will bring cool weather as well as gusty winds that will swing the eastern flank of the fire into a new front many hundreds of kilometres long.
Thirteen kilometres out of Bairnsdale is a corrugated iron demountable, which serves as the base for the department’s aerial firefighting activities. Water-bombing helicopters and planes land every hour to be refuelled before heading back to the fire ground.

Aircrews refuel at Bairnsdale before heading back to the firegrounds

The drivers of fuel tankers sit and wait, eating Zooper Doopers to survive the heat.
On a day like this, aircraft are the only tool available to quell the fire front. Thirteen strike teams – groups of five trucks filled with firefighters from the department or the Country Fire Authority – have been deployed to protect lives and towns, but it is too dangerous for them to approach the fire itself.
For residents fighting to defend their homes against the approaching flames, an approaching helicopter sounds like salvation.
Isolated villages such as Goongerah, which is directly in the path of the Barmouth-Spur fire, were told to evacuate on Saturday. Some residents, like the well-known sustainability pioneer Jill Redwood, have remained.
“We have been told there won’t be any emergency services in Goongerah, there won’t be any strike teams here,” Redwood told Guardian Australia early on Monday. “It is too dangerous. And in the worst-case scenario we could be cut off for weeks.”
Redwood has a fire bunker – a “glorified wombat hole” – and believes her home to be defensible.

“It’s probably going to be a bad one, maybe worse than I have experienced before,” she says. “I might end up a stick of charcoal, but I will do my best not to.”

Greta Thunberg: 'I wouldn't have wasted my time' speaking to Trump

Extract from The Guardian

Greta Thunberg

Swedish activist and president attended UN climate summit
‘He’s not listening to experts … why would he listen to me?’

Edward Helmore

Greta Thunberg has said she wouldn’t have wasted her time talking to Donald Trump about climate change at the UN climate change summit in New York earlier this year – the same event she was pictured glaring at the one of the world’s leading climate-change deniers.

The Swedish climate activist made the comment during an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Monday morning, where she had been invited to guest-edit the programme.
Thunberg, 16, was asked what she would have said to the leader who pulled the US – one of the world’s leading carbon emitters – out of the Paris climate accord, and who has taken radical steps to undo decades-old US pollution standards.
She said: “Honestly, I don’t think I would have said anything. Because obviously he’s not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me?”
She added: “So I probably wouldn’t have said anything, I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”

Thunberg’s comments came several weeks after Trump attacked her for being named Time magazine’s person of the year.
“So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!” Trump tweeted at the time.
She has also been attacked by Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
“It is staggering, the amount of coverage the press gives that brat,” Bolsonaro said at the time.
Invited to respond to her critics, Thunberg told the program “those attacks are just funny because they obviously don’t mean anything”.

She said: “I guess of course it means something – they are terrified of young people bringing change which they don’t want – but that is just proof that we are actually doing something and that they see us as some kind of threat.”

The environment in 2050: flooded cities, forced migration – and the Amazon turning to savannah

Extract from The Guardian

The world in 2050

Climate change

Unless we focus on shared solutions, violent storms and devastating blazes could be the least of the world’s troubles. Civilisation itself will be at risk

Jonathan Watts

@jonathanwatts

What the world will look like in 2050 if we continue to burn oil, gas, coal and forests at the current rate?

‘Good morning. Here is the shipping forecast for midday, 21 June, 2050. Seas will be rough, with violent storms and visibility ranging from poor to very poor for the next 24 hours. The outlook for tomorrow is less fair.”
All being well, this could be a weather bulletin released by the Met Office and broadcast by the BBC in the middle of this century. Destructive gales may not sound like good news, but they will be among the least of the world’s problems in the coming era of peak climate turbulence. With social collapse a very real threat in the next 30 years, it will be an achievement in 2050 if there are still institutions to make weather predictions, radio transmitters to share them and seafarers willing to listen to the archaic content.
I write this imaginary forecast with an apology to Tim Radford, the former Guardian science editor, who used the same device in 2004 to open a remarkably prescient prediction on the likely impacts of global warming on the world in 2020.
Journalists generally hate to go on record about the future. We are trained to report on the very recent past, not gaze into crystal balls. On those occasions when we have to venture ahead of the present, most of us play it safe by avoiding dates that could prove us wrong, or quoting others.
Radford allowed himself no such safe distance or equivocation in 2004, which we should remember as a horribly happy year for climate deniers. George W Bush was in the White House, the Kyoto protocol had been recently zombified by the US Congress, the world was distracted by the Iraq war and fossil fuel companies and oil tycoons were pumping millions of dollars into misleading ads and dubious research that aimed to sow doubt about science.

Radford looked forward to a point when global warming was no longer so easy to ignore. Applying his expert knowledge of the best science available at the time, he predicted 2020 would be the year when the planet started to feel the heat as something real and urgent.

“We’re still waiting for the Earth to start simmering,” he wrote back in that climate-comfortable summer of 2004. “But by 2020 the bubbles will be appearing.”
The heat of the climate movement is certainly less latent. In the past year, the world has seen Greta Thunberg’s solo school strikes morph into a global movement of more than six million demonstrators; Extinction Rebellion activists have seized bridges and blocked roads in capital cities; the world has heard ever more alarming warnings from UN scientists, David Attenborough and the UN envoy for climate action, Mark Carney; dozens of national parliaments and city councils have declared climate emergencies; and the issue has risen further to the fore in the current UK general election than any before it. With only weeks to go until 2020, the bubbles of climate anxiety are massing near the surface.
Radford’s most precise predictions relate to the science. Writing after the record-breaking UK heat of 2003, he warned such scorching temperatures would become the norm. “Expect summer 2020 to be every bit as oppressive.” How right he was. Since then, the world has sweltered through the 10 hottest years in history. The UK registered a new high of 38.7C this July, which was the planet’s warmest month since measurements began.

Hostile world: tackling forest fires in China.

He also correctly anticipated how much more hostile this would make the climate – with increasingly ferocious storms (for the first time on record, there have been category 5 hurricanes, such as Dorian and Harvey, for four years in a row), intensifying forest fires (consider the devastating blazes in Siberia and the Amazon this year, or California and Lapland in 2018) and massive bleaching of coral reefs (which is happening with growing frequency across most of the world). All of this has come to pass, as have Radford’s specific predictions of worsening floods in Bangladesh, desperate droughts in southern Africa, food shortages in the Sahel and the opening up of the northwest passage due to shrinking sea ice (the huge cruise liner, Crystal Serenity, is among the many ships that have sailed through the Bering Strait in recent years – a route that was once deemed impossible by even the most intrepid explorers).
A couple of his predictions were slightly premature (the snows on Kilimanjaro and Mt Kenya have not yet disappeared, though a recent study said they will be gone before future generations get a chance to see them), but overall, Radford’s vision of the world in 2020 was remarkably accurate, which is important because it confirms climate science was reliable even in 2004. It is even more precise today, which is good news in terms of anticipating the risks, but deeply alarming when we consider just how nasty scientists expect the climate to become in our lifetime. Unless emissions are slashed over the next decade, a swarm of wicked problems are heading our way.
How wicked? Well, following Radford’s example, let us consider what the world will look like in 2050 if humanity continues to burn oil, gas, coal and forests at the current rate.
The difference will be visible from space. By the middle of the 21st century, the globe has changed markedly from the blue marble that humanity first saw in wondrous colour in 1972. The white northern ice-cap vanishes completely each summer, while the southern pole will shrink beyond recognition. The lush green rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and Papua New Guinea are smaller and quite possibly enveloped in smoke. From the subtropics to the mid-latitudes, a grimy-white band of deserts has formed a thickening ring around the northern hemisphere.
Coastlines are being reshaped by rising sea levels. Just over 30cm at this stage – well short of the 2 metres that could hit in 2100 – but still enough to swamp unprotected stretches of land from Miami and Guangdong to Lincolnshire and Alexandria. High tides and storm surges periodically blur the boundaries between land and sea, making the roads of megacities resemble the canals of Venice with increasing frequency.
On the ground, rising temperatures are changing the world in ways that can no longer be explained only by physics and chemistry. The increasingly hostile weather is straining social relations and disrupting economics, politics and mental health.
Generation Greta is middle aged. Their teenage fears of the complete extinction of the human race have not yet come to pass, but the risk of a breakdown of civilisation is higher than at any previous time in history – and rising steadily. They live with a level of anxiety their grandparents could have barely imagined.

The climate activist Greta Thunberg leads a school strike outside of the Swedish Parliament in 2018.

This is a doorway into peak climate turbulence. Global heating passed the 1.5C mark a couple of years earlier and is now accelerating towards 3C, or possibly even 4C, by the end of the century. It feels as if the dial on a cooker has been turned from nine o’clock to midnight. Los Angeles, Sydney, Madrid, Lisbon and possibly even Paris endure new highs in excess of 50C. London’s climate resembles Barcelona’s 30 years earlier. Across the world, droughts intensify and extreme heat becomes a fact of life for 1.6bn city dwellers, eight times more than in 2019. For a while, marathons, World Cups and Olympics were moved to the winter to avoid the furnace-like heat in many cities. Now they are not held at all. It is impossible to justify the emissions and the world is no longer in the mood for games.
Extreme weather is the overriding concern of all but a tiny elite. It wreaks havoc everywhere, but the greatest misery is felt in poorer countries. Dhaka, Dar es Salaam and other coastal cities are hit almost every year by storm surges and other extreme sea-level incidents that used to occur only once a century. Following the lead set by Jakarta, several capitals have relocated to less-exposed regions. But floods, heatwaves, droughts and fires are increasingly catastrophic. Healthcare systems are struggling to cope. The economic costs cripple poorly prepared financial institutions. Insurance companies refuse to provide cover for natural disasters. Insecurity and desperation sweep through populations. Governments struggle to cope.
“By 2050, if we fail to act, many of the most damaging, extreme weather events we have seen in recent years will become commonplace,” warns Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “In a world where we see continual weather disasters day after day (which is what we’ll have in the absence of concerted action), our societal infrastructure may well fail … We won’t see the extinction of our species, but we could well see societal collapse.”

Huge waves at Porthcawl, Wales: there will be more extreme storms and longer droughts. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

On our current course, carbon concentrations in the atmosphere will pass 550 parts per million by midcentury, up from around 400ppm today. Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, explains how this stacks the odds in favour of disaster.
“By 2050, we’d be seeing events that are far more frequent and/or far stronger than we humans have ever experienced before, are occurring both simultaneously and in sequence.”
Her greatest concern is that food production and water supply systems could buckle under the strain, with dire humanitarian consequences in areas that are already vulnerable.

"Generation Greta live with a level of anxiety their grandparents could barely have imagined"

Hunger will rise, perhaps calamitously. The United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change expects food production to decline by 2% to 6% in each of the coming decades because of land-degradation, droughts, floods and sea-level rise. The timing could not be worse. By 2050, the global population is projected to rise to 9.7 billion, which is more than two billion more people to feed than today.
When crops fail and starvation threatens, people are forced to fight or flee. Between 50 and 700 million people will be driven from their homes by midcentury as a result of soil degradation alone, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated last year. Fires, floods and droughts will prompt many others to migrate within and across borders. So will the decline of mountain ice, which is a source of meltwater for a quarter of the world’s population. The poorest will be worst affected, though they have the least responsibility for the climate crisis. For the US author and environmentalist, Bill McKibben, this injustice will make the greatest impact in 2050.
“Forcing people to move from their homes by the hundreds of millions may do the most to disrupt the world. And, of course, it’s a deep tragedy, because these are precisely the people who have done the least to cause the problem,” he says.
In 2050, climate apartheid goes hand-in-hand with increasingly authoritarian politics. Three decades earlier, worried electorates voted in a generation of populist “strongmen” in the hope they could turn back the clock to a more stable world. Instead, their nationalism made a global solution even harder to achieve. They preferred to focus on the immigration consequences of global heating rather than the carbon-capital causes. When voters realised their mistake, it was too late. The thugocracy refused to give up power. They no longer deny the climate crisis; they use it to justify ever-more repressive measures and ever-wilder efforts to find a technological fix. In the past 20 years, nations have tried volcano mimicking, cloud brightening, albedo modification and carbon dioxide removal. Most were expensive and ineffective. Some made weather circulation even less reliable. Powerful countries now threaten rivals not just with nuclear weapons, but with geo-engineering threats to block sunlight or disrupt rainfall patterns.
This is not an inevitable future. Unlike Radford’s prediction for 2020, this vision of 2050 factors in human behaviour, which is more volatile and less predictable than the laws of thermodynamics. Many of the horrors above are already baked into the climate, but our response to them – and each other – is not predetermined. When it comes to the science, the dangers can be substantially reduced if humanity shifts decisively away from business-as-usual behaviour over the next decade. When it comes to the psychology and politics, we can make our situation better immediately if we focus on hope in shared solutions, rather than fears of what we will lose as individuals.
That means putting faith in institutions, warning one another about risks, and treasuring shared eccentricities and traditions – a bit like the shipping forecast.

A storm is certainly brewing. The science is clear on that. The question now is how we face it.