Discourse around the climate crisis tends to focus on the weather-related effects, such as rising sea-levels and intense hydrological incidents such as flooding and droughts, as well as the direct impact on human lives, like famines, forced migration and geopolitical shifts. Less has been said about the impact the climate crisis could have on human conflict and the implications it could present for the future.

—

Cornell University professor Gary Evans explored this proposition and found a link between the climate crisis and large-scale social behaviour. He identified rising temperatures, increased frequency and severity of droughts, flooding and storms, and air pollution as the main drivers of climate change-related societal disruption. 

Evans categorised these impacts into three groups, namely heat, weather disasters and air pollution. This is how the fate of climate and society has intertwined: 

You might also like: Asia’s Battle Against Plastic Waste

Which current conflict is a direct result of climate change?

1. Temperature, Mental Health And Quality of Life
   Starting from 1993, an 11-year long analysis of all deaths in the United Kingdom concluded that when temperatures exceeded 18°C, there was a 3.8% increase in the relative risk of suicide for each 1°C increase. Indeed, when ambient temperatures rise well above mean levels, mental health admissions to hospitals increase. However, while temperature is associated with mental health and quality of life, the direct association of rising temperatures with mental health is stymied by the complexity of suicide cases.

   A panel study examining 67 countries concluded that the warmer the coldest month of the year, the happier the country and the warmer the hottest month of the year, the less happy the country. The study included variables such as economic indicators, sociocultural factors and life expectancy to rule out alternative explanations for the differences in happiness.

   Furthermore, the study used projected changes in temperature to predict happiness levels over 30 and 60 years and found that as temperatures increase, countries at higher latitudes may become happier, while tropical and subtropical countries may become unhappier.

2. Social Interaction, Crime and Conflict
   As the climate crisis intensifies, an increase in crime could be seen, particularly at lower latitudes. A study found that given existing US data on assaults, murders and annual temperatures in a set of 50 US cities over a 48- year period, an average annual increase of 2°F in the US would result in a staggering 24,000 additional murders/assaults each year.

   Studies looking at fluctuations in temperature in the same populations over time show increased intergroup conflict, especially in low income, agriculturally-dependant regions. For example, increased temperatures result in reduced rainfall, damaging crop yields and leading to economic distress and resource scarcity. Additionally, economic pressure caused by insufficient infrastructure and unemployment may exacerbate climate-related migration.

   The climate crisis may strengthen authoritarian trends globally, as discussed in a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. Increased authoritarianism is directly linked to an increased perceived threat level; that is, situations that are troubling or distressing to an individual, which may result in populations becoming more polarised and discriminatory towards minorities and those at the margin of society.

   Eritrea is one such example. 5,000 refugees flee from its borders every month. Not incidentally, it’s one of Africa’s most food-insecure nations and and a one-party state with one of the worst human-rights records in the world.

3. Armed Conflicts
   Armed conflicts over a 30-year period were coincident nearly 10% of the time with major heat waves or droughts and in countries with a high degree of ethnic fragmentation, the incidence was 23%. According to an article published in PNAS, this has far-reaching implications as countries vulnerable to climate change are set to suffer disproportionately from rising temperatures. The most fragile states often couple an economy of basic subsistence with deep ethnic divides. Middle Eastern countries with quarreling ethnic groups, for example Syria and Afghanistan, both experienced prolonged droughts that ravaged agricultural output at crucial moments in their recent history.

   The Pentagon also found a causal link between the climate crisis and human conflicts (for example, the ongoing Syrian conflict), but only when other conditions and factors such as drought severity and the pre-existing likelihood of conflict were present at a high enough level to ignite armed conflict.

Overall, Evans’s review indicates that behavioural changes stemming from rising temperatures will have mostly negative consequences and that without effective intervention, humans will become more violent and mental health will suffer.

The post How the Climate Crisis is Aggravating Human Conflict appeared first on Earth.Org.

To meet climate change mitigation targets, practices that improve soil quality, like soil carbon sequestration, could be an effective and accessible solution. 

—

The Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming “well below 2 °C” and to “pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C”by 2100 requires a change in global consumption, CO2 emissions and lifestyle habits that are currently not occurring at a fast enough rate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2018 report ‘Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development’ state the need to implement carbon dioxide removal to have any chance of hitting the 1.5°C target.

The techniques mainly discussed in the report are Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation, strategies that have been explored as options to mitigate climate change but may have negative side impacts, including increasing land-use competition leading to increased food prices, increased fertiliser usage, increased water usage and a threat to biodiversity. 

In the race for the 1.5°C target, what other Negative Emission Technologies (N.E.Ts) could be implemented that pose a lower need for in-demand land and a lower risk of unwanted negative side effects? The answer: Soil Carbon Sequestration. 

You might also like: Outside Looking In: Satellites in the Climate Crisis

Soil Carbon Sequestration to Mitigate Climate Change

Soil carbon sequestration involves changing the way land is managed by increasing the amount of carbon content in soil leading to an overall net removal of CO2 in order to mitigate climate change. Changing the carbon balance so there is a higher level of inputs than carbon losses leads to a N.E.T phenomenon. To achieve this, practices that increase inputs or reduce losses must be implemented. An example of such a change in practice is decreasing tillage (the preparation of land for growing crops), resulting in a potential 30% decrease in organic carbon lost from the soil.

In her comprehensive topical review paper “Negative emissions—Part 2: Costs, potentials and side effects,” Dr Sabine Fuss from The Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin, analyses multiple N.E.Ts, giving a comprehensive breakdown of the pros, cons and potentials of each technique. When implemented correctly, soil carbon sequestration is the technique that has the smallest negative impact on socio-economic, environmental, biophysical and bio-geophysical factors.

Fuss summarises that soil carbon sequestration (SCS) techniques have a realistic carbon drawdown potential of between 2-5 GtCO2 yr−1 (other papers estimate both lower and higher potentials due to differing estimates of areas being adaptable to SCS techniques).

Aside from the potential drawdown of CO2, SCS has a number of potential positive side effects including:

Improved soil quality and health

Improved and more stable crop yields

No impact on competition for land; some other N.E.Ts require land-use change that could lead to an initial increase in emissions or lead to conflict over land that is needed to meet growing demand for food

Negligible additional water usage, since no further water is needed to implement SCS, just a change in land-use practices

Negligible energy usage, as SCS requires little change in farming techniques or energy input to be successful. Indeed, it could even lead to a reduction in energy usage if soil is worked less intensely

Increased organic nitrogen in the soil

Reduced pollution

Compared to other N.E.Ts such as BECCS, there are some drawbacks. Firstly, the amount of carbon that the soil can absorb decreases over time. The soil might also reach a “saturation cap”, after which no more sequestration can occur. Depending on the SCS option, soil type and climate, saturation may take anytime between 10 to 100 years. During this time, constancy in soil maintenance is crucial.

Aside from this, when compared to other N.E.Ts, SCS is far more accessible for people globally. The costs of SCS are low, knowledge is already in place or is easy to acquire (soils have been managed for thousands of years), it is readily deployable and presents a wide range of benefits.

Fuss admits additional feasibility studies are needed to scale up deployment, particularly in developing economies., However, she concludes that presents a viable, green and affordable option for farmers looking to manage their lands in an ecologically responsible manner. 

The post The Secret Weapon in the War On Climate Crisis appeared first on Earth.Org.

As a carbon mitigation tool, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is gaining momentum among scientists and conservationists. But is it effective enough?

—

Carbon emissions from fossil-fuel use hit a record last year after energy demand grew at its fastest pace in a decade, causing higher oil consumption and more coal-burning across the globe. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recorded 33.1 gigatons of carbon emissions in the global energy sector, up 1.7% from the previous year. While renewable power generation grew last year by about 7%, that was not enough to keep up with the increase in demand.

As global demand for energy continues to surge, emissions from fossil fuel use are expected to further go up unless the world nations start implementing innovative carbon mitigation initiatives.   

Negative Emission Technologies (NETs)–the frontier of climate crisis mitigation–might be an effective solution to reduce the global energy sector’s increasing carbon footprint. One of these proposed solutions, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), is now gaining momentum among scientists and conservationists. 

How does carbon capture and storage work? 

In a nutshell, carbon capture and storage is a process in which energy is generated from burning biomass. Carbon dioxide (CO2) produced during the process is captured and sequestered in geological storage units. In simplest terms, the BECCS procedure goes like this: plant thousands of trees which remove CO2 from the atmosphere, burn those trees instead of fossil fuels to produce energy, capture the emitted CO2, and then store it underground. It might sound counterintuitive to burn trees to cut emissions. But the ultimate result of the BECCS is the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.  

You might also like: South Asia Could Be Facing an Energy Crisis

BECCS process

If executed efficiently, BECCS will have a significant impact on the energy sector’s carbon footprint. For instance, if the US could sequester CO2 using BECCS, it could reduce emissions by one gigaton of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2eq) annually by 2050. That’s a significant quantity considering the world emitted 36.2 GtCO2eq from fossil fuel combustion in 2017.

The Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that BECCS could reduce emissions by around 12 GtCO2eq per year by 2100 globally. 

BECCS is still in its infancy. As an emerging technology, it raises a lot of questions and challenges that are still being debated. Industrial-scale implementation of this solution needs substantial resources: trees need land, water, and even fertilisers; the energy production process needs new transportation facilities and industrial infrastructure. While the usage of a large volume of water may put pressure on the existing irrigation system, a massive amount of fertilisers may cause serious environmental damage.

A recent study on BECCS states that it would cause food shortage in the future.  The world will have to produce 70% extra food by 2050 to keep up with the increasing population, and that means designating more land for agriculture. For a global scale deployment of BECCS, the world needs between 300-600 million hectares of additional land–an area the size of the European Union. If such vast tracts of land are reserved for fast-growing plants as part of BECCS, global agricultural production will be seriously affected.  

Large scale cultivation of trees could also bring problems associated with monoculture and biodiversity loss. This argument, however, is often negated by BECCS advocates who argue that the large-scale cultivation of trees can be carried out on degraded lands that were already used for grazing. 

The scientific community is still debating about the efficiency and side-effects of BECCS. But in desperate times, as a carbon removal technology, BECCS might prove to be a good bet.

The post Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage: A Silver Bullet for Carbon Emissions? appeared first on Earth.Org.

Our cooling devices use powerful greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide and curbing them might be the key to tackle the climate crisis.  

—

Ongoing debates on climate change policies largely ignore a relatively less discussed mitigation approach: managing our cooling devices like refrigerators and air conditioners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the climate crisis.

There are an estimated 1.4 billion fridges and freezers in the world today. There are also 1.6 billion air conditioning units and countless refrigerated trucks, warehouses, containers, medical appliances, and many industrial devices that require cooling. The number of cooling devices is expected to reach 14 billion worldwide by 2050.

Environmental Impact of Heating and Cooling Systems

Every refrigerator or air conditioning unit contains chemical refrigerants that absorb and release heat to enable cooling. Dangerous refrigerants, specifically Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), were once culprits in depleting the ozone layer. But they have already been phased out thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

You might also like: Asia’s Battle Against Plastic Waste

Manufacturers today use a class of chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) as refrigerants in air conditioners and refrigerators. HFCs do not destroy ozone, but they do form a blanket at high altitudes holding in heat. They have 9,000 times greater capacity to warm the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. 

Refrigerant Management and Climate Change

Refrigerant management — reducing emissions of greenhouse gases like HFCs from cooling appliances — might be the most impactful step to solving climate changing. An analysis of different climate change solutions and their mitigation potential by Project Drawdown–a research organisation that reviews, analyses, and identifies the most viable global climate solutions — ranks refrigerant management first among the top 80 possible solutions. The study estimates that by 2050 refrigerant management can reduce 89.7 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions, 5 gigatons more than the closest solution in the list: onshore wind turbines.

Refrigerant management, just like other climate change mitigation solutions, is not easy to implement. “There are weak regulations on controlling refrigerants, their leakage, and their end-of-life recovery,” says the study.  “There are no economic incentives for the recovery of refrigerants. Funding, training, technical, and informational barriers are also some of the limitations for the adoption of this solution.” It is estimated that the adoption process worldwide would cost $902.8 billion by 2050.

In order to successfully adopt the solution, the study says, new policies and regulations on refrigerant management need to be formulated and implemented worldwide. Strong regulations including a complete ban on venting of refrigerants must be introduced in national legislations.

As per the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, developed countries, including the United States and those in the European Union, will reduce the production and consumption of HFCs from 2019. Much of the rest of the world, including China, Brazil and all of Africa, will freeze the use of HFCs by 2024. A small group of the world’s hottest countries such as Bahrain, India, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have the most lenient schedule and will freeze HFCs use by 2028. But the countries may substitute HFCs with chemicals that are either toxic, like ammonia, or flammable, like propane, which might lead to other problems like air pollution.

However, emerging market-based solutions that attempt to tackle the problems of refrigerants offer a glimpse of hope.  Disruptive companies like Phononic, which produces modern  refrigerators, rely on thermodynamic science instead of HFCs for cooling.  While standard fridges and freezers work by creating cool air and blowing it throughout an area using compressors and refrigerants, Phononic’s devices use semiconductors that draw heat out and transfer it elsewhere. Without a compressor, the devices are also extremely energy efficient.  

The post Refrigerant Management: Taming Our Cooling Devices to Fight Climate Crisis appeared first on Earth.Org.