Scarier than fiction: Climate worry driving ‘cli-fi’ boom

Imagine a world where storms inundate coastal megacities, entire species become extinct in the blink of an eye and conflicts are fought over dwindling natural resources.

Not so difficult in 2019, perhaps.

After a year of devastating extreme weather and worldwide unrest over the emergency posed by climate change, topics that used to belong to the realm of science fiction are finding their way into mainstream storytelling.

Back in 2004, Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted a global weather catastrophe, with coastal areas devoured by the sea amid general meteorological mayhem.

Just 15 years on, scenes from the movie resemble images taken from real-life weather events today.

And as climate change makes superstorms, flooding, wildfires and droughts more likely, a new genre is gaining fatalistic fans the world over: “cli-fi.”

“It’s catching on like wildfire,” said United States writer and cli-fi aficionado Dan Bloom.

He credited U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said he will withdraw from the Paris climate deal, with helping promote the genre.

“There’s a lot of people who say that climate change is not real,” said Bloom. “These people are making the rest of us very angry and as a result cli-fi is getting more and more power.”

Andrew Milner, a professor of comparative literature at Melbourne’s Monash University, said that cli-fi was yet to break out from sci-fi’s yoke — most people get into the new genre because they like the old one.

“Both its texts and practitioners — writers, readers, publishers, film directors, fans — relate primarily to the science-fiction tradition,” he said.


“(But) it is very clear that the sub-genre has grown very rapidly in recent years.”

Global appeal

Global protest movements such as the Youth Strike for Climate and Extinction Rebellion have heightened public awareness of the issue.

For J.R. Burgmann, co-author of “Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach”, cli-fi films and novels are a logical expression of an increasingly knowledgeable and concerned society.

“This rise is a response to real-world concerns,” he said. “And though I would argue that literature has been rather slow to respond to manmade climate change, it certainly appears to be making up for lost time.”

And, because climate change is a truly global problem, cli-fi has become a worldwide, multi-lingual phenomenon.

In France, two major television series focussing on dystopian but conceivable futures have received popular and critical acclaim.

“The Last Wave” tells the story of 10 surfers who go missing in bad weather. When they return they can’t remember what happened but some have strange new powers.

And “The Collapse”, set in a post-apocalyptic world where fuel is scarce, nuclear sites are threatened and medicines are rationed, debuted this week.

Recent cli-fi works from around the world include “Blackout Island” by Icelandic author Sigridur Hagalin Bjornsdottir, a Canadian adaptation of Jean Hegland’s “Into the Forest” and “Water Knife”, by U.S. author Paolo Bacigalupi.


In “The History of Bees”, Norwegian author Maja Lunde’s 2017 bestseller, humanity is forced to pollinate their crops by hand after pesticides have wiped insects off the face of the Earth.

“People are more and more worried about climate change and authors write about what scares them,” Lunde told Agence France-Presse last year.

‘Hard to ignore’

Novels and films about climate change are nothing new, of course.

J.G. Ballard’s “The Burning World” (1964) and John Brunner’s “The Sheep Look Up” (1972) depicted a world ravaged by environmental damage decades before scientists fully understood manmade climate change.

Even John Steinbeck’s generational “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939) is essentially a tale of the harrowing ordeal undergone by climate migrants from the Oklahoma dust bowl.

But, as leading cli-fi author Jean-Marc Ligny explained, greater public awareness and a seemingly unending string of drought, wildfires and heatwaves have made climate a topic that’s “hard to ignore.”

“Climate change needs stories, and readers need them to be told,” he said. “There are figures, statistics, but these don’t really say anything. Cli-fi makes people more aware of the situation.” CL/JB

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Cities and monuments to dim lights in a nod to Earth

PARIS, France — From Sydney to New York, cities and monuments will dim their lights on Saturday in a show of solidarity against the threats being faced by the planet from humankind.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Earth Hour, an annual bid to raise awareness about global warming caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas to power cars and power plants.

Since it was first held in 2007, in Sydney alone, great strides have been made in highlighting the dire state of the planet, according to the conservation group WWF, which organises the event.

Earth Hour, said its coordinator Siddarth Das, must show that “each individual can help turn the page towards a sustainable, climate-resilient future for all.”

Following the path of the sunset around the world, Saturday’s events (between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm local times) will kick off with the Sydney Opera House dimming its lights, then move westward through Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

Monuments including the Empire State Building, the Kremlin, Big Ben, the Tower of Pisa, the Eiffel Tower and Egypt’s pyramids will go dark to mark the event.

Lisbon will host a concert by candlelight, Singapore will hold a “carbon-neutral run”, and Tanzania will organise a tree-planting ceremony.

Homes and businesses are also being asked to join in, and individuals can commit to the cause on Facebook.


Last year, scientists recorded the Earth’s hottest temperatures in modern times for the third year in a row.

Nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial temperatures.

That is the level at which many scientists say humankind can still avoid worst-case climate outcomes in terms of rising sea levels, worsening droughts and floods, and increasingly violent superstorms.

“Climate change is visible proof that our actions can have a ripple effect beyond physical borders,” Das said.

“It is up to each of us to ensure the impact we create helps instead to improve the lives of those around us and elsewhere, at present and in the future.” CBB

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Kerry urges US envoys to make climate change a priority

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State John Kerry has called on American ambassadors around the world to make the fight against climate change a top priority ahead of new UN talks next year.

In his first department-wide policy guidance statement since taking office a year ago, he told his 70,000 staff: "The environment has been one of the central causes of my life."

"Protecting our environment and meeting the challenge of global climate change is a critical mission for me as our country's top diplomat," Kerry said in the letter issued on Friday to all 275 US embassies and across the State Department.

"It's also a critical mission for all of you: our brave men and women on the frontlines of direct diplomacy," he added in the document seen by AFP.

He urged all "chiefs of mission to make climate change a priority for all relevant personnel and to promote concerted action at posts and in host countries to address this problem."

The clarion call comes ahead of key UN-led talks in Paris next year when the international community is due to try to set new emissions goals for greenhouses blamed for global warming.


The emission levels will be applicable to all countries, not just the developed world, and will come into effect in 2020.

The new agreement will replace the Kyoto treaty which is due to expire in 2015.

The United States, which along with China is the world's top polluter, did not ratify the Kyoto Treaty arguing that developing countries should also be obligated to cut greenhouse gases.

Kerry traveled to China last month and won agreement from Beijing that the US and China would cooperate closely ahead of the Paris talks as they aim to agree emissions targets.

In his policy guidance, Kerry set out a seven step program to enhance the focus on tackling climate change including boosting multilateral and bilateral efforts.

"We're talking about the future of our earth and of humanity. We need to elevate the environment in everything we do," he said.

It was, he said "our call to conscience as citizens of this fragile planet we inhabit."

Kerry is currently weighing a decision on whether the US should approve the building of a pipeline carrying oil from the tar sands of Alberta, in Canada, to US refineries in Nebraska and then Texas.

An environmental review found that the Keystone XL project would not add significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.

But opponents are calling on Kerry to reject the proposals by Canadian operators TransCanada, and a small but noisy protest was held late Thursday outside the State Department. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Global warming slowdown likely to be brief – US, UK science bodies

OSLO - A slowdown in the pace of global warming so far this century is likely to be only a pause in a longer-term trend of rising temperatures, the science academies of the United States and Britain said on Thursday.

Since an exceptionally warm 1998, there has been "a short-term slowdown in the warming of Earth's surface," Britain's Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said in a report.

But, they said, that "does not invalidate our understanding of long-term changes in global temperature arising from human-induced changes in greenhouse gases."

The warming slowdown has emboldened those who question the evidence about climate change and ask whether a shift in investments towards renewable energies such as wind and solar power, advocated by many experts, is really needed.

But the report said that scientists were "very confident" that the planet would warm further this century, causing more extreme heatwaves, droughts and rising seas.

A build-up of greenhouse gases from human activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels, is warming the atmosphere and the oceans, raising sea levels and melting Arctic ice, the report said, supporting the long-held view of a U.N. panel of climate scientists.

It projected that temperatures would rise by between 2.6 and 4.8 Celsius (4.7-8.6 F) by 2100 unless governments took strong action to limit rising emissions of greenhouse gases, broadly in line with U.N. estimates.

Temperatures have gained about 0.8 C (1.4 F) since the 19th century.

STAIRCASE

Almost 200 nations have agreed to work out a deal by the end of 2015 to combat climate change. So far there has been little progress in negotiations, partly because weak economic growth has sapped government interest.

Policy decisions were only possible if "based on the best possible advice about the science of climate change," Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, told a briefing.

The warming hiatus may be caused by shifts in the oceans that are absorbing more heat from the atmosphere, the report said. Other studies suggest that sun-dimming volcanic eruptions or a lower output from the sun may contribute.

Brian Hoskins, of Imperial College London, said warming trends in past decades had varied a lot despite rising greenhouse gas emissions. "It's a staircase rather than a gentle trend upwards," he said.

Among signs of rising temperatures, the report said that record heatwaves had hit Australia in 2013, the United States in 2012, Russia in 2010 and Europe in 2003. There had been fewer cold snaps, like in the United States this winter.

"It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate," it said.

Last year, the U.N.'s panel on climate science raised the probability that human activities, rather than natural variations, were the main cause of warming since the 1950s, to at least 95 percent from 90 in a previous assessment in 2007.  — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

UN draft stresses risk of global warming, from economy to health

OSLO - Global warming poses a mounting threat to health, economic growth, crops and water supplies, according to a draft report by top scientists that puts unprecedented emphasis on the risks of a changing climate.

A leaked 29-page draft by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), about the impacts of rising temperatures and due for release in March 2014, mentions "risk" 139 times against just 41 in its last assessment in 2007.

The increased stress on risk may make the case for cutting greenhouse gas emissions clearer both to policymakers and the public by making it sound like an insurance policy for the planet, analysts say.

Many governments, meeting in Warsaw from November 11-22 for UN talks on climate change, have long pleaded for greater scientific certainty before making billion-dollar investments in everything from flood barriers to renewable energies.

But certainty is elusive in climate science, as it is in predicting anything from the weather to Wall Street.

"The IPCC has transitioned to what I consider to be a full and rich recognition that the climate change problem is about managing risk," Christopher Field, co-chair of the IPCC group preparing the report, told Reuters.

The report, posted on a climate skeptical website "nofrakkingconsensus" on Nov. 1, resembles a previous draft that warns that parts of society and nature are more vulnerable than expected to climate change.

More certainty

Field, a professor at Stanford University, also said there was more certainty about many aspects of climate change than in 2007. He cautioned the draft was subject to change in editing.

It says, for instance, that a rise of temperatures of more than 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times could lead to economic losses of between 0.2 and 2.0 percent of global income.

It also says that warming will exacerbate threats to health, damage yields of major crops in many areas and lead to more floods. It could also exacerbate poverty and economic shocks that are root causes of violent conflicts.

"Responding to climate-related risks involves making decisions and taking actions in the face of continuing uncertainty about the extent of climate change and the severity of impacts in a changing world," the draft says.

The panel's credibility is under extra scrutiny, for its last report in 2007 wrongly exaggerated the melt of Himalayan glaciers. Several reviews said that this error, however, did not undermine the key findings in 2007.

James Painter, of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, said that the focus on risk may make the panel's message clearer.

"More risk language helps to shift the public debate away from the idea that decisions should be delayed until absolute certainty is obtained - something that may never be achieved."

He said politicians and businesses were used to making decisions based on risks. And many people insure their homes against fire even though the risks of a blaze are small.

Field said the report tries to capture a wide range of risks, including highly unlikely events that might have a major impact. "That's the way risk is generally formulated if you are an insurance company or figuring out an anti-terrorism policy."

The report is the second in a four-part IPCC assessment meant to guide governments that have promised to agree a pact in 2015 to slow climate change. The first, in September, raised the probability that most global warming is man-made to at least 95 percent from 90 in 2007. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Animated Google Doodle honors Earth Day

Google on Monday marked Earth Day with a 3D animated doodle, keeping the public aware of the importance of the environment and the effects of global warming.

Visitors to Google's homepage (www.google.com) were greeted with a doodle featuring ecological systems that spell the word "Google."


"The Google Doodle have also been cleverly designed into an animation showing the effects of Global Warming on the Earth. If you clicked on the Google Doodle without seeing the animation, you can go back to Google and click on the Earth Day 2013 play button, which will then animate the Google doodle showing the long term effect of global warming and climate change," according to an article on 3d-Car-shows.com.



 It added Earth Day 2013 "aims to raise people’s awareness of global warming, and offers solutions to people to help fight against Climate Change."

As in the past, clicking on the small magnifying glass will send the user to a Search Results page for Earth Day.

The EarthDay.org site warned of the effects of climate change, which it said "can seem like a remote problem for our leaders."

For this year's observance of Earth Day, it asked the public to help make a mosaic of the "faces" of climate change.


 "Fortunately, other Faces of Climate Change are multiplying too: those stepping up to do something about it. Help us personalize the massive challenge climate change presents by taking a photo and telling your story. How has climate change impacted you? What are you doing to be part of the solution?" it asked. — TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com