Global Warning: 24 hours on the climate change frontline as Trump becomes president – as it happened
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With climate change deniers moving into the White House, the Guardian is spending 24 hours focusing climate change happening now. After reporting from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas, we’re now focusing on how warming temperatures will affect the Asia-Pacific region Our partner, Univision News, is hosting a parallel event in Spanish today. Follow it here The Tumblr community is joining us with personal posts about climate change. See them here
A large table coral is severely bleached at Scott Reef. Research divers are assessing the extent and severity of the bleaching by conducting surveys at several sites across the reef. Photograph: AIMS/Nick Thake
A large table coral is severely bleached at Scott Reef. Research divers are assessing the extent and severity of the bleaching by conducting surveys at several sites across the reef. Photograph: AIMS/Nick Thake
We’re just a few hours from Donald Trump being inaugurated as the president of the United States, and we’re signing off from our 24-hour Global Warning live blog: a marathon effort from our Guardian offices in London, New York and Sydney, as well as our correspondents dotted around the globe.
What we’ve seen, as we’ve travelled around the world, is that regardless of what climate deniers (yes, deniers) like Trump may say about the science, the stark reality is that it is happening now.
Both scientists and people at the front lines of climate change – in low-lying Pacific islands where freshwater supplies are being contaminated by salt; in poor farming Cambodian communities, where “life is a high-wire act with no safety net” – agree: there is no ambiguity.
We are no longer fighting to stop climate change, but fighting to stop a runaway catastrophe.
Governments must step up and take action. But in the meantime, we must all do what we can. We’ve heard people fighting climate change all around the world give their advice for what individuals can do, and most of them said similar things: become active on the issue, make your views known to politicians, and become a climate voter.
Exactly what the Trump administration means for the world is not yet clear, but even if the Paris Agreement is weakened – even if the work is undone – not all hope is lost. There are signs that China might take a lead on climate change action, and investment in renewable energy around the globe seems unstoppable now.
Thank you for joining us in our Global Warning project, and particularly those of you who have contributed to it in the comments or on social media. We’ve been struck by the thoughtfulness and nuance of your discussion; on the whole, it’s hard not to feel a little more optimistic.
“For those standing on the precipice of life the impacts of climate change are an ever present reality,” writes Anika Molesworth, a young Australian working at at an agricultural research centre in Cambodia.
“For these farmers, many who live at subsistence level and survive on less that $1US a day, life is a high-wire act with no safety net. One stroke of bad luck – a drought, flood or pest outbreak – and they tumble further into hardship. …
“Not a day goes by that I don’t stand in awe at an under-resourced team committed to moving mountains despite the odds lined up against them.”
Much of the way we discuss climate-change mitigation focuses on supply: how to produce more energy, more cleanly. But some of the most fascinating conversations about climate-change in India are about reducing demand.
India is a society undergoing enormous changes. Between now and 2040, the population of its cities will swell by an estimated 315m people – roughly the current population of the US. Over the next years, the estimated 240m Indians who currently lack access to electricity will be connected to the grid. The half-billion Indians who still rely on fuel wood for cooking will transition to using stoves. And by some rough projections, around 70% of the buildings that will exist in India in 2030 are yet to be built.
A high-rise residential tower is seen next to shanties in Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums. In Mumbai, the windows of new high-rise apartment blocks, old low-rise residential buildings and shantytown shacks portray the disparity in living conditions and incomes in the Indian city. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui / Reuters/Reuters
Experts such as Navroz Dubash aren’t just thinking about how to power these changes, but how to lock in systems – of moving, cooking, cooling and lighting – that use a fraction of the energy it takes to power the same tasks in the west.
One example he gives is appliances. The Indian government has started paying rebates to manufacturers who can produce more energy efficient 40-watt fans to reduce the drain during the nation’s sweltering summers.
A bigger example – hundreds of thousands of high rises will spring up across Indian cities in the next 15 years. Energy researcher Radhika Khosla points out: building them to capture natural sunlight will reduce dependence on electric light.
These opportunities exist across every sector. Investing in rail freight networks would use less energy, long-term, than trucking freight by road. Convincing Indians to cook using gas, instead of electricity, would also substantially cut energy use. Transport emissions too could be slashed if the hundreds of millions of Indians who flood into cities in the next decades could work within a short distance of their homes.
“There’s a way to lock in institutional changes, technological changes and behavioural changes that are very difficult to undo,” Khosla says. “And that opportunity exists for countries like India, that are on the verge of great transitions.”
A shopkeeper stands next to a generator outside a commercial complex in Nehru Place, New Delhi, India. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Now we move to Mongolia, which is experiencing a disaster called a dzud, an extreme weather phenomenon commonly comprising heavy snow falls and temperatures below -40C.
The dzud starves livestock as they are unable to graze, which in turn can devastate Mongolians, a third of whom are entirely dependent on livestock.
Remains of sheep that perished during the harsh winter in Sukhbaatar region of Mongolia. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
The country used to suffer dzuds every decade or so but recently they have been occurring with growing frequency. This one is the second in a row.
The full extent of the dzud will not be known until the end of spring but last year’s killed more than 1.1 million livestock and left hundreds of thousands of Mongolian herders living on the brink.
Months of consistently heavy snow coverage and arctic temperatures have sparked fears of another devastating humanitarian crisis. The government has called for donations of warm clothing, food, medication for livestock, coal, hay, animal feed, insulation materials and other useful items for herders to help them survive the winter while preventing livestock deaths.
Some areas of the country have already recorded temperatures as low as -50C and local media reports that more than 70% of Mongolia is covered with thick snow and ice.
A dzud typically arrives after a summer drought or an early winter snow that melts then freezes over the land, cutting off food for livestock. Experts say the rising frequency is due to a combination of climate change and insufficient grasslands for large herds of livestock.
Telmen Erdenebileg, Save the Children’s humanitarian program manager in Mongolia, is leading the organisation’s dzud response and has just returned from one of the worst affected provinces, Arkhangai.
“The coming months are critical for herder families in the most heavily impacted areas. The end of winter is when stores of hay and fodder run out, and if there’s another large snowfall or temperatures remain so low we could see massive numbers of animals dying of starvation once again,” he told the Guardian from Ulaanbaator.
“Just last week herders told me how they lost half or even three quarters of their herd last winter, and they are worried about what awaits them in the next few months. Livestock are everything out there: a source of food, nutritious milk, warm clothing with their skins and a commodity for trade or sale. Without animals, herders have no livelihood.
Last year, Save the Children’s response to the dzud included distributing animal fodder and veterinary packages, fuel to help hospitals and schools, and cash grants for the most vulnerable families to buy essentials like warm clothing and nutritious food.
Suppakorn Chinvanno, at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, has been creating maps that show dramatically how temperature changes will affect the Southeast Asia region, if high CO2 emission continues.
Below is a map of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, as well as parts of Myanmar and Malaysia. It shows the average daily maximum temperature from 1980 and projected to 2090.
Chinvanno says the map suggests the region – already vulnerable to droughts and floods – is going to suffer more extreme and more frequent “abnormal weather patterns”. That’s to say, much longer dry periods with intense heat that could devastate agriculture, of which about a third of the population currently relies on.
That said, rainfall could actually increase, he says, but it will come in shorter bursts with more intense downpours. His climate change model also suggests a possible half-metre rise in the sea level in some areas of Thailand, which will magnify flood risk along the coast.
Over the past year, Thailand has been experiencing one of the worst droughts in decades and rice farmers are struggling. As we heard earlier, this was followed by terrible floods, one that killed 25 people this month and cut off large areas of the country.
The below map shows the average daily minimum temperature during the same period, displaying how it will not only get much hotter but parts of the country will hardly cool down, a necessity for some crops to thrive.
These scenarios are based on projections in which emission remain high. But even simulations that show lower CO2 levels have a similar result.
Now Chinvanno is researching adaptations, in which Thailand moves to deal with the effects of climate change by changing farming strategies, boosting flood defences and water storage practices.
“What we can do is to make ourselves more resilient,” he said.
We’re reaching the end of our 24 hour blog, so it’s time to check the carbon countdown clock again.
This clock estimates how much greenhouse gas the world is emitting right now – and how much we have left to emit if we want to keep global warming within the 2C band considered crucial by scientists to prevent serious damage to the planet.
By the time this blog finishes, the world will have emitted an estimated 112m tons (CO2-e) of greenhouse gases.
Bangladesh is already one of the most climate vulnerable nations in the world, and global warming will bring more floods, stronger cyclones.
Karen McVeigh, the Guardian’s global development reporter, filed this report from the coastal town of Cox’s Bazar where the fish-drying process is well underway. It can continue through to February or March if the weather is good.
A dry fish yard in Cox’s Bazar Photograph: Noor Alam/Majority World for The Guardian
But Aman Ullah Shawdagor, a dry fish (known as shutki in Bangla) businessman who employs 70 people, said that rising tides and recent changes in the seasons has hit his business.
“This is a dry season business. But for the last couple of years, the rain has become more frequent.”
Scientists predict that, by 2050, as many as 25 million people in Bangladesh will be affected by sea level rise.
We’re into the last hour of this marathon effort, and we’d love to hear from you before it’s all over – join us in the comments, and let us know what you think of either the 24-hour blog or the somewhat grim tidings it’s brought.
From 4pm to 5pm Sydney time, here’s what we explored:
If the grim statistics and worldwide perspective we’ve been reporting over the past 23 hours haven’t made an impact, perhaps this video with pop culture references put to jaunty music will.
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We’ve had a few posts about the effects of climate change on coral reefs. In particular, earlier in the day we had an interview with coral biologist Anne Hoggett, who lives and works on Lizard Island, in the remote northern part of the Great Barrier Reef.
She spoke about the process coral goes through when it first bleaches, and then eventually dies.
Here are a set of interactive before-and-after images we have, taken from Lizard Island, that show that very process.
Australian politicians have been dissembling on climate change for decades, pretending it will be possible to do what we must without any impact on our position as the world’s largest coal exporter or our domestic reliance on brown coal-fired power, or without incurring any costs.
When Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister of Australia, it was hoped there’d be serious action on global warming – but the conservative government continues to fiddle on climate policy while the country burns, writes Guardian Australia’s editor-in-chief Lenore Taylor.
Malcolm Turnbull delivers his statement at the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference, outside Paris on 30 November 2015. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP
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Tamil Nadu’s water crisis is a glimpse at the way climate change is already exacerbating environmental and political tensions in India. For future threats, go 1,300km northwest to Mumbai, India’s flashy financial capital – and the world’s climate-vulnerable megacity.
To start with, much of the city was actually built on water: by rubble poured into the seas and swamps that separated seven islets in the Arabian sea. That process of reclamation continues today, and has severely distorted the terrain’s ability to deal even with unexceptional rainfall. A 2013 study found flooding would cost Mumbai around US$6.4b each year by 2050.
It also means huge swathes of the city are low-lying. If sea levels rise at predicted rates, according to early research, around 40% of Mumbai could be submerged by the end of the century.
Mumbai skyline at night. Photograph: Alamy
A day of freak rainfall in July 2005 saw chest-high flooding in parts of the city and killed 500 people. But the real nightmare scenario is a category 4 or 5 storm blowing in from the Arabian sea. A new book by Amitav Ghosh, one of India’s best-known writers, imagines this very scenario.
In the event of a two-to-three metre storm surge, Ghosh writes:
“Waves would be pouring into south Mumbai from both its sea-facing shorelines; it is not inconceivable that the two fronts of the storm surge would meet and merge. In that case the hills and promontories of south Mumbai would once again become islands, rising out of a wildly agitated expanse of water.”
Luckily, no storm like that has been seen in Mumbai in recent memory. But meteorologists are nearly unanimous in the view that increasing global temperatures will make tropical storms more severe. And a 2012 paper cited by Ghosh in his book predicts a 46% increase in the frequency of tropical cyclones in the Arabian sea over the course of the century.
City buildings seen in heavy smog at Nariman Poin, on 30 January in Mumbai. Photograph: Imago / Barcroft Media
Is Mumbai ready – either for “the big one”, or even just increased floods? I asked Atul Deulgoankar, an author and member of the Maharashtra State Disaster Management Authority. He said:
“I’ve been part of the disaster management authority since its inception in 2006. In that time, not a single government, not a single chief minister or chief secretary has taken an interest in disaster-risk reduction. In 2005, we experienced heavy flooding because just one river was choked. And nothing has been done about that. There has been no campaign to clear water bodies or rivers. Nothing is happening systematically.”
Tim Flannery, Australian palaeontologist, environmentalist and member of the Climate Council has penned a sobering opinion piece in the Guardian today, outlining the threat climate change is posing to Australia’s unique wildlife.
And as he says, meanwhile, Australia is doing very little to improve their outlook:
...while other countries are winding down their coal use, Australia is attempting to ramp up our production and export of the product, all the while as we watch first-hand the immediate and long term damage coal and fossil fuels are wreaking on our planet, on people and on nature.
Naveen Rabelli, a 35-year-old engineer, wanted to show the power and potential of clean energy, so he designed and built a solar powered tuk-tuk and drove it 9,000 miles from India to the UK.
“The moment I tell them it doesn’t require petrol, their minds are blown,” he said in September last year after he arrived in Dover following a seven month-long journey.
His journey shows there is a sustainable alternative for the millions of tuk-tuks around the world.
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Two more hours until we’ve gone round the world in 24 hours of climate change – thanks for following along, and particularly for the lively discussion below the line. We’d love to highlight and respond to more of your comments in the final stretch, so keep them coming.
If you’re just joining us, in the past hour:
We’ve heard how climate change is affecting already extreme climate in Australia’s Northern Territory
Deforestation, and the role it plays in carbon emissions, has been explained in a neat infographic by The Wilderness Society
We’ve checked back in with the effects of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef – is the Australian government really doing all it can do to save its natural wonder?
A short clip on the British Antarctic Survey’s activity at Rothera research station explains the answers to be found in Antarctica
Oliver Holmes has reported back from southern Thailand, where unseasonably heavy rains have marked the start of what should be the dry season
And is slowing the birth rate really the solution to climate change? It may be not so simple.
Global population is forecast to climb steadily, reaching 8.5bn in 2030, 9.7bn in 2050 and 11.2bn in 2100 – but the overall rate has been falling since the 1970s, and demographics are shifting.
The number of births have peaked, or levelled off globally; the growth in population is due mostly to people living longer.
Here in Thailand, the south of the country has been experiencing unseasonably heavy rains, unusual for what should be the start of the dry season.
More than 25 people have died and close to a million people, or 360,000 households, have been affected, with homes submerged in water. At one hospital, 100 patients had to be evacuated on small boats after the building was hit by overflowing reservoirs.
A flash flood washed out a bridge on the country’s main north-south highway, backing up traffic for 200 km (125 miles). Footage on local television channels showed abandoned cars submerged in muddy water.
A bridge damaged by floods at Chai Buri District, Surat Thani province, southern Thailand on 9 January. Photograph: STRINGER/Reuters
The railway link was also cut off and the Department Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said that the main airport in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat would remain shut for the foreseeable future.
Thailand’s rainy season usually ends in November. This year, intense rain has fallen well into what should be the dry season.
Women look out from a flooded house in the southern Thai village of Chauat on 7 January. Photograph: Tuwaedaniya Meringing/AFP/Getty Images
There is debate among scientists on the reasons for the extreme weather we’re seeing in Thailand, with many pointing to the cyclical El Niño and La Niña patterns, in which oscillations in the temperatures between the atmosphere and the ocean create storms.
It’s hard to isolate the impact of global warming, but increasing temperatures will lead to longer, more intense droughts and increasingly devastating flooding.
Widespread floods in 2011 killed more than 900 people and caused major disruption to business, cutting economic growth that year in Thailand to just 0.1 %.
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