Australian media on the IPCC report

Australian media is giving good coverage to the IPCC report - but the NZ media, to its eternal shame, is not.

Climate change and health: IPCC reports emerging risks, emerging consensus

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Impacts volume of the Fifth Assessment Report will be released today. Here, three contributors to the health chapter explain the ideas and evidence behind the report.

The Conversation

31 March, 2014

The consequences of human-driven global climate change as this century progresses will be wide-ranging. Yet public discussion has focused narrowly on a largely spurious debate about the basic science and on the risks to property, iconic species and ecosystems, jobs, the GDP and the economics of taking action versus taking our chances.

Missing from the discussion is the threat climate change poses to Earth’s life-support system – from declines in regional food yields, freshwater shortage, damage to settlements from extreme weather events and loss of habitable, especially coastal, land. The list goes on: changes in infectious disease patterns and the mental health consequences of trauma, loss, displacement and resource conflict.

In short, human-driven climate change poses a great threat, unprecedented in type and scale, to well-being, health and perhaps even to human survival.

Extreme weather events have contributed to a rise in global food prices. 'Palm Trees, Wind and Ocean' by Brooke/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

The human health chapter in the second (“Impacts”) volume of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concludes that the scientific evidence of many current and future risks to health has strengthened in recent years. The chapter, as in all IPCC reports, reviews all existing scientific evidence and is subject to external peer-review.

During at least the next few decades, the chapter states, climate change will mainly affect human health, disease and death by exacerbating pre-existing health problems. The largest impacts will occur in poorer and vulnerable populations and communities where climate-sensitive illnesses such as under-nutrition and diarrhoeal disease are already high – thus widening further the world’s health disparities.

Currently, the worldwide burden of ill-health clearly attributable to climate change is relatively small compared with other major blights on health such as from poverty, poor sanitation and exposure to tobacco.

Even so, in this early stage of human-driven climate change researchers in many countries have reported that rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns have, variously, increased heat-related illnesses and deaths, altered the distribution of some water-borne infectious diseases and the insect transmitters (vectors) of some diseases (such as malaria), and have reduced food yields in some already food-insecure populations.

Less certainly, extreme weather events, influenced in part by climate change, are likely to have contributed to the recent rise in global food prices.

Climate change may render some regions uninhabitable. Shutterstock

The chapter discusses three impact categories in particular:

• under-nutrition and impaired child development due to reduced food yields
• injuries, hospitalisations and deaths due to intense heat waves, fires and other weather disasters and
• shifts in the seasonal duration and spatial range of infectious diseases.

There is also mounting evidence of the adverse health consequences of workplace exposure to heat extremes, including reduced work capacity and productivity.

Looking ahead to 2100, for which some modelled scenarios now project an average global warming of 4 degrees Celsius, the report foresees that in such conditions people won’t be able to cope, let alone work productively, in the hottest parts of the year. And that’s assuming social and economic institutions and processes are still intact. Some regions may become uninhabitable.

Impacts on mental health could be similarly extreme, further limiting our collective capacity to cope, recover and adapt.

Overall, while limited health gains from climate change may occur in some regions, the health chapter concludes from the evidence that harmful impacts will greatly outweigh benefits. The impacts of climate change will also undermine hard-won gains achieved through social development programs, impeding progress in the world’s poorest countries.

The world community has dithered for two decades over climate change since it rose to prominence during the 1992 Earth Summit. As valuable time to reduce the risks (mitigation) has been squandered, the need to also focus on managing risk (adaptation) has increased. But excessive reliance on adaptation carries its own risks – including fooling ourselves that we don’t need immediate and aggressive mitigation.

Public health programs can help manage the effects of climate change. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, CC BY

The health chapter concludes that the most immediate effective way to manage health risks is through programs that introduce or improve basic public health measures. It also notes the need to boost human rights-based access to family planning.

As climate change proceeds, additional climate-specific measures (such as enhanced surveillance, early warning systems and climate-proofed building design) will be needed to protect population health, even in high-income settings. Recent extreme events such as the severe heat waves and fires in Australia in 2009-2014 and in Russia in 2010 underscore this need.

The chapter offers some cheer in stressing that the near-term and relatively localised health “co-benefits” from reducing greenhouse emissions (mitigation) could be very large. Reducing emissions of methane and black carbon, for example, may avoid more than two million deaths per year.

• Other mitigation actions likely to improve physical health, social connectedness and mental health include: 

• encouraging communities to be more active via improved public transport and reduced car reliance

• reducing exposures to temperature extremes with well-insulated energy-efficient housing and

• promoting healthier diets through the transformation of food production and processing systems.

Impacts of climate change on mental health limit our capacity to cope, recover and adapt. Tim Caynes, CC BY-NC

In economic terms, the IPCC chapter judges that the health co-benefits from reducing emissions would be extremely cost-beneficial. They would, for example, be one thousand times greater than the economic co-benefits to agricultural yields from reduced exposures to short-lived, crop-damaging, airborne climate pollutants.

Overall, the up-front costs of reducing emissions could be substantially offset by early and extremely large health (and other) benefits.

Of course, none of this matters if human well-being, health and survival mean little to us. In that case we can emit all we like, then suffer, dwindle or even die out as a species and leave this planet to recover and thrive without us. One way or another we will then emit less.

We have a closing window of time in which to do something about global climate change.

Again, "adaptation" to climate change which the IPCC sees progressing in a linear manner. Better not mention those pesky positive feedbackss!

IPCC: Australia and New Zealand face greater fire and flood risk, damage to coral reefs

Australia’s coral reefs and mountain-top ecosystems are set to suffer from climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest summary of the research

The Conversation

31 March, 2014

The threats to these ecosystems are among a host of climate risks posed to Australia and New Zealand, which also includes increased danger from extreme weather events and bushfires, as well as the threat from rising seas and drying river systems.

Many of these risk have become even more evident since they were discussed in the previous 2007 IPCC report, and will almost certainly intensify even if remedial efforts are undertaken.

This report – the second volume of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report – deals with the impacts of climate change, our vulnerabilities to it, and how we might adapt. It contains a dedicated chapter on Australia and New Zealand, prepared by eight lead authors coordinated by me and Andy Reisinger, with assistance from 37 corresponding authors.

Its message should be cause for concern but, as we shall see, not necessarily despair.

Key climate risks for Australia and New Zealand in the new IPCC climate impacts and adaptation summary. IPCC , CC BY-NC-ND

Corals set to suffer

Significant impacts, including bleaching, coral death and a range of coral diseases, are leading to changes in the structure and species makeup of corals on both the Great Barrier Reef and Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef.

These natural ecosystems have little ability to adapt and, other than reducing other detrimental effects such as nutrient run-off and over-exploitation, there seems little we can do about it in the short term.

The same is true of mountain-top ecosystems in Australia’s tropical and alpine zones. Mammals and birds, as well as whole sets of other species endemic to the tops of mountains, simply have nowhere to go.

Floods, heatwaves and fires on the rise

Extreme events such as floods, heatwaves and bushfires are all set to increase in both frequency and intensity. Recent events underscore our vulnerability to weather extremes.

Without serious mitigation, increases of up to 200% by 2090 for extreme rainfall events for some regions of Australia are projected in some models. For New Zealand the projections are for an 8% increase for each 1°C increase in temperature.

Hot days in Melbourne (over 35°C maximum) are projected to increase by 20-40% by 2030, 30-90% by 2070, and by 70-190% by 2070.

In New Zealand, spring and autumn frost-free land is projected to at least triple by 2080 and up to 60 more hot days (over 25°C maximum) are projected for northern areas by 2090.

Depending on the model used, days with a very high and extreme fire danger index will increase in Australia by 2-30% by 2020, and by 5-100% by 2050. For New Zealand, extreme fire days are projected to increase from around 0 to 400% by 2040), and by 0 to 700% by 2090, again depending on the climate model used.

The number of fire danger days is set to rise in Australia and New Zealand. AAP

But, unlike for coral reefs, we may be able to adapt to these problems, at least under the less extreme climate projections: that is, those that envisage gradually declining carbon emissions globally.

Both Australia and New Zealand are set to suffer more major flooding events – and as a result, simply bunkering down and hoping for the best may not be the most prudent course of action. So-called “transformational adaptation” may be the better long-term solution, with planned retreat from most vulnerable areas.

Similarly, sustained periods of extreme heat bring significant health risks, and the devastating impacts of bushfires on human life, property and ecosystems are all too well known. The Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 caused 173 deaths and destroyed A$4 billion worth of infrastructure. A further 374 deaths are estimated to have been caused by the extreme heatwave conditions in southeastern Australia in 2009.

Reduced rainfall in parts of southern Australia will impose greater stresses on water availability and consumption.

All of these risks, however, can be reduced to some extent by changes in management regimes. The IPCC report draws attention clearly to known impacts and current projections and are intended to provide the strongest possible scientific basis for governments to construct future policies.

Sea levels and droughts: an uncertain future

There are two more key threats, the severity of which will depend on how the various possible climate scenarios play out in the future.

If sea levels rise by a metre by the end of the century (within the range of model projections), the consequences for those who live in coastal towns and cities would be immense. That’s a particular problem for Australia and New Zealand, where the majority of the population is clustered in coastal areas.

Similarly, the drier scenarios projected by some models could affect Australia’s food productivity in its major food-producing regions: the Murray-Darling Basin, the far southwest and the far southeast. Our heavy dependence on these regions as the nation’s food bowls means that these risks, even though at the lower ends of the probability spectra, must be taken seriously. These less likely but more extreme scenarios project declines in annual rainfall of up to 30% for 2070 in South Australia with some larger declines seasonally.

Local steps but a lack of overall action

Some local governments are taking concrete steps to manage these various risks, but overall implementation is patchy. The preferred options have tended to be “incremental”: gradual adjustments that should allow us to maintain our current lifestyles. Examples include raising levee banks to cut flood risk; increasing fire-fighting resources and bushfire education; and the introduction of water-conservation programs.

These actions are all both necessary and desirable, but without strong action to limit future climate change – the subject of the IPCC’s next report in April – they will become increasingly inefficient, expensive and even futile in the long term.

The alternative is the sort of transformational adaptation mentioned earlier, which would involve taking more radical measures to address the threats. This might involve planned retreats from low-lying coastal zones or high-risk fire areas, or introducing new crop strains or shifting farming to new areas.

Some authorities and individuals have taken tentative steps down these paths, but it is clearly a huge challenge to coordinate such large-scale shifts. At least one local council on Australia’s east coast has attempted to promote planned retreat policies, only to have these overturned upon legal challenge.

Meeting the climate challenge

There is no doubt about the main threats that face Australasia, although there is obviously still some uncertainty about the finer details. In the seven years since the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report, we have learned more about potential climate impacts on biodiversity, human health, agriculture and forestry, rural communities and urban infrastructure.

During that time our knowledge about possible ways to adapt to these various threats has grown even faster. We might feel helpless in the face of the climate challenge, but really we’re not – although bringing action to bear will involve a big collective effort.

Without substantial adaptation the impacts will only intensify across all sectors of society and the environment. But as the report notes, there are many constraints on the implementation of such adaptation measures. These include the need for consistency and reduced uncertainty in projections, as well as more clarity on local impacts.

There is also a lack of guidance on principles and priorities for action, as well as the responsibilities of different levels of government, from the United Nations right down to local councils. There are also widely differing attitudes among the community to both climate change risk and the value of particular objects and places. These remain as challenges for the future.

IPCC reports give a wealth of information to politicians, but it is not their job to recommend policies. That remains the purview of politicians and the public - although everybody has a stake in meeting this challenge.

This article is based on the Executive Summary of the Australasia Chapter of the IPCC’s Working Group II report: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. The chapter’s Executive Summary was prepared by Andy Reisinger, Roger Kitching, Francis Chiew, Lesley Hughes, Paul Newton, Andrew Tait, Sandra Schuster and Penny Whetton