Super typhoons, hurricanes, global warming and global denial

The following article explains how unusual Haiyan is and how it and the frequency of highly intense storms are related to global warming. 

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Haiyan is a strange storm in both its strength and because it comes very late in the typhoon season, which officially ended November 1, said Colin Price, head of the geophysical, atmospheric, and planetary sciences department at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Although the overall number of hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons—all the same weather phenomenon—hasn't increased over the past decades, the proportion of more intense storms has, Price explained. (See "Typhoon, Hurricane, Cyclone: What's the Difference?")

"All typhoons feed off the warm ocean waters," he said. The moisture-laden air above these regions is the fuel that fires the engines in these storms.

"We've seen in the past decades the oceans are warming up, likely due to climate change," said Price. "So warmer oceans will give us more energy for these storms, likely resulting in more intense storms."

Haiyan dipped down near the Equator, where it likely picked up some more steam, before heading to the Philippines, he said.

It's similar to what happened when Hurricane Katrina picked up steam as it passed over the warm pool of water in the Gulf of Mexico in August 2005.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131108-supertyphoon-haiy...

There are now more than 9.7 million people in 41 provinces in the Philippines affected by Haiyan. While the CBC reported an confirmed death toll of 942 a few hours ago, the new confirmed death toll is 1770 only a few hours later. The final death toll is expected to surpass 10,000. The government is considering imposing martial law in the affected regions as people desperate for food and water do whatever they have to in order to survive. 

The Canadian government, which unfortunately denies how its fossil fuels contributes to climate disasters such as this, has promised $5 million in aid and to match any donations by Canadians to Philippine relief. Whatever you think of our government and its policies, please consider giving to help these desperate people. Details for contributing are given in the article below (as well as more details at the website). 

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The city of Tacloban resembled a garbage dump from the air, punctuated only by a few concrete buildings that remained standing.

"I don't believe there is a single structure that is not destroyed or severely damaged in some way — every single building, every single house," U.S. Marine Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy said after taking a helicopter flight over the city. He spoke on the tarmac at the airport, where two Marine C-130 cargo planes were parked, engines running, unloading supplies.

Authorities said at least 9.7 million people in 41 provinces were affected by the typhoon, which is called Yolanda in the Philippines but is known as Haiyan elsewhere in Asia. It's one of the most powerful recorded typhoons to ever hit land and likely the deadliest natural disaster to beset this poor Southeast Asian nation. ...

[Canada announced] Sunday that it would offer up to $5 million in aid for the relief effort.

Minister of International Development Christian Paradis said in a teleconference on Sunday that Ottawa will also match each dollar donated by Canadians to registered Canadian charities for the Philippines Crisis Matching Fund.

Donations will be accepted until Dec 8. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/typhoon-haiyan-survivors-in-philippines-des...

With Typhoon Haiyan hitting the Philippines at estimated speeds of 320 to 380 km/hour (Hurricane Sandy did $65 billion damage in the US at 190 km/hr), it is the fastest moving storm to hit landfall in history. There are already an estimated 10,000 deaths in Leyte province alone, which is only one of 20 provinces hit by the storm. These super storms are exactly what was predicted by the computer global warming models as the extra heat in the water fuels more and ever faster storms. 

At the same time, the latest round of UN climate change talks are taking place in Warsaw, where the Polish government is holding a conference promoting its coal industry next door to the UN conference, a symbol of how serious most governments are about dealing with global warming. Our governments continue to sleep through the five alarm fire bells warming of ever greater global problems. However, Third World countries like the Philippines, Bangladesh, and the small island nations of the South Pacific (such as the Maldives, Seychelles, Palau that are facing disappearance due to rising sea levels) believe the First World, which has provided none of its promised $100 billion climate change mitigation fund, has no intention of doing little more than talk. While some effort has been made to move away from coal, virtually all climate change experts not tied to the fossil fuel industry state a lot more has to be done a lot faster. 

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The timing is tragically ironic. As Super Typhoon Haiyan -- one of the strongest storms ever recorded -- smashes into the Philippines, sending millions fleeing for safety, negotiators from around the world are beginning to arrive in Warsaw, Poland for the latest installment of the United Nations Climate Talks, COP 19.

Climate change is loading the dice for extreme weather events like Haiyan. The storms strength and rapid development have been aided by unusually warm ocean waters and warm, moist air (warm air holds more water vapor than cold). Global warming also causes sea level rise, increasing the risk of flooding from storm surges, especially in low-lying areas like much of the Philippines. Carbon dioxide is the steroids that leads to grand-slam storms like Haiyan.

Haiyan should be a five-alarm wake up call for negotiators in Warsaw and the capitals that sent them here. Over the next two-weeks, despite the best attempts of the nations most vulnerable to climate change, negotiators from the largest emitting countries will bask under the fluorescent lights of yet another conference center to bicker, delay, and obfuscate. Meanwhile, millions of people in the Philippines -- and other impacted communities around the world -- will be sleeping in relief centers and bravely trying to rebuild their homes.

The United Nations tried to make this year's climate meeting a summit focused on finance, but the Green Climate Fund, which is supposed to provide $100 billion every year by 2020 for adaptation and mitigation efforts, remains empty, and there's no sign that rich countries will come to the table in Warsaw with any serious pledges.

Instead, the Polish government has turned this year's Conference of the Parties into the "Coal COP," going so far as to host a World Coal Summit next-door to the official climate negotiations. It's like throwing a tobacco industry expo next-door to a global meeting of cancer experts. It's the gun show next to a world peace summit.

Coal fired power plants are the largest source of greenhouse gas emission in the world, making coal the number one threat to the climate. If we want a future for the planet, there is no future for coal.

So far, Poland's attempts to promote the future of the coal industry at the climate summit has only cast more of a spotlight on the fragile state of the industry.

In the United States, coal demand has fallen by about 20 percent over the last five years, while environmental regulations in Europe will force the closure of many coal fired power plants over the next decade. The drop in demand has resulted in a similar drop in share price for many coal companies, sometimes by as much as 75 percent.

The situation for the industry will only get worse. According to a growing number of reports by institutions like the World Bank, HSBC, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 60-80 percent of current fossil fuel reserves must stay underground in order to limit global warming to below 2°C. Coal, and other high-carbon, unconventional fuels such as tar sands, are likely to be the hardest hit by the tightening carbon budget.

The threat of these reserves turning into stranded assets has led many investors to start shedding their coal industry stocks, and fueled fears of a carbon bubble resulting from the overvaluation of fossil fuel companies. The prices of some coal mining companies have plummeted 75 percent, many others have gone out of business. Meanwhile, the growing fossil fuel divestment campaign is continuing to turn up the heat on institutions to divest from the coal industry and other major-holders of fossil fuel reserves.

Climate activists in the Philippines are already making the connection between Haiyan and the need to end the global dependence on coal. In an interview with the Sun Star, Voltaire Alferez, the national coordinator for Aksyon Klima, a climate coalition in the Philippines, called on the government to start protecting communities rather than polluters. ...

The test for any would-be climate leader here at the UN Climate Talks in Poland will be whether they are willing to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them that the age of coal is over, and that it's time to start investing in the future. That's especially true for UN Climate Secretary Christiana Figueres, who is keynoting World Coal Conference.

I'm straining to give Figueres the benefit of the doubt--she spoke emotionally to hundreds of young people about the need for bold climate action at the Global Power Shift summit last summer, breaking into tears at one point. If she goes to the summit and calls for an end to the coal industry, it will be a powerful moment. If instead, she plays the politician and spouts off some lies about clean coal, it will be a slap in the face to every young person who believed in her -- and the millions of people in the Philippines who will still be recovering from Haiyan.

From Haiyan to Sandy to Bopha (another major storm that hit the Philippines last year), our so-called leaders have heard alarm after alarm and continued to hit the snooze button. It's time to kick them out of bed and demand action. Warsaw could be the start.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-henn/super-typhoon-haiyan-is-a_b_423...

Here is the video of Yeb Sano, the Filipino delegate, speaking at the Warsaw conference on climate change yesterday. At the end of the speech he promises to fast until a meaningful agreement on climate change is passed. He received a three minute standing ovation. However, while government representatives to such conferences may be more sympathetic to such changes than their governments in many cases, the problem of achieving such an agreement and then applying and enforcing it remains. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yITq61XedI&feature=youtu.be

The first graph in the last post illustrates a major difference between North American and European insurance firms when it comes to climate change. While European insurance firms have often been one of the major groups pushing laws and regulation related to global change and in providing information to support this position, the silence of North American insurance firms has been deafening. The actions of the North American firms seems counterintuitive since fewer climate change catastrophes would almost certainly reduce insurance payouts related to these disasters. The articles below and in the next post discuss the expectation by both the North American and European insurance industry that global warming disasters will get worse and why the insurance industries on the two continents have responded differently.

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From Hurricane Sandy’s devastating blow to the Northeast to the protracted drought that hit the Midwest Corn Belt, natural catastrophes across the United States pounded insurers last year, generating $35 billion in privately insured property losses, $11 billion more than the average over the last decade.

And the industry expects the situation will get worse. “Numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the U.S. East Coast in the long term,” said Peter Höppe, who heads Geo Risks Research at the reinsurance giant Munich Re. “The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge.” Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming.

“Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,” Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told me last week. “It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.”

Yet when I asked Mr. Nutter what the American insurance industry was doing to combat global warming, his answer was surprising: nothing much. “The industry has really not been engaged in advocacy related to carbon taxes or proposals addressing carbon,” he said. While some big European reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re support efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, “in the United States the household names really have not engaged at all.” Instead, the focus of insurers’ advocacy efforts is zoning rules and disaster mitigation. ...

Nutter argues that the insurance industry’s reluctance is born of hesitation to become embroiled in controversies over energy policy. But perhaps its executives simply don’t feel so vulnerable. Like farmers, who are largely protected from the ravages of climate change by government-financed crop insurance, insurers also have less to fear than it might at first appear (this seems, in my opinion, to have a minor role at most in producing the North American insurance non-response to climate change as will be explained in the next post). 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/business/insurers-stray-from-the-conse...

Despite Haiyan's world record wind speeds and the damage and death it caused in the Philippines, the annual UN conference on climate change held as this storm struck will almost certainly achieve the same amount as previous conferences - nice words and not much else. 

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As global warming proceeds, some of the poorest people in the world, who have had the least to do with the burning of fossil fuels, stand to be among the primary victims in small island nations and in countries like Bangladesh, India and the Philippines.

Developing countries want the West — historically responsible for emissions, for the most part — not only to take the lead in reducing the use of fossil fuels, but to put up huge amounts of money to help poorer countries adapt to climatic changes that have already become inevitable. Western governments, which in some cases are already starting to consider their own adaptations to climate change, agree in principle that they should help poor countries. But they have committed relatively small sums, and they are wary of letting fast-growing countries like China off the hook on emissions.

Analysts say the likeliest outcome of the Warsaw negotiations is a weak pact that essentially urges countries to do what they can to cut emissions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/world/asia/typhoon-in-philippines-cast...

Wente has long been a climate change denier as her 2010 and 2013 articles show. Her 2010 article stated:

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In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035. ...

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/online-discussion-margaret-w...

However , a major 2012 study shows that the glaciers are melting at an even faster rate, primarily due to global warming, which are not only raising temperatures, but also changing precipitation patterns. 

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 The scientists studied 30 years of data from the field, and satellite and weather records to examine the retreat of 82 glaciers, the area reduction of 7,090 glaciers, and mass-balance change - the difference between the accumulation and loss of ice of 15 glaciers in the seven larger regions of the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau and the Pamir Mountains. ...

"Potential consequences of glacier changes would be unsustainable water supplies from major rivers, and geohazards (glacier-lake expansion, glacier-lake outbursts and flooding), which might threaten the livelihoods and wellbeing of those in the downstream regions," the study warned. 

A sustained glacier retreat would increase the volume of water in rivers and also sediments, which could choke water supply, affecting agriculture.

http://www.irinnews.org/report/95917/climate-change-himalayan-glaciers-m...

Nevertheless, Wente, like the rest of the climate change deniers, continues to never let reality get in the way of her bias, as in her September 2013 article.

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 A funny thing happened since that blockbuster UN report in 2007 called for urgent action on global warming. The world stopped warming up.

This fact is a monumental PR headache for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is set to issue the first part of its next report on Friday. It’s hard to call for urgent action when nothing much is happening.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/climates-big-pr-problem/arti...

Despite the fact that there are now more than 9,200 articles published in accredited scientific jounrnals providing evidence that climate change does exist and there is not one article published in an accredited scientific journal coming to the opposite conclusion, Wente wrote in September 2013

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This fact is a monumental PR headache for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is set to issue the first part of its next report on Friday. It’s hard to call for urgent action when nothing much is happening.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/climates-big-pr-problem/arti...

The graph in post #11 shows that the number of weather related catastrophes has been increasing steadily for at least the last 40 years despite Wente's claim that "nothing much is happening".

Furthermore, the IPCC has concluded that a great deal is happening when it comes to climate change. The IPCC consists of the UN member government and writes its report on a consensus basis, which means that its September 2013 report is based on a lowest common denominator agreement amongst member states. The summary of its conclusions below, despite the limitations created by its need to achieve a consensus before issuing a report, are the direct opposite of Wente's and other climate change deniers. 

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 — Global warming is "unequivocal," and since the 1950's it's "extremely likely" that human activities have been the dominant cause of the temperature rise.

— Concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased to levels that are unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. The burning of fossil fuels is the main reason behind a 40 per cent increase in C02 concentrations since the industrial revolution.

— Global temperatures are likely to rise by 0.3 to 4.8 degrees C, or 0.5-8.6 F, by the end of the century depending on how much governments control carbon emissions.

— Most aspects of climate change will continue for many centuries even if CO2 emissions are stopped.

— Sea levels are expected to rise a further 10-32 inches (26-82 centimetres) by the end of the century.

— The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass over the past two decades. Glaciers have continued to melt almost all over the world. Arctic sea ice has shrunk and spring snow cover has continued to decrease, and it is "very likely" that this will continue.

— It's "virtually certain" that the upper ocean has warmed from 1971 to 2010. The ocean will continue to warm this century, with heat penetrating from the surface to the deep ocean.

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/findings+IPCC+report+climate+chan...

So a little detail like Supertyphoon Haiyan will do nothing to change her or other denier's minds.

2013 is almost certainly going to be one of the ten warmest years since weather records have been kept, with all of the top ten warmest years occurring since 1998. Carbon dioxide atmospheric levels have also reached unprecedented levels during human history this year further increasing the risks associated with global warming. 

General Circulation Models generated from mathematical equations are based on enormous amounts of data in the largest computers in the world. These models predict that as carbon dioxide levels rise, the resulting greenhouse effects not only generate higher land and water temperatues, more intense storms with higher wind speeds, as seen in Supertyphoon Haiyan, and changes in precipitation levels leading to nore droughts in dry areas and more precipitation in wet areas. The only problem with these predictions is that they have been too conservative. For example, the models initially predicted that the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free in the summer in 2100, then 2050. Now we are looking at ice-free Arctic Ocean summers as early as 2015. Yet Harper and the other deniers continue on the same path of more and more production of fossil fuels. 

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This year is likely to be among the top 10 warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

It continues a pattern of high temperatures blamed directly on man-made climate change.

The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, told BBC News that warming could no longer be ignored.

He urged action to reduce emissions to minimise the likelihood of disasters like Typhoon Haiyan, which has claimed thousands of lives in the Philippines.

The WMO's head, Michel Jarraud, echoed his call: “The Philippines is reeling from Typhoon Haiyan... and is still struggling to recover from a typhoon one year ago.

"Although individual tropical cyclones cannot be directly attributed to climate change, higher sea levels are already making coastal populations more vulnerable to storm surges."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the jury is out on whether the frequency of tropical cyclones will increase, but Michel Jarraud said it was expected that the impact of storms would be more intense.

Of the broad pattern, he said: “All of the warmest years have been since 1998, and this year once again continues the underlying, long-term trend. The coldest years now are warmer than the hottest years before 1998.

"Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reached new highs in 2012, and we expect them to reach unprecedented levels yet again in 2013. This means that we are committed to a warmer future.

"Surface temperatures are only part of the wider picture of our changing climate. The impact on our water cycle is already becoming apparent - as manifested by droughts, floods and extreme precipitation."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24925580

The small island countries (including Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Kiribati, Seychelles and Maldives) of the Indian, Pacific, Caribbean and Mediterranean, feel especially vulnerable because as sea levels rise, they are in danger of losing much of their land base and some are increasingly likely to totally disappear. They have formed the 44 member Association of Small Island States in an attempt to get big carbon emitters, including not only the developed nations of North America and Europe, but the  emerging economic powers, such as India, China and Brazil, to begin reducing emissions before 2020.

For example, Kiribati has already seen three of its uninhabited atolls disappear under the waves by 1999 and is negotiating the purchase of 5,000 acres in Fiji to resettle its entire population of 102,000. The Maldive Islands are making plans to move their entire 350,000 population to Australia or India before the islands disappear.

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 Kiribati's President Anote Tong is in talks to buy 23 sq km (9 sq miles) on Fiji's Vanua Levu island. The land is wanted for crops, to settle some Kiribati farmers and to extract earth for sea defences, reports say. Some of Kiribati's 32 coral atolls, which straddle the equator, are already disappearing beneath the ocean. None of the atolls rises more than a few metres above the sea level.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17295862

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 Climate change may continue to seem like a semi-ambiguous, far-off phenomenon to many Americans, even despite the extreme weather than wracked the nation last year. But to millions of people around the world, those on the front lines of global warming, I assure you: it is a real and imminent threat.

Take the Maldives, for example. The small island nation may be the first country in the world to be entirely swallowed up by rising sea levels caused by climate change. Those rising sea levels are already endangering the nation's cherished beaches, and will before too long render many parts of the country inhospitable. 

The country has established a sovereign wealth fund, drawn from its tourist revenue, to be used to buy land overseas and finance the relocation of the country's population of 350,000.

http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/sea-levels-rise-maldives-presid...

With the election of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia in September of this year, Harper has quickly found an ally on global warming. Abbott has quickly scrapped Australia's carbon tax. In response, Harper publicly congratulated him. Both Canada and Australia ranked #1 and #2 in environmentalists' lists in attempts to block progress at the UN's conference on climate change in Warsaw that just concluded. Harper, unlike other governments and previous Canadian governments, has not allowed MPs from other parties to be representatives to the UN climate change conferences.

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 When the new Australian Prime Minister moved to scrap that country's carbon tax last week, he received a public statement of congratulations from Stephen Harper's parliamentary secretary.

Just days later, at the Commonwealth meetings in Sri Lanka, an initiative to help fund smaller countries combat climate change gained unanimous support, with the exception of.... Canada and Australia.

And at the UN Climate Change talks wrapping up today in Warsaw, Poland, observers' lists of "countries behaving badly" are consistently topped by Canada and Australia.

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/11/22/canada-and-australia-the...

CBC's The Current's podcast below discusses the role of these global warming deniers on the world stage in much more detail.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/The+Current/ID/2419980219/