We knew this was coming. This August the rains have come with a vengeance. But we knew something like this was coming. In 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its summary of the expected impacts of climate change. In dry, academic language, the report sets out the evidence: climate change will bring extremes of precipitation: more droughts and more deadly floods. 

Early in the morning on 14 August, heavy rains in Freetown, Sierra Leone triggered a mudslide. Muddy rubble cascaded down the hillside, destroying homes and burying people inside them. The official death toll from this tragedy has now risen to over a thousand.

At the same time, monsoon rains were causing deaths in India and Nepal. In Himachal, two buses with their passengers were swept into a gorge in a landslide. Fatalities from flooding are not uncommon in the summer monsoon season, but this time the heavy rains just kept coming, leading to extraordinary flooding in Nepal, northwestern Indian states and downstream Bangladesh, where the floods submerged over a third of the country.

A storm was brewing

By 24 August, official estimates were 41 million affected across the three nations of India, Nepal and Bangladesh and at least 900 killed. The next day the reported death toll had risen to 1200. And yet this catastrophe was barely reported in the western media.

Meanwhile, a storm was brewing off the southeastern US coast. Having been downgraded to a tropical wave, Harvey picked up energy again and regained hurricane status as it moved across the abnormally warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It also picked up unusual amounts of moisture. As it hit Houston and surrounding areas of Texas, there was no lack of media attention this time. 

Experts had warned that Houston was particularly vulnerable to flooding in a warming climate because of several factors. In a low lying plain, with poor draining clay soils, and with the expanding city laying down ever more concrete, the water management plan is in no way fit for increasing storm risks. But this was a storm that would overwhelm even the most well-prepared city. 

In the first 72 hours over a metre of rain fell in some areas. Dramatic photographs showed freeways turned into deep rivers, while stranded families sent out desperate pleas for rescue on social media.

Just days earlier, Donald Trump had signed an order scrapping stricter rules around flood risk for federal investment in infrastructure. As Harvey’s rains fell, Trump’s top official at the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, dismissed the subject of linking the storm to climate change. When asked in an interview, Pruitt described those discussing cause and effect as ‘opportunistic’.

Heavy load

So there may be no immediate impetus from disaster to climate action. The media plays an important role here. There are three ways that media can let us down in reporting climate change-influenced disasters. 

The first is when the media give prominence to events which are easy to report, rather than those which are truly significant. Harvey is a significant story deserving major coverage. Yet before Harvey hit Texas (and hit the headlines), where were the reports on the South Asian flooding? 

Even given the general tendency to treat the deaths of poor people in non-western countries as non-newsworthy, the death toll was then climbing towards a thousand and 41 million affected across three countries. But someone actively following the news could easily be completely unaware of these floods. The story was given cursory coverage then dropped completely out of the news for at least five days, to be picked up again on 29 August, this time more widely.

The second weakness is a failure to be upfront about the links between these disasters and climate change. In the case of Harvey, there are at least three links. One of the most significant is that the warmer than normal waters in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to Harvey’s heavy load of atmospheric moisture. 

In the first five days, it dumped some 20 trillion gallons of water on Texas (one sixth the volume of Lake Erie). Warm waters also give hurricanes more energy. Another factor is that storm surge along the coast rides on top of raised sea levels. These are particularly significant on the Gulf Coast of Texas – sea levels there have risen over 30cm in 50 years. 

Still devastated

One difficulty journalists have in reporting climate change is sustaining interest in a vast slow-motion catastrophe that plays out over a timescale of decades or more. But right now the drama and tragedy is immediate, and there is no excuse for not being clear about what is at stake and the choices we are making.

The final way the media can fail in their coverage is not to stick around. Flood waters make for dramatic photography. But what comes next can be just as devastating. With a lack of clean water, the displaced people of Bangladesh, especially the children, are at risk of deadly diseases such as cholera. 

Many victims of the floods have lost all their possessions. Bangladesh was already experiencing food supply problems after flash flooding wiped out a large part of the rice crop in April. Now more vast areas of crops have been washed away.

And although the US is a rich country, even there, for those who have least, it is hardest to get it back. A year ago, Baton Rouge, Louisiana was hit by one of the worst floods in US history. One year on, poorer neighbourhoods are still devastated. For them, and for the people of Bangladesh, climate change is already here. Will we pay attention?

This Author

Claire James is the campaigns coordinator for the Campaign against Climate Change. She tweets at @campaigncc. 

Managers of supermarkets and garden centres might be surprised to see stocks of the weedkiller Roundup vanishing from their shelves next week. The reason will become clear when customers put them on the spot as to why they are stocking the controversial product.

This is the plan for Christie’s national day of action on 6 September. Christie’s 20 years of campaigning have seen him dressed as vegetables, heckling prime ministers and arrested and charged with criminal damage. He has rallied against the slaughter of animals during the Foot and Mouth crisis, the use of genetically modified seeds and the Iraq war. But, he claims that support for his anti-Roundup campaign has been overwhelming and more than he has previously experienced. 

Christie will be leading the charge in his local town of Barnstaple, where he plans to stage a protest in every supermarket. The use of the herbicide leaves Christie “quivering with anger”, he said. “It’s believed to be a carcinogen, it needs to be exposed. Roundup is a horrendous substance, there is so much evidence out there on its impact on human health. It feels like the right time to do this.

Beautiful planet

“Let’s roundup the Roundup and banish it – and the companies who make it – from our beautiful planet once and for all,” he told The Ecologist.

The controversial weedkiller is in the spotlight again as a crucial decision on its future in Europe is set to be made in the autumn. The European Commission is considering whether to extend the substance’s licence. It was originally due to make a decision last year, but instead granted a temporary extension days before the licence expired. 

In May, EU health commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis proposed a ten-year extension to the approval of the herbicide, originally patented by Monsanto for Roundup but now manufactured by some 20 companies.

Significant pressure has been building up on both sides of the argument ahead of the licence renewal deadline of 15 December. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a research body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), in 2015 classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. 

Several local authorities in the UK, including Brighton and Hove, Frome and Edinburgh have already banned the use of glyphosate in public spaces. This is in line with a global trend, with restrictions on glyphosate introduced in ten countries in Europe, eight out of ten Canadian provinces, multiple US states and cities, Sri Lanka and Colombia, according to Pesticide Action Network UK.

Permaculture garden

A petition calling for glyphosate to be banned across the EUhas gained support from more than 1,300,000 European citizens, meaning that the European Commission must formally respond. 

However, the European Chemicals Agency, which was asked by the commission to investigate the safety of glyphosate, cleared the substance of having direct links to cancer. 

A spokesman for Monsanto, the largest manufacturer of Roundup, said that when glyphosate had been reviewed by regulators including the European Food Safety Authority and the US Environmental Protection Agency, they had found it to be non-carcinogenic. A joint report by the World Health Organisation and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation upheld these conclusions, he added.

Christie, who comes from a farming background and established one of the country’s oldest permaculture gardens on his estate 20 years ago, alleges that research carried out by regulators is “absolutely not independent at all.” 

“The criteria to work for regulators is to be pro-big business,” he said. “But I really think they’re fighting a losing battle now. I’ve been demanding long-term independent research but I don’t think that is going to happen because they [the manufacturers] know their stuff is toxic.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Managers of supermarkets and garden centres might be surprised to see stocks of the weedkiller Roundup vanishing from their shelves next week. The reason will become clear when customers put them on the spot as to why they are stocking the controversial product.

This is the plan for Christie’s national day of action on 6 September. Christie’s 20 years of campaigning have seen him dressed as vegetables, heckling prime ministers and arrested and charged with criminal damage. He has rallied against the slaughter of animals during the Foot and Mouth crisis, the use of genetically modified seeds and the Iraq war. But, he claims that support for his anti-Roundup campaign has been overwhelming and more than he has previously experienced. 

Christie will be leading the charge in his local town of Barnstaple, where he plans to stage a protest in every supermarket. The use of the herbicide leaves Christie “quivering with anger”, he said. “It’s believed to be a carcinogen, it needs to be exposed. Roundup is a horrendous substance, there is so much evidence out there on its impact on human health. It feels like the right time to do this.

Beautiful planet

“Let’s roundup the Roundup and banish it – and the companies who make it – from our beautiful planet once and for all,” he told The Ecologist.

The controversial weedkiller is in the spotlight again as a crucial decision on its future in Europe is set to be made in the autumn. The European Commission is considering whether to extend the substance’s licence. It was originally due to make a decision last year, but instead granted a temporary extension days before the licence expired. 

In May, EU health commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis proposed a ten-year extension to the approval of the herbicide, originally patented by Monsanto for Roundup but now manufactured by some 20 companies.

Significant pressure has been building up on both sides of the argument ahead of the licence renewal deadline of 15 December. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a research body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), in 2015 classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. 

Several local authorities in the UK, including Brighton and Hove, Frome and Edinburgh have already banned the use of glyphosate in public spaces. This is in line with a global trend, with restrictions on glyphosate introduced in ten countries in Europe, eight out of ten Canadian provinces, multiple US states and cities, Sri Lanka and Colombia, according to Pesticide Action Network UK.

Permiculture garden

A petition calling for glyphosate to be banned across the EUhas gained support from more than 1,300,000 European citizens, meaning that the European Commission must formally respond. 

However, the European Chemicals Agency, which was asked by the commission to investigate the safety of glyphosate, cleared the substance of having direct links to cancer. 

A spokesman for Monsanto, the largest manufacturer of Roundup, said that when glyphosate had been reviewed by regulators including the European Food Safety Authority and the US Environmental Protection Agency, they had found it to be non-carcinogenic. A joint report by the World Health Organisation and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation upheld these conclusions, he added.

Christie, who comes from a farming background and established one of the country’s oldest permaculture gardens on his estate 20 years ago, alleges that research carried out by regulators is “absolutely not independent at all.” 

“The criteria to work for regulators is to be pro-big business,” he said. “But I really think they’re fighting a losing battle now. I’ve been demanding long-term independent research but I don’t think that is going to happen because they [the manufacturers] know their stuff is toxic.”

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The American automotive firm Delphi announced the closure of its factory in the rural market town of Sudbury in Suffolk earlier this month, but the news received little coverage beyond regional media outlets reporting on the loss of 520 jobs at the site by 2020.

Having grown up in the town, I am aware of what the closure of one of its largest employers means for the local community. But the closure is significant at a national level, too. It highlights the wider state of the UK car industry, possibly stalling at the crossroads.

Investment in the sector is falling. This is in part due to the uncertainty that is effecting the whole business community as we approach Brexit. But it is also because the leading manufacturers are now all too aware that the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) poses a threat to their traditional business model.

Scrappage schemes

The decision to close the Sudbury site was made, according to Delphi, as a “result of predicted falls in the demand for diesel vehicles”.

Following VW’s 2015 emissions testing scandal and growing concerns about air pollution, there has been a shift in political and consumer attitudes towards diesel cars.

Last month, sales of new diesels in the UK were 20 percent lower than July 2016. Car companies have responded by promoting new EVs and offering scrappage schemes for older, polluting cars, while city and national governments across Europe want bans on the sale and use of diesel cars.

EVs are forecast to make up 54 percent of global new car sales by 2040. Delphi itself already supplies equipment for EVs sold by companies such as Tesla, Ford and Chevrolet, and is planning to expand its operations.

Delphi’s plant in Sudbury produces components for commercial diesel vehicles. More than 95 percent of UK commercial vehicles remain diesel-powered, but companies are beginning to move to EVs.

Future viability

This summer big household names such as Royal Mail, British Gas, the Metropolitan Police, and Harrods have all unveiled plans to increase their use of electric vans in London.

Across the rest of the UK, too, local authorities, universities, retailers, and even some airports are increasing their use of EVs. This means the long-term demand for the products made at Sudbury will fall, suggesting the plant’s future viability was always going to be uncertain.

The changing fortunes of diesel aside, Delphi’s decision to close the factory ultimately reflects an increasingly obvious trend of car companies cutting UK investment ahead of the UK’s exit from the EU, expected in 2019. 

Investment fell to £322million in the first half of this year, putting the sector on course for investment of less than half the total of 2016. And the investment last year was more than £1bn less than the £2.5bn spent by the sector in 2015.

Car production in the UK relies on the unrestricted movement of materials and parts between multiple EU countries, with stages of production of a single vehicle occurring across different factories.

Falling sales of diesel vehicles

Components assembled at Delphi’s Gloucestershire factory, for example, are shipped to Germany for heat-treatment, before returning to the UK to be installed in lorries, with the finished vehicles then re-shipped to the continent to be sold.

Supply chains and production lines rely on rapid shipping of parts between countries, and typically plants hold only a few hours’ worth of components in stock.

The government’s intention to leave both the EU and the Customs Union will likely result in future customs checks, tariffs and delays at borders which will jeopardise the profitability of UK car plants. The falling value of the pound compounds this further

But Delphi’s assertion that falling sales of diesel vehicles is the reason behind closing its factory in Sudbury should also serve as a signal for the UK government on its industrial policy.

The automotive sector is one of the UK’s largest manufacturing industry employers, with 169,000 people directly employed in final-stage manufacturing, and another 645,000 across the wider automotive industry. 

Highly skilled

Faced with a decision over the next few years on the future development of EVs as we move away from diesel and petrol cars, the industry will either begin to transform – maintaining or even growing job numbers – or decline, losing many of these jobs in the process.

The government should seek to maintain the UK’s competitive advantage in the car sector by supporting the development of EVs through its industrial strategy, and use low carbon technologies as a driver of wider industrial growth.

It has signalled support for EVs, but there is a lack of firm policy to encourage investment, and to incentivise consumers to buy EVs.

Doing so would preserve the UK’s well-established and highly skilled automotive manufacturing sector, as well as addressing pollution that is blighting cities across the UK. 

The continued absence of such policies will lead to further job losses in the sector far beyond Sudbury. Of course, this government – preoccupied with Brexit – may not act until the closure of large plants owned by the major car brands grabs nationwide headlines, by which time the damage to the industry may be irreversible.

This Author

Joseph Dutton is a policy advisor for the global climate change think tank E3G. He tweets at @JDuttonUK.

As renewable energy swells on the tide of global climate awareness and countries commit to preventing the average global temperature from exceeding two degrees Celsius, how can we make sense of the enduring investments into fossil fuels in large parts of the world?

The debate surrounding the Adani-Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail project in Australia is but one such situation. The new project of the Indian based Adani Group, a multibillion dollar Indian business and energy enterprise, is intended to be one of the largest thermal coalmines in the world. The Carmichael mining project, however, has faced years of public disapproval and legal challenges.

On the environmental front, the mine would demand significant water resources from the Belyando River (in their 2015 application for a water licence the Adani Group requested access to 12.5 billion litres per year). Controversy also surrounds the extent to which drilling and mining activities would affect local ground water supplies.

The mine further poses threats to local habitats for a number of threatened and vulnerable species, and heightened industrial activities at the port of Abbot Point are predicted by scientists and environmentalist groups to have significant negative impacts on the Great Barrier Reef – which has already suffered severe coral bleaching in recent years.

Fraud investigation

The financial viability of the mine has also received much scepticism. The entire project, including the rail line connecting the mine to the Abbot Point port, is expected to cost over 20 billion dollars. In order to fund the project, the Adani Group has been seeking funding from various public sources in Australia such as NAIF, the Northern Australian Investment Fund ($900 million AUD), and State and Federal Loans ($1 billion), with predictions that an extra $10 billion will likely be necessary over a four-year period.

Significant doubts have been raised as to the eligibility of the Adani Group to receive public funding and the actual viability of large-scale investments like these. Key concerns consider India, the mine’s primary costumer and its national commitments to phase out imported coal – a move that holds the potential to seriously undermine the project. This is compounded by the decline of coal prices since 2011 and an 80 percent reduction to the price of solar energy in India.

There is also the scandal regarding a current fraud investigation into the acquisition of equipment for the construction of two electricity transmission grids in Maharashtra, India, which allegedly resulted in the movement of up to $235 million US dollars into a trust account in Mauritius controlled by Vinod Adani, the older brother of Gautam Adani, the billionaire Adani Group chief executive.

This allegation of fraud is particularly poignant to Australia’s proposed Carmichael mining project as the deal includes a royalty scheme that would see up to $120 million AUD moved to a subsidiary based in the Cayman Islands owned by the Adani family, coincidentally away from taxes and Australian investors. The Adani family deny any wrongdoing.

The noble goal

The key arguments in favour of the mine are the production of jobs in Queensland, Australia, and the potential to increase the electricity in India, in which millions of people still live off the electrical grid.

However, the much-touted number of 10,000 potential new jobs was rejected by Adani representatives in court, at which time 1,464 long-term jobs were predicted for the life-span of the project.

As for the noble goal of increasing access to the electrical grid in India, off grid renewable energy sources such as solar are achieving massive successes, which is being reflected in the record breaking affordability of solar energy.

Times are changing fast. A plan that in 2010 and 2011 seemed profitable has, in the intervening years, become a source of derision and public exasperation. The renewed pledge of nations to reduce and limit carbon emissions is in direct conflict to the mining of coal – the burning of which, mined in such quantities, would be significant – particularly in light of recent solutions to climate change such as carbon sequestration. It is far easier to keep carbon dioxide out of the air by leaving it in the ground.

The existence and progression of the Adani-Carmichael coal mine is challenging to a clean energy future, but the negative public response smacks of change and perhaps even hope.

This Author

Mariah Sampson is an Australian environmental scholar, currently based at the University of Freiburg in Germany. She is a co-founder of the NGO The Green Bean, an organisation that sets up educational programs on biodiversity and nature in schools across Europe. This article is part of a series produced in collaboration between The Ecologist and Climate Tracker. 

Demand for water – our most precious resource on the planet – is set to increase as the global population continues to grow dramatically. The World Economic Forum identifies ‘water crises’ as the global risk of greatest concern for the next decade. 

While water scarcity is something typically associated with deserts and countries ravaged by droughts, it’s becoming clear that water shortage issues are far more prevalent. So much so, that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that by 2050 water scarcity could affect four billion people worldwide. 

What’s certain is that addressing this issue will require a revolution in our day-to-day behaviour and mindsets. While old habits die hard, the global population needs to reduce use, recycle more and use water more sustainably. 

I appeared at World Water Week in Stockholm last week. My talk discussed the circular economy in the context of water; in other words, the importance of moving towards a system which favours restoration and regeneration over disposal and wastage. 

World Water Week 

The focus of this year’s World Water Week, the annual focal point for global water issues, was “water and waste – reduce and reuse”. Bringing together experts and key decision makers from a range of sectors and countries, this annual gathering allows us to forge new ways of thinking and develop solutions to the most concerning water-related challenges.

This year, one of the standout questions for the water industry is, how can we change how we approach water management on a global scale? What will be the catalyst for change for water-based, privatised utility companies already making steady profits?

And how can UK citizens, who have a dangerous misconception that water is an endless resource, be persuaded that immediate behaviour change in essential if we’re to meet long-term goals?  

Practical application of the circular economy 

I believe more progressive circular economy, or system-based thinking, needs to be applied across and within the water cycle.  

But what do we mean by the circular economy? A circular economy reuses and recycles materials to conserve them and reduce waste. More broadly the application of circular principles aims to improve citizen quality of life and protect our most vital natural resource, while providing employment opportunities in local communities. 

At Arup, our projects are carried out with circular principles in mind. We recently worked with Del Monte for example, to create a new cost-effective plant which treats wastewater from pineapple washing and processing.

Using an anaerobic reactor, waste water from the pineapple washing and processing areas is treated to lower contaminant levels. Gas generated from the anaerobic process is captured and then transferred to new combined heat and power engines to produce electricity.

As a result, Del Monte have stopped using their coal fired power station, and bolstered the resilience of their plant during a power outage, all while reducing operating costs. 

The ‘water lens’ 

Arup encourages the organisations we work with to apply a “water lens” when evaluating their processes and systems. This means assessing how they can reduce consumption and reuse water, as well as improving the design of their business models, materials and products to cut waste.

Having a coherent vision of how the circular economy can deliver value is crucial for all organisations, whether private or public. 

We have developed our own Design with Water Framework to demonstrate how water management needs to be integrated as part of the water cycle.

Addressing issues such as resilience, flood risk, water supply and wastewater treatment, the framework places the water cycle at the centre of sustainable planning. 

Collaborating for sustainable solutions 

In a world with rapidly depleting resources, private sector water companies who wish to keep turning over a healthy profit need to adapt their business models to reuse materials wherever possible.

When engaging with local communities and stakeholders across the water cycle, the business and societal benefits of integrating the circular economy principles into projects must be clearly outlined at an early stage. 

At the same time, there’s the opportunity for water companies to work together with other organisations – public and private – to ensure water becomes a more significant driver in the planning and development of future community projects. This type of collaboration brings a shared case for investment, as well as environmental and societal benefits. 

What’s next?

Organisations will need to step up to the plate and take advantage of emerging technologies and best practice examples to adopt a circular economy approach. 

At a national level, there are significant issues for the industry to tackle. Considering an estimated 3.3 billion litres of water are lost daily in the UK due to leaking pipes, there are glaringly obvious opportunities to repair ageing infrastructure and rethink design with ‘reuse’ as a priority.  

On a bigger scale, the industry needs to think outside the box to deliver solutions. For example, as well as purifying, delivering, collecting and treating water, utilities could extract and sell resources from wastewater.

Wastewater plants could become bio-refineries for example, where organic materials could be converted to useful products.  

Clear governance and regulation will be key, as many existing frameworks for both natural and man-made water management fail to offer clear guiding principles for design, engineering and construction projects. Integrating circular principles into frameworks will ensure that we manage water in a much more sustainable way.

We still have a long way to go before we achieve the type of behavioural change needed to secure our future water supply. However, dispelling the view of water as an ‘end-of-life’ concept is a good place to start.

If there was a message I wanted to deliver at World Water Week 2017, it was this: encouraging a circular approach to water is no longer just a conceptual nicety – it’s an economic and environmental must.

This Author

Dr Mark Fletcher (FICE, FCIWEM, FGS) is director and global water business leader at Arup.

Tropical cyclones are, of course, a natural feature of our climate. But the extreme impacts of these recent storms, especially in Houston, has understandably led to questions over whether climate change is to blame.

How are tropical cyclones changing?

Tropical cyclones, called typhoons in the Northwest Pacific and hurricanes in the North Atlantic, are major storm systems that initiate near the Equator and can hit locations in the tropics and subtropics around the world.

When we look at the Atlantic Basin we see increases in tropical storm numbers over the past century, although there is high year-to-year variability. The year 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, marks the high point.

There is a trend towards more tropical storms and hurricanes in the North Atlantic. US National Hurricane Center

We can be confident that we’re seeing more severe tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic than we did a few decades ago. It is likely that climate change has contributed to this trend, although there is low statistical confidence associated with this statement.

What that means is that this observed increase in hurricane frequency is more likely than not linked with climate change, but the increase may also be linked to decadal variability.

Has Harvey been enhanced by climate change?

Unlike other types of extreme weather such as heatwaves, the influence of climate change on tropical cyclones is hard to pin down. This is because tropical cyclones form as a result of many factors coming together, including high sea surface temperatures, and weak changes in wind strength through the depth of the atmosphere.

These storms are also difficult to simulate using climate models. To study changes in tropical cyclones we need to run our models at high resolution and with interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean being represented.

It’s much easier to study heat extremes, because we can do this by looking at a single, continuous variable: temperature. Tropical cyclones, on the other hand, are not a continuous variable; they either form or they don’t. This makes them much harder to model and study.

Tropical cyclones also have many different characteristics that might change in unpredictable ways as they develop, including their track, their overall size, and their strength. Different aspects of the cyclones are likely to change in different ways, and no two cyclones are the same. Compare that with a heatwave, which often have similar spatial features.

For all these reasons, it is very hard to say exactly how climate change has affected Hurricane Harvey.

So what can we say?

While it’s hard to pin the blame for Hurricane Harvey directly on climate change, we can say this: human-caused climate change has enhanced some of the impacts of the storm.

Fortunately, in Harvey’s case, the storm surge hasn’t been too bad, unlike for Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, for example. This is because Harvey did not travel as far, and weakened rapidly when it made landfall.

We know that storm surges due to tropical cyclones have been enhanced by climate change. This is because the background sea level has increased, making it more likely that storm surges will inundate larger unprotected coastal regions.

Building levees and sea walls can alleviate some of these impacts, although these barriers will need to be higher (and therefore more expensive) in the future to keep out the rising seas.

Deluge danger

Harvey’s biggest effect is through its intense and prolonged rainfall. A low pressure system to the north is keeping Harvey over southern Texas, resulting in greater rainfall totals. The rainfall totals are already remarkable and are only going to get worse.

We know that climate change is enhancing extreme rainfall. As the atmosphere is getting warmer it can hold more moisture (roughly 7% more for every 1℃ rise in temperature). This means that when we get the right circumstances for very extreme rainfall to occur, climate change is likely to make these events even worse than they would have been otherwise. Without a full analysis it is hard to put exact numbers on this effect, but on a basic level, wetter skies mean more intense rain.

Houston, we have a problem

There are other factors that are making this storm worse than others in terms of its impact. Houston is the second-fastest growing city in the US, and the fourth most populous overall.

As the region’s population grows, more and more of southern Texas is being paved with impermeable surfaces. This means that when there is extreme rainfall the water takes longer to drain away, prolonging and intensifying the floods.

This Author

Andrew King is an Climate Extremes Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Cumbrian farmers have a problem.  Although Cumbria is in the Low Risk Area (LRA) for bovine TB, the disease has quietly been on the increase for some years.

The county was badly hit in the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis. A total of 3500 farms lost all or some of their stock, and when they started re-stocking the following year, it included cattle from an area in the South West that was known to have a high incidence of bTB.

TB testing had been suspended during the crisis so the cattle that went up north were a risk. But, given that farmers were literally in the depths of despair, it was thought best to restock as quickly and cheaply as possible. We now know, as they didn’t then, that the TB skin test is pretty unreliable, and can leave many unidentified infected cattle in the herd.

However, farmers that had been to hell and back in 2001 were hypersensitive to disease risks and somehow managed to contain any possible bTB, so much so that Cumbria was rarely troubled. In 2013 in the northern half of Cumbria there were only three incidences of bTB (between Penrith and Carlisle).  There were a further eight incidents in southern Cumbria.

But since then, in the north and in less than four years, there have been around 61 separate outbreaks, with yet more in the south.  Bovine TB now surrounds the Lake District (see http://www.ibtb.co.uk/ – select all types/all years)

That infection had to come from somewhere, so what went wrong?

Cumbrian cattle farmers buy stock imported from other areas of England (even some from High Risk Areas), Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  Tanis Brough from the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) said that strain-typing has shown that the strain of TB infecting Cumbrian cattle comes from Northern Ireland – a strain that had never previously been present in the rest of the UK.

APHA believed that this particular strain came from Northern Ireland in an animal imported prior to autumn 2014. “How this strain M.bovis 17Z came to be in the Cumbrian herds remains unclear,” said Ms Brough.  “We do not know if this original animal is alive. It is probably dead.”

Because of the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis, the tracking system for all farm stock was quickly improved. All cattle can now be individually identified and their movements followed. Yet here the system failed. In LRAs the default bTB testing is still every four years instead of annually. Trading is easier. But does farming in an LRA give a false sense of security? Security which turns out to be not so secure?

The first sign that the LRA was being compromised was in 2011, when Plumpton Head Farm, near Penrith, lost 103 of its 260-strong dairy herd. This herd was said to be a ‘closed herd’ (that is, not bringing in cattle from elsewhere). One possible cause was nose-to-nose contact with cattle on a neighbouring farm.

Slowly the incidence of bTB in Cumbria has increased without any real outcry from the agricultural lobby. Why then, at the beginning of this month (August), has all of this information suddenly become news?  Because, accompanied by a typical knee-jerk reaction from farmers and the NFU, they have now found bTB in some Cumbrian badgers – the first time since the 1980s.

It is admitted that the cattle must have infected the badgers. Seeing that the original source of this outbreak is Northern Ireland, they have to – unless they insist that badgers swam across the Irish Sea.  And with so much disease now in the area it would be hard for the badgers to avoid it.

But of course the answer, as always, is to cull the badgers to stop them spreading the disease. Given the rise of bTB across Cumbria in the last four or five years, one would think that the cattle trading, farming practices and inadequate biosecurity are doing a pretty good job of spreading TB without any help from Mr Brock.

But no… badgers have to be ‘controlled’.

And we return to ignorant and uninformed statements about badgers.  Take this Penrith vet, talking to the BBC:

“Badgers live in the same fields as cattle; they can move into cattle buildings and eat the feed and poo in the troughs.  It’s very easy for badgers to spread the disease to cattle.”

Defra has issued some fairly comprehensive advice on the biosecurity measures farmers should take to prevent badgers from accessing yards, feed stores and cattle housing.  And farmers are advised to fence off any areas in their fields where cattle could get close to badgers.  But it is only ‘advice’ that, sadly, most farmers ignore.

Study after study has found that badgers avoid cattle and cattle housing (when the cattle are there). Despite many efforts, no one has yet managed to demonstrate how badgers are supposed to give TB to cattle. And badgers don’t ‘poo in troughs’. Why ever would they? They are clean creatures and dig latrines to defecate in.

You would hope that this succession of events would persuade Defra, Natural England, the NFU and farmers that badgers really are not the problem. It is farming-based. But no; to deal with the disease one of the options would be to kill the badgers which have had the misfortune to become infected.

There is hope. Recent research by a Nottingham University team has developed a new bTB blood test.  This identifies bTB in cattle at a much earlier stage than current testing methods do. Their study, carried out over four years at a Devon farm, also identifies many more infected cattle than the standard testing does. And that appears to show that the reservoir for the disease was within the herd, not the wildlife – news that won’t be welcome to farmers.

This Author

Lesley Docksey is a campaigner and regular contributor to the Ecologist

Electric cars have come a long way, both literally and figuratively, in the past few years. I remember when the green-minded father of a school friend bought a G-Wiz, the dinky electric car that blazed a modestly-paced trail among early adopters. In 2007 Top Gear named it the worst car of the year and co-presenter James May described it as “the worst car for this year – and indeed for every year whilst we have breath in our bodies.”  They blew one up later in the episode.

It’s amazing to think that 10 years later, Tesla’s Model X, a seven-seater, electric SUV would be beating a Lamborghini Aventador in a quarter mile drag race and UK Environment Minister Michael Gove would be announcing that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would be banned in the UK by 2040.  It’s probably fair to say the beleaguered G-Wiz and its descendants have had the last laugh.

The rise of the electric car has given us a tantalising glimpse into a world of clean city air, free from choking vehicle fumes, cheaper running costs (as the many moving parts in the complicated combustion engine won’t need fixing), not to mention a reduction in our national carbon emissions. 

But a new report published today shows that electric vehicles will also dramatically improve Britain’s energy security by reducing its dependence on foreign oil as well. The study, by the Green Alliance in conjunction with organisations such as WWF, Greenpeace and Christian Aid, shows that if Michael Gove and his Government were to bring forward the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2030 Britain could reduce its oil imports by 51 per cent in 2035 compared to current projections.

Considering the world’s biggest oil producers include such delightful regimens as Russian, Iran and Saudi Arabia it seems obvious that we would want to spare ourselves having to rely on countries with such questionable human rights records as these, not to mention being wedded to potentially volatile and unreliable trading partners. When combined with the other benefits of electric vehicles it seems like a no brainer.

Bringing forward the era of new electric vehicles would see the UK starting to catch up with other countries which are already ahead of the curve. Norway has nearly ten times more charging points per head of the population than the UK and 29 per cent of new cars and vans sold there in 2016 were electric, compared to 1.4 per cent in the UK.

The report comes before the launch of the Government’s plan, which will set out how the UK plans to cut its emissions and boost the nation’s low carbon industries.  Laura Taylor, Head of Advocacy at Christian Aid, said: “The UK Government’s long-overdue Clean Growth Plan needs to prove that this government is serious about speeding up the low carbon transition, not slackening the pace.”

That pace may well come faster than we expect. Technology advances often accelerate at surprising speed. The Daily Telegraph’s Juliet Samuel recently told the story of consulting firm McKinsey, which was asked in the nineties to predict what the global market for smartphones would be by 2000. It guessed just under 1 million – wrong by a factor of 109.  She concluded: “The decarbonisation of energy is coming. It’s time for governments, investors and industry to plan for it, rather than sticking their heads in the sand.”

Likewise, if the British Government is to put the UK in the fast lane for the coming low carbon vehicle revolution then it needs to publish a truly bold and transformative Clean Growth Plan next month.

This Author

Joe Ware is a journalist and writer at Christian Aid and a New Voices contributor at the Ecologist. He is on twitter @wareisjoe

Cumbrian farmers have a problem.  Although Cumbria is in the Low Risk Area (LRA) for bovine TB, the disease has quietly been on the increase for some years.

The county was badly hit in the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis. A total of 3500 farms lost all or some of their stock, and when they started re-stocking the following year, it included cattle from an area in the South West that was known to have a high incidence of bTB.

TB testing had been suspended during the crisis so the cattle that went up north were a risk. But, given that farmers were literally in the depths of despair, it was thought best to restock as quickly and cheaply as possible. We now know, as they didn’t then, that the TB skin test is pretty unreliable, and can leave many unidentified infected cattle in the herd.

However, farmers that had been to hell and back in 2001 were hypersensitive to disease risks and somehow managed to contain any possible bTB, so much so that Cumbria was rarely troubled. In 2013 in the northern half of Cumbria there were only three incidences of bTB (between Penrith and Carlisle).  There were a further eight incidents in southern Cumbria.

But since then, in the north and in less than four years, there have been around 61 separate outbreaks, with yet more in the south.  Bovine TB now surrounds the Lake District (see http://www.ibtb.co.uk/ – select all types/all years)

That infection had to come from somewhere, so what went wrong?

Cumbrian cattle farmers buy stock imported from other areas of England (even some from High Risk Areas), Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  Tanis Brough from the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) said that strain-typing has shown that the strain of TB infecting Cumbrian cattle comes from Northern Ireland – a strain that had never previously been present in the rest of the UK.

APHA believed that this particular strain came from Northern Ireland in an animal imported prior to autumn 2014. “How this strain M.bovis 17Z came to be in the Cumbrian herds remains unclear,” said Ms Brough.  “We do not know if this original animal is alive. It is probably dead.”

Because of the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis, the tracking system for all farm stock was quickly improved. All cattle can now be individually identified and their movements followed. Yet here the system failed. In LRAs the default bTB testing is still every four years instead of annually. Trading is easier. But does farming in an LRA give a false sense of security? Security which turns out to be not so secure?

The first sign that the LRA was being compromised was in 2011, when Plumpton Head Farm, near Penrith, lost 103 of its 260-strong dairy herd. This herd was said to be a ‘closed herd’ (that is, not bringing in cattle from elsewhere). One possible cause was nose-to-nose contact with cattle on a neighbouring farm.

Slowly the incidence of bTB in Cumbria has increased without any real outcry from the agricultural lobby. Why then, at the beginning of this month (August), has all of this information suddenly become news?  Because, accompanied by a typical knee-jerk reaction from farmers and the NFU, they have now found bTB in some Cumbrian badgers – the first time since the 1980s.

It is admitted that the cattle must have infected the badgers. Seeing that the original source of this outbreak is Northern Ireland, they have to – unless they insist that badgers swam across the Irish Sea.  And with so much disease now in the area it would be hard for the badgers to avoid it.

But of course the answer, as always, is to cull the badgers to stop them spreading the disease. Given the rise of bTB across Cumbria in the last four or five years, one would think that the cattle trading, farming practices and inadequate biosecurity are doing a pretty good job of spreading TB without any help from Mr Brock.

But no… badgers have to be ‘controlled’.

And we return to ignorant and uninformed statements about badgers.  Take this Penrith vet, talking to the BBC:

“Badgers live in the same fields as cattle; they can move into cattle buildings and eat the feed and poo in the troughs.  It’s very easy for badgers to spread the disease to cattle.”

Defra has issued some fairly comprehensive advice on the biosecurity measures farmers should take to prevent badgers from accessing yards, feed stores and cattle housing.  And farmers are advised to fence off any areas in their fields where cattle could get close to badgers.  But it is only ‘advice’ that, sadly, most farmers ignore.

Study after study has found that badgers avoid cattle and cattle housing (when the cattle are there). Despite many efforts, no one has yet managed to demonstrate how badgers are supposed to give TB to cattle. And badgers don’t ‘poo in troughs’. Why ever would they? They are clean creatures and dig latrines to defecate in.

You would hope that this succession of events would persuade Defra, Natural England, the NFU and farmers that badgers really are not the problem. It is farming-based. But no; to deal with the disease one of the options would be to kill the badgers which have had the misfortune to become infected.

There is hope. Recent research by a Nottingham University team has developed a new bTB blood test.  This identifies bTB in cattle at a much earlier stage than current testing methods do. Their study, carried out over four years at a Devon farm, also identifies many more infected cattle than the standard testing does. And that appears to show that the reservoir for the disease was within the herd, not the wildlife – news that won’t be welcome to farmers.

This Author

Lesley Docksey is a campaigner and regular contributor to the Ecologist