$60 Trillion Cost Of Global Warming?

The Truth Behind That $60 Trillion Climate Change Price Tag

If all the methane off the East Siberian seafloor was released, the fallout would cost $60 trillion—a huge, staggering number.

For comparison’s sake, the world’s GDP is $70 trillion. The findings assume that 50 gigatons of methane would be released over the course of 10-to-20 years in a warming pulse.

Some climate scientists disagree with the underlying assumption. Gavin Schmidt has taken to Twitter to argue that 50 gigatons is an excessive estimate; prior warming periods didn’t show similarly large releases of methane.

On the other hand, climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann believes that “the precise magnitude of methane is an object of valid debate, but the possibility of a substantial release cannot be dismissed out of hand.” Climate modelers have underestimated Greenland sheet ice and Arctic sea ice melt, so the estimate is not outside the realm of possibility.

The authors make it clear that they’re responding to exuberant claims of $100 billion in short term benefits from a warming Arctic—if the sea ice melts, trade routes will be shortened. Neither the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its Global Risk Report, nor the International Monetary Fund in its World Economic Outlook, recognizes the potential economic threat from changes in the Arctic.

Very large numbers make us sit up and take notice, but they’re also hard to grasp. What is climate change currently costing even without that warming pulse? A NRDC report estimates that American taxpayers, through the federal government, paid $100 billion in 2012—more than the cost of education or transportation. And that doesn’t include what state and local governments, insurers, or private citizens paid. Mann estimates the global cost at $1.4 trillion per year in coastal damage, droughts, fires, floods and hurricanes.

Dying Oceans

Acid Test: Rising CO2 Levels Killing Ocean Life (Op-Ed)

Matt Huelsenbeck, Oceana 07/17/2013

Matt Huelsenbeck is a marine scientist for the climate and energy campaign at Oceana. Huelsenbeck contributed this article to LiveScience’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The ocean absorbs approximately one-third of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions at a rate of 300 tons per second, which helps slow global climate change. But, due to that carbon dioxide absorption, the ocean is now 30 percent more acidic than before the Industrial Revolution, and the rate of change in ocean pH, called ocean acidification (video), is likely unparalleled in Earth’s history.

With today’s levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide so high, the ocean’s help comes at a cost to marine life and the millions of people who depend on healthy oceans.

For the first time in human history, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen above 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide at the historic Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This observatory is where Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher Charles David Keeling created the “Keeling Curve,” a famous graph showing that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been increasing rapidly in the atmosphere for decades.

Carbon dioxide levels were around 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution, when humans began releasing large amounts of the gas into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. On May 9, 2013, the reading was an alarming 400.08 ppm for a 24-hour period. This number would be even higher, however, if it were not for the help of the oceans. [Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Breaks 3-Million-Year Record]

Scientists already see ocean acidification harming marine animals like oysters, mussels and clams as well as coral reefs and floating marine snails called pteropods, dubbed the “potato chips of the sea” because of their significance to marine food webs. In the last decade, ocean acidification killed many oyster larvae at the Whisky Creek oyster hatchery in Oregon, shrunk the shells of pteropods in the Southern Ocean and slowed coral growth on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Society’s use of fossil fuels is putting the world’s marine life through a high-risk chemistry experiment with no fail-safes in place and no way to turn back. Earlier in Earth’s history, changes in ocean conditions that were much slower than today still managed to wipe out 95 percent of marine species. If emissions continue at current rates, our planet is risking a similar mass extinction event, one that could begin within our lifetimes.

These impacts will ripple up to threaten people as well, who are at the top of the ocean food web. In September 2012, an Oceana report entitled “Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World” ranked nations based on their vulnerability to reductions in seafood production due to climate change and ocean acidification. Many island nations rely on seafood as one of their main food sources, since it is the cheapest and most readily available source of protein. Threats to seafood especially threaten small-scale fishermen, who simply aren’t capable of following fish into distant waters.

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the only way to confront global ocean acidification and the primary means to stop climate change. Oceana is currently working to limit pollution emissions that threaten the ocean by halting the expansion of offshore drilling and supporting clean energy solutions like offshore wind. In the Atlantic Ocean, oil companies are trying to take their first step toward drilling for offshore oil and gas with seismic airgun surveys that would injure dolphins and whales with loud blasts. The more oil they find and the more drilling that occurs, the worse climate change becomes.

The current rate of change in ocean conditions is simply too high for many marine animals to adapt, but to avoid further harm, society needs to create an even faster rate of change in energy supply options. If not, our planet risks losing the diversity and abundance of ocean life that we all depend on.

This article was originally published on LiveScience.com.

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change Report

Climate Change Report Predicts Tragedies

November 2, 2013

According to a new report, starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease are likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report describes how global warming is already affecting the way people live and projects what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income.

Cities, where most of the world now lives, are particularly vulnerability, as are the globe’s poorest people.

The report says scientists have high confidence especially in what it calls certain “key risks”:

-People dying from warming- and sea rise-related flooding, especially in big cities.

-Famine because of temperature and rain changes, especially for poorer nations.

-Farmers going broke because of lack of water.

-Infrastructure failures because of extreme weather.

-Dangerous and deadly heat waves worsening.

-Certain land and marine ecosystems failing.

“Human interface with the climate system is occurring and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems,” the 29-page summary says.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t part of the international study team, said the report’s summary confirmed what researchers have known for a long time: “Climate change threatens our health, land, food and water security.”

The Summary Report dated 11/01/2013 can be viewed here.

Decimation of Species

Without Action, Warming to Decimate Species Diversity (Op-Ed)

On June 26, 2013 President Obama announced a Climate Action Plan to address the enormous and growing costs of climate change. He talked about the impacts of climate change on society — devastating natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, raging wildfires, diminished snowpacks, depleted water supplies and drought wilting farmers’ crops. As a conservation biologist, I get the urgency of climate action for society, but also for the many life forms with which we share the planet.

It is clear that the stakes of climate change are rising for biodiversity. A recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change predicted a shocking decline of global biodiversity within this century if nations fail to take quick, effective actions to halt greenhouse gas emissions. Roughly one third of common and widespread animal species and over half of plant species will disappear from a large percentage of their current ranges if society does not take action on climate change, the research team predicted.

Plants, reptiles and amphibians are likely to suffer the most because climate change will outpace these organisms’ abilities to shift to new locations as conditions change. Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Amazonia, Australia, North Africa, Central Asia and Southeastern Europe will become especially inhospitable for plants and animals if emissions continue to rise unchecked.

Without action to mitigate global warming, the ranges of many common, widespread plant and animal species will shrink by at least half, according to the team who modeled the effects of six climate change mitigation scenarios on a huge number of species (48,786 to be exact).

The study may actually have understated the problem because it didn’ t take into account other impacts that will interact with climate change, like diseases and pests, land-use changes, pollution, physical barriers to species movement, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events. The authors also pointed out that the actual rate of greenhouse gas emissions is outpacing the projected emissions levels in the models they used.

There is hope, though, to be gleaned in their finding that with “prompt, stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions,” species could avoid roughly 60 percent of the losses to their current ranges. However, that would require that nations rapidly reign in global emissions so that they peak before 2030.

We have an Administration that has shown itself ready to lead on this issue. However, if society delays action, the chances of curbing species losses are significantly reduced. I share President Obama’ s impatience with climate change skeptics attempting to slow down our response to this urgent matter. As he said in his speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday, “There is no time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society.”

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on LiveScience.com .

Endangered Species

On the Brink: Climate Change Endangers Common Species

LiveScience.com – 05/12/2013

A wide variety of plants and animals are likely to become much less common if something isn’t done to avert the worst effects of a warming climate, new research suggests.

Under a “business as usual” scenario, where greenhouse gas emissions aren’t significantly reduced, about 50 percent of plants and one-third of animals are likely to vanish from half of the places they are now found by 2080, said Rachel Warren, a researcher at the University of East Anglia in England. These losses could lead to local extinctions of species.

In the study, published online May 12, 2013 in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers looked at the likely effects of global warming on 50,000 different species around the world. The study used a computer model that calculated the desired climatic zone that these plants and animals live in, and analyzed how these zones, and the organisms’ accompanying ranges, are likely to shift in the future, Warren told OurAmazingPlanet.

In many cases these shifts are likely to cause extinctions, as warming temperatures force animals and plants to move to points beyond which they cannot go, such as up mountaintops and toward coastlines into the ocean, Warren said.

However, plants and animals with limited ranges were intentionally excluded from this study, because the goal was to gauge climate change’s effects on common species, Warren said. In other words, if you include total extinctions — which this study did not — the impact of climate change on global biodiversity looks even worse.

Not too late

It’s not too late to do something to prevent the widespread loss of species, however. The study found that if emissions are slowed and ultimately begin being reduced by 2017, about 60 percent of the losses can be avoided, Warren said. If emissions peak in 2030 and are reduced after that, about 40 percent of the losses could be avoided.

The losses are likely to be particularly severe in Central and South America, Australia, North Africa and Southeast Asia, Warren said. These areas are vulnerable to declines in rainfall and increasing temperatures, according to the study.

A decline in plants and animals means a decline in the services these organisms provide, such as recycling of nutrients, purification of air and water, pollination, as well as draws for ecotourism and recreation, she added.

Some species are likely to be more tolerant than others, but the point of this study is that it didn’t focus on any one plant or animal, or specific high-profile creatures like polar bears, Warren said. “The important message I want to get across is that there are large effects on a large proportion of species,” she said.

Warren said she considers the estimates conservative, since the study didn’t take into account interactions between animals and plants, which could exacerbate declines; if an animal’s preferred plant food disappears, it too could bite the dust. The research also didn’t consider the effect of extreme weather that many models project will become worse with global warming, she said.

“There will be winners and losers in the natural world as species respond to climate change,” said Lee Hannah, a senior fellow in climate change biology at Conservation International, who wasn’t involved in the research. “This study shows that we can greatly reduce the losers among common, well-known species by taking action to reduce climate change.”

This “phenomenal” study “scared me to death,” said Terry Root, a scientist at Stanford University who wasn’t involved in the research. “What it is showing is how many species we are actually affecting by putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” she told OurAmazingPlanet.

Real Estate

The Secondary Market

American institutional lenders commonly fund two types of real estate loans: conventional, and government-insured and/or guaranteed, primarily by the Federal Housing Administration (HUD), the Veterans Administration (VA) and the Farmers Home Administration (FmHa). While lenders may choose to keep loans in their portfolios, the vast majority do not do so. They sell them to two government sponsored enterprises, the Federal National Mortgage Association, (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and to private-label companies set up by investment banks, pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds and hedge funds. Ginnie Mae, a wholly-owned government corporation within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guarantees –but does not buy- loans. Collectively, the system is known as the secondary market, an indispensable mechanism that continuously supplies lenders with working capital to fund more loans.

Historical Events

In September of 2008 Fannie and Freddie were seized by the Federal Housing Finance Agency as souring loans pushed them to the brink of insolvency; as a result, the government assumed the liability for their portfolio of loan guarantees. All said and done, the government now bears the risk for 90% of the nation’s $10 trillion mortgage market. Needless to say, in view of the magnitude of its chronic budget deficits and accumulated debt, it’s difficult to imagine how it could possibly make good on these guarantees should real estate prices collapse yet again.

Prior to the crash, investors worldwide viewed American real estate as a very low risk, profitable opportunity, and private capital flowed in from every corner of the world to satisfy the nation’s insatiable demand. The debacle changed that perception, and the supply of new money dwindled to an insignificant trickle. To compensate for the shortfall, which threatened to push interest rates up and plunge the country into a full blown depression, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) reduced its target federal funds rate to near zero and expanded the holdings of longer term securities in its portfolio, the System of Open Market Account (SOMA), to include large-scale purchases of fixed-rate, mortgage backed securities (MBS). SOMA operations, the Fed’s primary means to implement monetary policy, are granted under Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act and take place at the Trading Desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) exclusively with primary dealers (banks and security brokerages) that the FRBNY has selected for its operations. The Fed’s purchase program began in November 2008. By August 14, 2013 it held $1.264 trillion in MBS and $1.998 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities bills. Essentially the Fed has used its unique authority to create money as it sees fit to replace the $3.262 trillion capital shortfall caused by the collapse. This is an open-ended program, to be continued until the Fed feels that the economy has improved sufficiently. Left unanswered is the question of how much interest rates would rise and how that would affect real estate prices.

Outlook

There’s nothing to indicate that private capital will return to fund loans any time soon on a scale comparable to pre-2008. In fact, there’s a host of reasons why institutional lenders and private investors are reluctant to lend without government guarantees. To begin with, they expect to earn fees for making mortgages that they sell to Fannie and Freddie and to generate income while placing the risk on the government’s balance sheet. In addition, deep flaws remain in the mortgage securitization process, particularly with respect to the lack of transparency in privately issued securities. For example, although the banks issuing the securities do provide some data like borrowers’ incomes and credit scores, investors are not granted access to the actual loan files to determine if the type and quality of the loans meet their investment standards. Another powerful reason is the continuing impoverishment of the middle class, now afflicting roughly half of the population and with no relief in sight. Furthermore, nonexistent job security, declining benefits, and the skyrocketing cost of medical care and college student debt (the latter, by the way, does not guarantee a job), collectively suggest a higher probability that at some point in the future borrowers may be unable to make payments on mortgages they take out today. Add to that chronic political gridlock, which threatens to dissolve what’s left of the glue holding the nation together, and it’s not difficult to understand big money’s reluctance to lend.

The Truth

The widening gap in the distribution of income and wealth is the reason for the middle classes’ declining standard of living. The 400 richest Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million put together, and the richest 1% own more than 35% of the country’s wealth; in contrast, the bottom 50% control just 2.5%. And the trend is accelerating. Since the official end of the recession in 2009, income for the bottom 99% grew by 4%; in contrast, for the top 1% it grew by 31%.

Middle Class Income

This situation has ominous implications for the U.S., nominally still the world’s largest economy and therefore with the most to lose. It is a historical fact that when societies get too unequal bad things happen. They become inefficient, stagnant, subject to social/civil/ethnic unrest and unable to compete for long with rising powers that eventually overpower them. While this extreme inequality could be reduced somewhat by tangential administrative and regulatory changes such as increasing investment in education and reforming the entire tax system, the overall trend will not be halted –much less reversed- until the root cause of the problem is formally acknowledged, confronted and addressed: unlike the upper class, the working and middle classes cannot tap directly into the great fountain of wealth emanating from China’s growth. As we shall see, this could be corrected without resorting to a redistribution of current wealth.

Consequences

The growing impoverishment of the middle class has caused a corresponding decline in the real estate index of affordability –the number of people who can afford to buy at current prices. Although the demand for housing has not declined, generally the construction industry has catered to the upper class simply because profit margins are higher and there are more qualified buyers. Understandably, due to its declining purchasing power, virtually no new housing is being built for the middle class; unable to buy, people are being forced to pay ever higher rents or to live with others. In effect, the middle class is being squeezed by declining incomes on the one hand and higher housing, medical and education costs on the other, and there’s no relief in sight.

As mentioned earlier, this trend cannot be halted –much less reversed- solely by tangential measures such as tax reform and by expanding the number of college graduates. The former cannot make up for the loss of millions of well-paying middle class jobs, and the latter is a fallacy to the extent that our colleges and universities don’t have the capacity to accept everyone who would like to attend. In fact, even if universities were completely free and staffed with enough professors and classrooms to accommodate every high school graduate without any restrictions or conditions, the country would still need farm laborers, electricians, plumbers and carpenters. None of these occupations require a degree, but they all need to make living wages. No, only a specific, feasible project designed to create thousands –if not millions- of high paying, permanent middle class jobs that cannot be outsourced or relocated will do, and new construction will be a fundamental part of it.

New Tracts, Towns, Cities

The construction portion of this proposal is a natural complement to the proposed parallel economy in the desert. But these new tracts, towns and cities would be unlike any others ever built. Each and every building –residential, commercial or industrial- would be equipped with the latest solar capturing technology (newly discovered materials and techniques have pushed the efficiency rate to 44.7%) designed to generate a surplus of electricity. Homes would be equipped with batteries to be charged during the day and used at night, when demand is lower. The rest of the surplus electricity would be transmitted to hydrogen and water plants via a private local grid that would not be connected to the existing state grid. Each homeowner would be free to install as many solar panels –within safety, practical and aesthetic limits- to generate as much electricity as desired to be sold at market rates. A portion of the profit from the sale of the hydrogen and water would be allocated to amortize the debt incurred to build the macro infrastructure, including the canal and lakes; the rest would be distributed among the homeowners according to a formula designed to reward and thus encourage maximum production of electricity. The funds would be deposited in escrow accounts for each property; a fee would be deducted for the maintenance and repair of the private grid –which would be done by licensed contractors who would bid every few years- and of the generating equipment in each home. The rest would be used to help pay the monthly payment on each property’s first mortgage, property taxes or insurance. If there is any money left, it would be distributed to the property owners. To protect homeowners, their right to generate electricity using solar energy should be non-transferable and be appurtenant to the land. To qualify for profit sharing from the hydrogen, water and electricity produced by those plants, which would be owned exclusively by property owners supplying them with power, residences should be owner-occupied. Of course, all real estate would be bought and sold in the open market as it normally is.

These new income streams would lower the risk of future default on purchase money loans and encourage private capital to participate without government guarantees. More importantly, a direct link would be established between middle class homeowners in the U.S. and hydrogen consumers in China, India and other similar markets. Currently this is the exclusive domain of shareholders of multinational corporations and wealthy investors.

Getting Started

There are two phases to this project. The first entails construction of the macro infrastructure –the canal, saltwater lakes, plants (hydrogen, hydro (gravity) and water), homes and supporting businesses in Death Valley. The second phase would see the expansion to suitable areas throughout the southwest and the introduction of secondary businesses such as recreation, agriculture and fish farming.

Financing

There are several ways to finance the macro infrastructure portion of project. One could be to create a special entity similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority, but with key differences. It would issue bonds that the Federal Reserve would buy, secured by the income derived from the sale of surplus electricity, manufactured water, hydrogen, and a lien on the instantaneous appreciation that would occur as the vacant, dry land is transformed into a thriving new economy. Better yet, no new taxes would be required, and since the Fed has considerable latitude to act without the approval of the Legislative and/or Executive branches of government, it might be possible to bypass political gridlock.

Another way to increase upfront revenue would be to require clients –countries or states that need clean water and hydrogen- to pay annually a priority fee to guarantee a portion of the hydrogen produced.

Conclusion

Overall, this should meet the fundamental demands of the left: millions of long-term, well-paid jobs that cannot be outsourced or relocated, significant reduction of the unemployed and underemployed, and higher tax revenue from a dramatic expansion of the tax base rather than from higher tax rates; and of the right: reduced federal spending on entitlements (more people would be working) and no new taxes or higher tax rates. The ripple effect of an additional economy on this scale would benefit the entire country. The environment would improve worldwide as hydrogen powered plants replace fossil fuels to generate electricity –natural gas could be diverted to replace gasoline as the fuel of choice for vehicles- and to simultaneously manufacture clean water wherever they may be built, even in the middle of the driest deserts. Existing big businesses would benefit from a revitalized purchasing power of the American middle class, and farmers would enjoy a reliable, predictable, permanent new source of water and fertilizers completely independent of the rain/precipitation cycle and thus impervious to drought.

Inconclusive Doha climate talks, questionable future

The conclusion to 2012’s talks in Doha, Qatar, which created a bridge from the old climate regime to a new one, set the stage for a cliffhanger in 2015, when a new comprehensive agreement will have to be reached. It reaffirmed the continuation of the Kyoto protocol for another eight years, preserved the body of related international law, and retained the rules on accounting for emissions and trading between countries. At the same time Kyoto will expire in 2020, when a new agreement will end the distinction between “developed” and “developing” countries and require them all to commit to reductions in line with their level of development. In addition, it reaffirmed that the agreement must seek not to exceed the UN goal of limiting global warming to 2C, created a specific procedure to review each country’s emission targets, established a mechanism to compensate the countries most affected by climate change, and set a 2015 deadline to achieve the new agreement.

Easier said than done. The last time this was attempted, 2009 in Copenhagen, presidents and prime ministers from around the world failed to agree to a binding, enforceable course of action, and in so failing, caused a collapse in confidence that any agreement will ever be reached. As before, it’s shaping out to be a matter of the economy versus the environment, and the former has always won: the most recent U.S. presidential election hinged primarily on the economy, not global warming.

The situation is dire. In spite of targets set by the heaviest polluters, including the U.S. and China, global emissions are rising, a direct consequence of growth and higher per rising capita consumption of fossil fuels. Given the level of devastation that the working classes have endured in the U.S. and parts of Europe, no leader worth his/her salt would dare take a course of action to aggravate the unemployment rate. That begs the question, must we reach the point that we’ll all have to carry oxygen tanks on our backs on a daily basis before we do what we must to quit using fossil fuels?

Carbon Dioxide Reaches 400 ppm

On May 9, 2013, worldwide levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) -the chief culprit for global warming- reached 400 ppm at the monitoring station in Hawaii, which sets the global benchmark.

Humans have never been exposed to this level. The last time it happened was at least 2 million years ago, during the Pleistocene Era.

In 1958, when measurements of CO2 were first taken, the concentration was 315 ppm. Today levels are growing at about 2 ppm per year, 100 times faster than at the end of the Ice Age, when they stood at 200 ppm. At that time it took 7,000 years for CO2 to rise by 80 ppm; now, they’ve gone up by the same amount in just 55 years.

The speed of the increase is alarming; when concentrations change gradually, over thousands or millions of years, living organisms can adapt. But not at this rate; already thousands of species of all kinds have become extinct, and animals that can are migrating to higher altitudes and latitudes, seeking refuge from the heat.

The possible consequences are frightening. Sudden, massive changes to the ecosystem on which we all depend are bound to negatively impact our food and water supply and pit some nations against others.

WikiSolver

Economic & Political Solutions

Author: Solver1