Jump to content

Climate crisis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by X1\ (talk | contribs) at 23:54, 16 September 2019 (further Climate change opinion by country under "Public opinion (United States)" section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"Climate crisis" or "climate emergency" is a description of climate change and global warming used by scientists, governments and other organisations to describe how the anthropogenic effects of humans on the climate are proceeding so quickly that the world is facing a global crisis.

A number of governments and local authorities around the world have made climate emergency declarations.[1] In New Zealand, the Ministry of Defence has plans to combat the climate crisis[2]

Other authorities also describe the crisis. At a Nobel forum on how to solve climate issues in 2018, Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore said "the urgency of this problem cannot be overstated, nor can the need for continued dialogue about the solutions to the climate crisis."[3] Scientists at Columbia University are concerned about the impact of the climate crisis on human rights and global land use.[4] The New England Journal of Medicine is concerned about the impact of the crisis on health.[5]

Various media have also begun to use the term climate crisis in order to reflect the growing urgency of the problem. For example, the British The Guardian adopted the use of “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” in its official editorial policy.[6] In July 2019, the coalition Call It a Climate Crisis Campaign[7] began circulating an online petition that in part says, "The words your reporters and anchors use matter. What they call something shapes how millions see it – and how entire nations act."[8] Others are also embracing the expression "climate crisis" simply because they believe it is more accurate.

History

In 1979 the First World Climate Conference was organized by the World Meteorological Organization in collaboration with various partner organizations. The conference issued a declaration stating that: It is now urgently necessary for the nations of the world (a) To take full advantage of man's present knowledge of climate; (b) To take steps to improve significantly that knowledge; (c) To foresee and prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity.[9] The conference led to creation of the first World Climate Programmeto research climate change.[10] In 1985, the Villach Conference produced a report warning that temperature rises in the first half of the 21st century would likely be "greater than any in human history'. The Tenth World Meteorological Congress in May 1987, highlighted global warming as "a major threat to sustainable development".[11]

In June 1988, 300 scientists and policy-makers gathered in Toronto at the "World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security". Their report used the word "crisis" in conjunction with anthropogenic global warming. From individual actions to the international community, the conference urged "specific actions to reduce the impending crisis", and declared in part: "Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war... These changes represent a major threat to international security and are already having harmful consequences over many parts of the globe."[12]

In May 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed by 155 countries. Articles 4 and 5 of the Convention include specific commitments to systematic observation and research in support of its ultimate objective described as “…..stabilization of greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.[11]

Following the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC in 2001 and the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, international awareness rapidly increased for the need to develop and support national and international strategies "for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to unavoidable climate change."[11]

Al Gore's impact

Main article: Environmental activism of Al Gore

In 2005, environmentalist and former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore wrote an op-ed in Salon titled: The time to act is now. The first sentence read: "It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly and wisely. "Global warming" is the name it was given a long time ago. But it should be understood for what it is: a planetary emergency that now threatens human civilization on multiple fronts."[13] The following year, Gore released the award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the thesis of which is that global warming is already happening and potentially catastrophic. In its synopsis, Paramount which distributed the film warned: "If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction."[14] Although the film was not without controversy, Al Gore appears to have a significant impact in raising public and political awareness of the dangers posed by global warming.

The severity of global warming

Language used by the IPCC

In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report on the difficulty of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above pre-industrial levels.[15] Those difficulties are also highlighted by research in the journal, Nature Climate Change, which states that given current emission levels, we have a 5% chance of limiting warming to 2 °C (3.6 °F)[16] but only a 1% chance of keeping man-made global warming to 1.5°C. The same journal reports that we may have already locked in 1.5°C of warming even if we somehow reduced our carbon footprint to zero today.[17]

The IPCC 2018 report says that the if greenhouse gas emissions continue on the current trajectory, the world will actually warm by 3.1 to 3.7°C by the end of the century and that even if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide today, the atmosphere would continue warming for at least another 40 years.[18] Even in 2014, the IPCC said: “Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped… It is virtually certain that global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emissions”.[19]

The IPCC now says the challenge the world faces in limiting warming to 1.5℃ is “unprecedented in scale”[20] and that “transformational” change is required to do so.[21] Keith Shine, Regius Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science, at the University of Reading points out that when documenting the risks associated with global warming, the IPCC lists five main categories of risk or "reasons for concern". He says national pledges made as part of the Paris Agreement still mean we are on course for warming of about 3 °C (5.4 °F) by 2100, meaning four of the five IPCC “reasons for concern” would then be in the high to very-high risk category. [22]

Criticism of language used by IPCC

Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics says the report fails to highlight some major risks from climate change. He points out that in the summary for policymakers, it does not mention the potential for human populations to migrate and be displaced, leading to the possibility of war.[23] The only risks the summary does mention are the destabilization of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.[24] Ward points out that the summary of the report had to be approved line by line by governments, including the US, Australia and Saudi Arabia.[25] The Union of Concerned Scientists says Government representatives try to influence the wording of the summary in ways that support their negotiating positions.[26] As a result, the summary is "written in matter-of-fact language, but omits some of the biggest risks of climate change, which are described in the full text".[27]

The American Institute of Biological Sciences conducted a statistical analysis of the language used by the IPCC in this report and confirmed that the tone of the IPCC's probabilistic language (when describing possible warming scenarios) is remarkably conservative, and "tailored to its audience" of governments and policy makers. [28] Lead author of the study, Dr Salvador Herrando-Pérez, of the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute says: "We found that the main message from the IPCC report, that our society is in climate emergency, is lost by the overstatement of uncertainty and gets confused among the gigabytes of information." [29]

Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research agrees that the IPCC is "quite conservative" in its terminology and that the latest report "downplays the real costs of climate change and its contribution to natural disasters." Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of climate sciences at the University of California says the IPCC report ignores “wild cards” in the climate system, or self-reinforcing feedbacks which have a "real possibility of pushing the planet into a period of chaos that humans cannot control." [30]

Other scientists' perspectives

One of the biggest threats from global warming comes from the impact on sea levels. If global emissions are stabilised by the end of century, which is one of the scenarios laid out by the IPCC, seas will continue rising for at least another 100 to 150 years, with an increase of up to two metres above current levels likely.[31] In 2015, a study by Professor James Hansen of Columbia University and 16 other climate scientists said a sea level rise of three metres could be a reality by the end of the century.[32]

However, the collapse of Arctic ice is happening faster than climate computer models predict. The Arctic has already heated up by 2°C above pre-industrial levels, twice the global average. Some hotspots, including parts of the Fram strait, have warmed by 4C.[33] Since 2014 there has also been a dramatic plunge in sea ice around Antarctica – to the extent that Antarctica has lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. Antarctica is on land so the melting of this ice has the greatest impact on sea levels. Research published in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters shows the amount of ice loss is doubling every decade, and sea level rise is now running at the extreme end of projections made just a few years ago. A complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would drive global sea levels up by about five metres, drowning coastal cities around the world.[34]

Adam Sobel is professor of applied physics & mathematics at Columbia University studies atmospheric and climate dynamics. He says by 2050 “we could see irreversible damage to global climate systems resulting in a world of chaos where political panic is the norm and we are on a path towards the end of civilization.” A report in May 2019 by The National Centre for Climate Restoration in Australia, says that “feedback cycles could push warming to 3°C by 2050, making climate change a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization”.[35] Professor Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University, and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers says: “The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the Second World War.”[36] Professor Hans Schellnhuber, Emeritus director of the Potsdam Institute and science advisor to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, recently said if we continued down this present path there was a real risk that human civilization would end.[37]

In 2019, the Global Commission on Adaptation released a report which said the world’s readiness for the inevitable effects of the climate crisis is 'gravely insufficient' and this "will result in poverty, water shortages and levels of migration soaring, with an 'irrefutable toll on human life'." The authors added that a trillion-dollar investment is needed to avert 'climate apartheid', where the wealthy pay to escape most of the impact while 100 million people could be driven into poverty by 2030.[38]

Public opinion (United States)

Further information: Climate change opinion by country

In September 2019, a CBS poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe climate change is either a crisis or a serious problem and more than half said they wanted action taken to address the crisis right away. Twenty percent of respondents described climate issues as a minor problem, while 16% were unconcerned. The poll found that age and political ideology play a significant role in these perceptions. Seventy percent of 18 to 29-year-olds believe climate change is a crisis or serious problem, but only 58% of those over 65 agree. The need for immediate action was supported by 80% of Democratic voters, over half of independent voters and just over a quarter of Republican voters. However, respondents' age tends to cut across ideology; the poll found that younger Republicans are more convinced climate change is a crisis and are more supportive of action than older Republicans.[39]

Political responses

Responding to the growing threat, as at September 2019, nine countries including the United Kingdom, France and Argentina have made national declarations of an emergency. Climate emergency declarations have been made in 983 separate jurisdictions and local governments in 18 countries covering 212 million citizens.[40]

In 2019, the United States House of Representatives established the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.[41] Washington State Governor Jay Inslee also ran an unsuccessful campaign in the 2020 United States Presidential Election with the climate crisis being his primary campaign issue.[42]

Constraints on media reporting

Writing in The Climate Reality Project, Rose Hendricks, notes that a growing body of research suggests that bombarding people with facts and scientific evidence is not particularly effective. She says that science communicators need to focus more on how they present this information and that the public "hasn’t been given facts in the right ways".[43] Writing in the Columbia Journal Review, Rosalind Donald, a journalist and communications PhD candidate, points out the difficulties journalists face when trying to communicate about the impact of global warming. She says research shows the overall volume of climate coverage in the media remains thin, and mainstream coverage comes and goes.[44] She quotes a study by Media Matters for America which found that coverage of climate change issues on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, which she describes as the primary sources of news for most people, fell by 45% between 2017 and 2018.[45]

The media also sometimes describes the effects of climate change in catastrophic terms without necessarily using the phrase climate crisis. Former Time correspondent, Chris Taylor, refers to climate change as The Catastrophe and says that climate change is like the elephant in the room that everyone ignores.[46] To illustrate the point, ABC (Australia) has an online a documentary in which David Attenborough takes a look at "a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe". However, on the ABC website, the documentary is promoted under the headline Climate Change: The Facts.[47] In a similar vein, WorldWideLife describes climate change as a "threat that impacts the earth".[48] The Environmental Defence Fund says "climate change plunders the planet".[49]

In response to such issues, the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation have developed a project aimed at strengthening the media’s focus on the climate crisis, and report that more than 170 news outlets worldwide have signed up to Covering Climate Now.[50]

Journalistic reframing

On May 17, 2019 The Guardian announced it would begin using the expression, climate crisis along with "global heating". Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner explained, "We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue. The phrase "climate change", for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity."[6] Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has embraced the expression as well.[51]

Media outlets embracing "climate crisis"

Other users

Criticism

Some social scientists expressed caution over emergency framing such as "climate crisis".[72]

...framing climate change as an emergency has several potential disadvantages. It may implicitly prioritise climate change over other important social issues. It can orient the movement towards government-led solutions rather than build popular support for long-term efforts. Finally, emergency framing may be counterproductive: it can disempower citizens because the problem seems too big, whereas providing practical opportunities for action is a better long-term approach.

See also

References

  1. ^ Aidt, Mik (September 4, 2019). "Climate emergency declarations in 987 jurisdictions and local governments cover 212 million citizens". Climate Emergency Declaration.
  2. ^ "The Climate Crisis" (PDF).
  3. ^ "2018 - How to Solve the Climate Crisis?". The Nobel Peace Prize.
  4. ^ "The Climate Crisis, Global Land Use, and Human Rights - Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment".
  5. ^ a b "NEJM — Climate Crisis and Health". New England Journal of Medicine.
  6. ^ a b c Carrington, Damian (May 17, 2019). "Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
  7. ^ "Call It a Climate Crisis Campaign". Retrieved 26 July 2019.
  8. ^ "Call it a Climate Crisis". Retrieved 26 July 2019.
  9. ^ Zillman, John W. "A History of Climate Activities". World Meteorological Organization. World Meteorological Organization. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
  10. ^ "Climate Change Fact Sheet 213". web.archive.org. 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2019-09-10.
  11. ^ a b c Zillman, John W. "A History of Climate Activities". World Meteorological Organization. World Meteorological Organization. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
  12. ^ Gore, Al (November 4, 2005). "The Time to Act is Now". Salon Magazine. Retrieved 26 July 2019. It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly and wisely. "Global warming" is the name it was given a long time ago. But it should be understood for what it is: a planetary emergency that now threatens human civilization on multiple fronts.
  13. ^ Al Gore's 'nine Inconvenient Untruths', The Telegraph, 11 October 2007
  14. ^ SPECIAL REPORT: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC
  15. ^ Less than 2 °C warming by 2100 unlikely
  16. ^ Committed warming inferred from observations
  17. ^ The UN’s 1.5°C special climate report at a glance
  18. ^ IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, p. 16.
  19. ^ IPCC 1.5℃ report: here’s what the climate science says, The Conversation, 9 October 2018
  20. ^ How can we limit warming to 1.5℃?
  21. ^ IPCC 1.5℃ report: here’s what the climate science says
  22. ^ The IPCC global warming report spares politicians the worst details, The Guardian 8 October 2018
  23. ^ New Climate Report Was Too Cautious, Some Scientists Say, Scientific American 11 October 2018
  24. ^ The IPCC global warming report spares politicians the worst details, The Guardian 8 October 2018
  25. ^ The IPCC: Who Are They and Why Do Their Climate Reports Matter?
  26. ^ The IPCC global warming report spares politicians the worst details, The Guardian 8 October 2018
  27. ^ Statistical Language Backs Conservatism in Climate-Change Assessments BioScience, Volume 69, Issue 3, March 2019, Pages 209–219.
  28. ^ IPCC is underselling climate change, ScienceDaily, 20 march 2019
  29. ^ New Climate Report Was Too Cautious, Some Scientists Say, Scientific American 11 October 2018
  30. ^ Warne, K. (2015) Three Feet High & Rising, Rising Seas, Issue 136, Nov-Dec 2015.
  31. ^ Simulation shows ‘unavoidable’ 3m Auckland sea level rise. 1NewsNow, 25 July 2015.
  32. ^ The end of the Arctic as we know it, The Guardian 7 June 2019
  33. ^ ‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica, The Guardian, 16 May 2019
  34. ^ Spratt, D. & Dunlop. I. 2018. National Centre for climate restoration (2019). Existential climate -related security risk: a scenario approach.
  35. ^ The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response, The Guardian 4 June 2019
  36. ^ Spratt, D. & Dunlop. I. 2018. National Centre for climate restoration (2019). Existential climate -related security risk: a scenario approach. p.6.
  37. ^ World 'gravely' unprepared for effects of climate crisis – report, The Guardian, 10 September 2019
  38. ^ 'Americans are waking up': two thirds say climate crisis must be addressed, Guardian, 15 September 2019.
  39. ^ Aidt, Mik (September 4, 2019). "Climate emergency declarations in 987 jurisdictions and local governments cover 212 million citizens". Climate Emergency Declaration.
  40. ^ "Democrats Establish a New House 'Climate Crisis' Committee". The Atlantic. December 28, 2018. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
  41. ^ "Jay Inslee, Dropping Out of 2020 Race, Will Run for Governor Again". The New York Times. August 21, 2019. Retrieved August 28, 2019.
  42. ^ Communicating Climate Change: Focus On The Framing, Not Just The Facts, Climate Reality Project, 9 November 2017
  43. ^ The climate crisis is a story for every beat, Columbia Journalism Review, 10 May 2019
  44. ^ How broadcast TV networks covered climate change in 2018, Media Matters for America
  45. ^ Taylor, Chris. "The Catastrophe: Climate change and the 22nd Century". Mashable.
  46. ^ Climate Change: The Facts.
  47. ^ "Environmental Threats | WWF". World Wildlife Fund.
  48. ^ How climate change plunders the planet
  49. ^ "Covering Climate Now signs on over 170 news outlets". Columbia Journalism Review.
  50. ^ Brady, Jeff (August 28, 2019). "Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg arrives in New York after sailing the Atlantic". NPR. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
  51. ^ "Climate crisis". The Independent.
  52. ^ "Act now and avert a climate crisis". Nature. 2019-09-15. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02734-x. ISSN 0028-0836.
  53. ^ No formal style guide, reporters routinely use the term, eg. [1][2]
  54. ^ Signe, Dean. "ScienceAlert Editor: Yes, It's Time to Update Our Climate Change Language". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  55. ^ Preston, Mark. "10 Democratic presidential candidates will participate in CNN climate town hall". CNN.
  56. ^ "How do you solve a problem like the climate crisis?" – via www.ted.com.
  57. ^ "Covering Climate Now signs on over 170 news outlets". Columbia Journalism Review.
  58. ^ Osborne, Hilary; agencies (2007-03-02). "UN's Ban Ki-moon warns of climate change dangers". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-09-06.
  59. ^ "Secretary-General's remarks on Climate Change [as delivered]". United Nations Secretary-General. September 10, 2018.
  60. ^ Walker, Peter (May 1, 2019). "MPs endorse Corbyn's call to declare climate emergency". The Guardian.
  61. ^ "Welcome to Select Committee on Climate Crisis | Select Committee on Climate Crisis". climatecrisis.house.gov.
  62. ^ "Amsterdam becomes the first Dutch municipality to recognise the climate crisis". kinder.world.
  63. ^ "What lies beneath" (PDF). climateextremes.org.au. 2018. Retrieved 2019-09-05.
  64. ^ Pierrehumbert, Raymond (2019-09-03). "There is no Plan B for dealing with the climate crisis". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 75 (5): 215–221. doi:10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255. ISSN 0096-3402.
  65. ^ Redlener, Caleb; Jenkins, Charlotte; Redlener, Irwin (July 31, 2019). "Our planet is in crisis. But until we call it a crisis, no one will listen | Caleb Redlener, Charlotte Jenkins and Irwin Redlener" – via www.theguardian.com.
  66. ^ Hasselmann, Klaus (October 1990). How well can we predict the climate crisis (Report). Hamburg: Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie.
  67. ^ Reframing the problem of climate change : from zero sum game to win-win solutions. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Earthscan. 2012. ISBN 9780203154724. OCLC 785927974.
  68. ^ Flannery, Tim (2015). Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis. Grove/Atlantic. ISBN 9780802190925. OCLC 922849158.
  69. ^ ""You are beginning to see an empathetic AI, which understands what it means to be human"". newhumanist.org.uk.
  70. ^ "Bill Nye's profanity-laced video goes viral". CNN Video.
  71. ^ Hodder, Patrick; Martin, Brian (September 5, 2009). "Climate Crisis? The Politics of Emergency Framing" (PDF). Economic and Political Weekly. 44 (36): 53, 55–60. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Climate_crisis&oldid=916093244"