Methane-reducing "Manhattan Project" a crucial step to survival

Methane and the Fierce Urgency of Now

by Nathan Currier, Senior Climate Advisor, Public Policy Virginia; Classical Composer

With its Koch brothers funding and climate denier affiliations, the Berkeley Earth Project finally laid 'Climategate' to rest last week, affirming the climate data of NASA and others. So now we return to the more complex questions of what to do -- with denial coming from a very different direction. Shining the light of truth onto this denial is a single graph in a major new United Nations Assessment about to be released, showing that even aggressive reductions of CO2 emissions have no effect on warming until about 2040. This is largely because many primary CO2 emission sources co-emit aerosols with CO2. Aerosols on balance cool the planet, but being very short-lived we lose this cooling much more quickly than CO2's warming declines. In stark contrast, the same graph shows that methane and black carbon reductions can achieve considerable impacts on warming very soon.

"Comprehensive" plans like Waxman-Markey could bring mild near-term climate benefits, but 100% of that comes at first from non-CO2 reductions or increasing carbon sinks through risky credits. With recent drought, flood and fire bringing a foretaste of the costs of climate disruption, shall we continue aiming for such a "comprehensive" plan? Politically, the approach has already been in deep trouble. What has not been clear, however, is why it is unwise for the climate and what should be done instead.

Our biggest challenge will be drastic cuts in CO2, perhaps down to near zero by mid-century, as we'll need a planet after 2040. But central to this UN graph is that those CO2 cuts must be decoupled from methane cuts, and the methane cuts must be strongly 'front-loaded' to help preserve near-term climate. The multi-gas strategies value the non-CO2 gases against CO2 using an inappropriate 100-year time frame which undervalues methane by up to 400%, impeding rapid methane drawdown. It makes much more sense to combine methane with black carbon in a separate package for near-term protection. Indeed, we have no choice about this: this is the only emissions policy that can effectively impact the climate changes we are experiencing right now. To claim otherwise is its own form of denial.

In an appeal to developing nations, the United Nations report focuses on measures beneficial to both climate and health, and thus black carbon, causing an appalling number of deaths, is emphasized first. But methane's climate effects are far more certain than are black carbon's, and so while we should do both, we must focus more on methane at first, aiming black carbon cuts mostly towards sources that save lives (cookstoves), while scrutinizing their effectiveness and increasing them greatly if very helpful for the climate.

Skeptics will likely still claim for a while that global warming is not caused by us. They are wrong, but might soon be right: that is, if we let the arctic continue melting, and the methane stored in the Eastern Siberian shelf come out, the problem won't have much to do with us any longer, as even just a few percent of it would swamp all attempts to control warming, shifting the planet rapidly to a new state. So, while CO2 is surely the largest chunk of human-induced warming, the "fierce urgency of now" in climate is methane. We either reduce our methane emissions sharply now, giving ourselves a fighting chance to deal with the CO2 problem over the coming decades, or we seriously risk letting 'non-human' methane push Earth to a hotter state. Perhaps we can finally close the debate with deniers through methane: no one can contest how much methane is stored in the Siberian shelf, no one can contest what it will do if released. And no one should contest any longer that its state is changing: just recently the NCAR HIPPO project concluded three years of the highest-tech greenhouse gas readings yet. Its first big surprise: background levels of methane are rising over large areas of the arctic ocean.

Robert Watson, the former IPCC chairman, admirably started the Global Methane Fund (GMF) in 2009 saying we need near-term cooling and methane is the best way to start. The GMF later joined the U.S. EPA's Methane to Markets to form the Global Methane Initiative, which estimates it could cut by 2020 50% of those methane emissions costing less than $40/ton, if it can greatly leverage an initial $200-300 million. But that is less than half of what should be achievable in even less time.

'Methane Apollo' is my name for what might help us -- an Apollo-like half-decade project centered on massive methane reductions from gas and oil, coal mining, landfills, agricultural waste, and wastewater. Scientists call something that perturbs our planet's energy balance a 'radiative forcing', adding warming if positive, cooling if negative. With rapid reduction of methane emissions by a third, methane should restabilize around 1250 parts per billion over fourteen years, reducing radiative forcing by almost a third of its increase since industrialization. If some recent studies of black carbon are correct, then the methane and 20% black carbon cuts together could temporarily cut by almost half (~45%) all the radiative forcing added since industrialization. These measures should be particularly effective in the arctic, moreover, because of the roles there of ozone and black carbon. Unlike the "350" movement for CO2, the "1250" goal for methane with added black carbon cuts makes for a practical immediate goal.

The total 'cost' would be around $250 billion, but is effectively far less. Some of the methane provides a profit stream from captured emissions producing energy, attracting investment. Methane to Markets leveraged their modest $50 million expenditures by almost eight times. If G20 nations put up amounts between just $1-5 billion, averaging about $3 billion each, then this $60 billion would only need to be leveraged about four times. Let's do it, fast, and let's hope it is not already too late.

Matt Damon: Is safe water and a basic toilet too much to ask?

by Matt Damon and Gary White

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, one more child will have died from something that's been preventable for over a century. Nearly 40 percent of the world's population is still unable to secure a safe glass of water or access a basic toilet. While we continue to rally around the goal of ensuring safe water and sanitation for all, the real question we are left asking ourselves: how do we truly confront this in a way that results in realizing our vision within our lifetime?

Even today, as solutions are known and available, lack of access to safe water and sanitation continues to claim more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

This painful reality has driven philanthropic efforts to help stop the suffering. There are conferences, master plans, frameworks, legislation, new institutions, and even more resolved resolutions. Money is raised, wells are dug, ribbons are cut. But even after decades of charity, subsidies, multilateral aid, and investments on the part of governments and outside non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the system remains inefficient and largely misses the goal of providing relief for those at the base of the economic pyramid (BOP) in their daily need to secure water. The intentions are good, but the relief is not trickling down.

On average, those living in slums pay 7-15 times more per liter of water than owners of nearby five-star hotels. This is because subsidies are largely delivered through unrealistically low water tariffs -- if you are too poor to afford a water connection, you can't capture the subsidy. Similarly, if you are a poor day laborer in Port-au-Prince and you want a drink of safe water to quench your thirst, you will pay 250 times more than the cost of New York City tap water. Those who lack cash pay with their time -- hours each day spent scavenging for water from public taps that frequently run dry, rivers, or even drainage ditches. There are nearly a billion people in this trap of water insecurity and about 2.5 billion lack a sanitary toilet.

Instead of viewing this as an ocean of people with their hands out waiting for charity-driven solutions, what if we see many of them, or even most of them, as potential customers. In the past decade we have seen a paradigm shift in how we understand the BOP -- a shift that holds much promise for tackling the water and sanitation crisis. Microfinance has been a catalyst in this, democratizing access to capital. Water.org has tapped into the power of microfinance to demonstrate that its principles can spill over into meeting the water and sanitation needs of the poor.

Through WaterCredit, we have explored the application of microfinance to water and sanitation needs. With the support of the Pepsico Foundation, we have reached more than 250,000 people with loans that allow them to pay connection fees for house taps and to construct toilets. This was done at an average philanthropic cost of $24/person, which, in turn, leveraged more than three times that amount in the form of commercial capital to complete the finance package for each household. We are now taking this to scale with an $8 million grant from the Pepsico Foundation announced last Thursday and a $3.8 million grant from the MasterCard Foundation. We project that this philanthropic capital will leverage an additional $36 million in commercial capital, reaching about one million people. In the case of India, we will drive the philanthropic cost per person served down even further, to $10 by the end of the grant.

Access to capital -- philanthropic, social and commercial -- is certainly a choke point in achieving universal access to water and sanitation. But neck and neck is lack of accountability to those living in poverty on the part of their governments and water utilities. Unfortunately, about half of investments that do find their way to water and sanitation infrastructure misses the mark due to corruption, incompetence, inadequate maintenance, and subsidies captured by those who could pay for services.

The potential of microfinance to democratize access to capital is paralleled by the potential of technology and social media to democratize access to information. In the same way that social media and mobile devices allowed those driving the Arab Spring to find their voice in holding their leaders accountable for principles of democracy, we believe they can be used to allow the poor -- citizens in their own right -- to hold their leaders accountable for investments made into basic services such as water and sanitation. More people now have access to a cell phone than a toilet. What if a cell phone became a tool for the poor to better hold their elected officials accountable for fulfilling their mandate to provide sanitation?

Approaching this crisis in a way that truly yields lasting and scalable solutions requires that we tap into orthogonal forces -- trends that are swirling around us that, at first, seem unrelated to the business of addressing the water and sanitation needs of the poor. New tools have been placed in our toolbox -- often, when we in the water sector were looking the other way, drilling another well. Microfinance and social media are just two examples of these tools.

While the issues surrounding water poverty are complex, at a fundamental level they need to be addressed from the bottom up. Philanthropic capital should be used catalytically to jump-start markets for the hundreds of millions who can afford to meet their own needs if only given the right tools. It should be used to help drive transparency and accountability around public funds already targeting this crisis. It should seek to back those initiatives that can continue to democratize those forces and tools that we in the United States take for granted, whether poor or affluent, in leveling the playing field.

We call on ourselves and other NGOs, governments, utilities, philanthropists, and influencers to recommit to approaching this crisis from the perspective of the poor. This call includes directing more resources towards experimentation and discovery, and doing so in a way that taps into and channels the intrinsic power of the poor as customers and citizens. It also includes raising the stakes by putting the global water and sanitation crisis on the map in a way that it truly deserves. This is a challenge worthy of the next global movement, similar to what was needed to sound the alarm around the fight against HIV/AIDS.

This is that next movement and we are honored to have the opportunity to work with Arianna Huffington, who pledged herself and her team to give this movement an incredible kick-start with the launch of a new section of Huffington Post -- a section that will be dedicated to giving coverage to this cause, the doers, the solutions, and the discourse that is needed to change the world. In the end we know that we cannot fund-raise our way out of this crisis. Ultimately, it will be creativity, innovation, and collective action that will allow us to achieve universal access to water and sanitation, and do so in our lifetime.

Gary White and Matt Damon are the co-founders of Water.org

Climate change escalating wild weather patterns

BY SETH BORENSTEIN , HuffingtonPost.com

WASHINGTON -- For a world already weary of weather catastrophes, the latest warning from top climate scientists paints a grim future: More floods, more heat waves, more droughts and greater costs to deal with them.

A draft summary of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press says the extremes caused by global warming could eventually grow so severe that some locations become "increasingly marginal as places to live."

The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change marks a change in climate science, from focusing on subtle shifts in average temperatures to concentrating on the harder-to-analyze freak events that grab headlines, hurt economies and kill people.

"The extremes are a really noticeable aspect of climate change," said Jerry Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "I think people realize that the extremes are where we are going to see a lot of the impacts of climate change."

The final version of the report from a panel of leading climate scientists will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. The draft says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.

The most recent bizarre weather extreme, the pre-Halloween snowstorm that crippled parts of the Northeast last weekend, cannot be blamed on climate change and probably isn't the type of storm that will increase with global warming, according to four meteorologists and climate scientists.

Experts on extreme storms have focused more closely on the increasing number of super-heavy rainstorms, not snow, NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said.

By the end of the century, the intense, single-day rainstorms that typically happen once every 20 years will probably happen about twice a decade, the report said.

The opposite type of disaster – a drought such as the stubbornly long dry spell gripping Texas and parts of the Southwest – could also happen more often as the world warms, said Schmidt and Meehl, who reviewed part of the climate panel report.

Studies have not yet specifically tied global warming to the continuing drought, but it is consistent with computer models that indicate current climate trends will worsen existing droughts, Meehl said. Scientifically connecting a weather disaster with global warming is a complicated and time-consuming task that can take more than a year and involve lots of computer calculations.

Researchers have also predicted more intense monsoons with climate change. Warmer air can hold more water and impart more energy to weather systems, changing the dynamics of storms and where and how they hit.

Thailand is now coping with massive flooding from monsoonal rains – an event that illustrates how climate is also connected with other manmade issues such as population growth, urban development and river management, Schmidt said.

In fact, the report says, "for some climate extremes in many regions, the main driver for future increases in losses will be socioeconomic" rather than a result of greenhouse gases.

The panel was formed by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization. In the past, it has discussed extreme events in snippets in its report. But this time, the scientists are putting them all together.

The report, which needs approval by diplomats at the mid-November meeting, tries to measure the confidence scientists have in their assessment of climate extremes both future and past.

Chris Field, one of the leaders of the climate change panel, said he and other authors declined to comment because the report is still subject to change.

The summary chapter did not detail which regions of the world might suffer extremes so severe as to leave them only marginally habitable.

The report does say scientists are "virtually certain" – 99 percent – that the world will have more extreme spells of heat and fewer of cold. Heat waves could peak as much as 5 degrees hotter by mid-century and even 9 degrees hotter by the end of the century.

From June to August this year in the United States, blistering heat set 2,703 daily high temperature records, compared with only 300 cold records during that period. That made it the hottest summer in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl of 1936, according to Weather Underground Meteorology Director Jeff Masters, who was not involved in the study.

And there's an 80 percent chance that the killer Russian heat wave of 2010 would not have happened without the added push of global warming, according to a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists expect future hurricanes and other tropical cyclones to have stronger winds, but they won't increase in number and may actually decrease.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, who studies climate's effects on hurricanes, disagrees and believes more of these intense storms will occur.

And global warming isn't the sole villain in future climate disasters, the climate report says. An even bigger problem will be the number of people – especially the poor – who live in harm's way.

The 18-page summary report isn't completely grim. It says some "low-regrets measures" can help reduce disaster risks and costs, including better preparedness, sustainable land and water management, better public health monitoring and building improvements.

University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who was not among the authors, said the report was written to be "so bland" that it may not matter to world leaders.

But Masters said the basic findings seem to be proven true by actual events.

"In the U.S., this has been the weirdest weather year we've had for my 30 years, hands down."