Climate change may now be irreversible, and is certainly at an urgent stage. While this website is dedicated to opposing the nuclear threat, we can’t ignore the reality of its twin peril – global warming.
The scientific consensus is that the Earth’s climate system is unequivocally warming, and that it is extremely likely (meaning 95% probability or higher) that this warming is predominantly caused by humans. It is likely that this mainly arises from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels (Wikipedia)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that warming of the climate system is ‘unequivocal’ with changes unprecedented over decades to millennia, including warming of the atmosphere and oceans, loss of snow and ice, and sea level rise.
Right now, climate experts are stressing the urgency of the situation, but offering differing ideas on what action to take. Dr Clive Hamilton, in his new book new book titled “Defiant Earth – the fate of humans in the Anthropocene.” says we will go well beyond the danger point of 2 degrees C. of warming, at least to 3 or 4 degrees. He advises that human society must adapt, and try to avoid the very worst. He warns us to avoid grandiose technological solutions.
Climate scientists agree on the need to drastically cut greenhouse has emissions, but some say that more action is needed. Paul Beckwith wants an international collaboration on further projects, to slow the warming rate – Removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere, Cooling the Arctic and saving the sea ice, Preventing Greenland Ice Sheet disintegration, Suppressing methane.
Of course, the nuclear lobby keeps promising extremely expensive solutions for the very distant future. However, nuclear reactors, of whatever type, would be far too late, even if they did combat climate change, (which they don’t). Nuclear power is irrelevant to climate change, – except for taking resources away and thus slowing up effective measures, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The Japanese city of Hiroshima of around 350,000 people, was the first city to be attacked with a nuclear weapon when a single bomb was dropped by the USA on August 6, 1945 towards the end of World War 2.
The bomb and its firestorm destroyed two-thirds of the city, with an estimated 70,000 ordinary people killed immediately and a similar number over the next five years. These deaths resulted from the immediate explosion, burns, radiation and cancers.
The city was devastated with destruction of most buildings. Photos appear to show a scene from hell with the city burned out, and civilians with horrendous burns and injuries.
Nuclear proliferation has ensued internationally since then, with an estimated 19,000 nuclear weapons now in existence, all much more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The threat of nuclear war was strongly present throughout the Cold War, and is again rising today.
The cost of nuclear weapons is enormous with an estimated $40 billion spent annually by the US alone.
Countries known to possess nuclear weapons are Russia, USA, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — not necessarily all reliable international citizens whom we would trust to have a finger on the nuclear trigger, particularly in view of recent inquiries confirming that unreliable information led to the recent war in Iraq with ongoing consequences.
Some countries such as Australia without nuclear weapons choose to be under the US “nuclear umbrella”.
Today, the use of nuclear weapons would result in extraordinary numbers of immediate deaths, devastation of medical facilities to care for those injured, and destruction of infrastructure of a city on a much larger scale than seen in Japan.
It is also predicted that the atmospheric debris from a limited regional nuclear war could cause global cooling and prolonged worldwide famine.
The good news is that a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been adopted by the United Nations in July this year.
This treaty prohibits states from developing, testing, possessing, transferring or deploying nuclear weapons under any circumstances.
This treaty was passed by 122 nation, unfortunately not Australia, as our government decided not to attend these discussions. Unsurprisingly, those countries with nuclear weapons are also non-participants.
Nuclear weapons will now join the list of banned weapons such as chemical and biological weapons and cluster bombs, which seems highly appropriate given that they are designed primarily to indiscriminately cause death to massive numbers of civilians. In a recent poll about 75 per cent of Australians support nuclear disarmament.
Our government believes that the US nuclear umbrella provides protection for Australia.
Australia’s official view is that a “building block approach” is required towards improving global nuclear weapon safety, with the initial step being increased transparency regarding nuclear stockpiles among those possessing them, which seems highly unlikely to happen given the secrecy surrounding military matters.
Somewhat ironically, international nuclear weapon treaties until now have made it legal for those signatories with nuclear weapons to continue to have them, but illegal for non-nuclear countries to manufacture or buy them.
The current international situation with escalating conflict between North Korea and the US and their respective leaders, illustrates what a precarious situation the world is in with the threat of nuclear weapons being used again very real. There is also the possibility of terrorist groups gaining nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are abhorrent to a civilised society. Whilst in existence they are a threat to all.
Their cost is enormous. The existence of nuclear weapons cannot enhance international safety
The only winners in the nuclear arms race are the arms manufacturers. Australia still has an opportunity to participate in this current UN nuclear abolition treaty, and truly make our country — and our planet — safer.Sally Atrill is Tasmanian GP and the Tasmanian convener for the Medical Association for Prevention of War.
Australia doesn’t ‘get’ the environmental challenges faced by Pacific Islanders http://theconversation.com/australia-doesnt-get-the-environmental-challenges-faced-by-pacific-islanders-81995 Steven Cork, Adjunct Associate Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Kate Auty, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Melbourne, August 7, 2017 What actions are required to implement nature-based solutions to Oceania’s most pressing sustainability challenges? That’s the question addressed by the recently released Brisbane Declaration on ecosystem services and sustainability in Oceania.
There once was an Island
Compiled following a forum earlier this year in Brisbane, featuring researchers, politicians and community leaders, the declaration suggests that Australia can help Pacific Island communities in a much wider range of ways than simply responding to disasters such as tropical cyclones.
Many of the insights offered at the forum were shocking, especially for Australians. Over the past few years, many articles, including several on The Conversation, have highlighted the losses of beaches, villages and whole islands in the region, including in the Solomons, Catarets, Takuu Atoll and Torres Strait, as sea level has risen. But the forum in Brisbane highlighted how little many Australians understand about the implications of these events.
Over the past decade, Australia has experienced a range of extreme weather events, including Tropical Cyclone Debbie, which hit Queensland in the very week that the forum was in progress. People who have been directly affected by these events can understand the deep emotional trauma that accompanies damage to life and property.
At the forum, people from several Pacific nations spoke personally about how the tragedy of sea-level rise is impacting life, culture and nature for Pacific Islanders.
One story, which has become the focus of the play Mama’s Bones, told of the deep emotional suffering that results when islanders are forced to move from the land that holds their ancestors’ remains.
The forum also featured a screening of the film There Once Was an Island, which documents people living on the remote Takuu Atoll as they attempt to deal with the impact of rising seas on their 600-strong island community. Released in 2011, it shows how Pacific Islanders are already struggling with the pressure to relocate, the perils of moving to new homes far away, and the potentially painful fragmentation of families and community that will result.
Their culture is demonstrably under threat, yet many of the people featured in the film said they receive little government or international help in facing these upheavals. Australia’s foreign aid budgets have since shrunk even further.
As Stella Miria-Robinson, representing the Pacific Islands Council of Queensland, reminded participants at the forum, the losses faced by Pacific Islanders are at least partly due to the emissions-intensive lifestyles enjoyed by people in developed countries.
Australia’s role
What can Australians do to help? Obviously, encouraging informed debate about aid and immigration policies is an important first step. As public policy researchers Susan Nicholls and Leanne Glenny have noted, in relation to the 2003 Canberra bushfires, Australians understand so-called “hard hat” responses to crises (such as fixing the electricity, phones, water, roads and other infrastructure) much better than “soft hat” responses such as supporting the psychological recovery of those affected.
Similarly, participants in the Brisbane forum noted that Australian aid to Pacific nations is typically tied to hard-hat advice from consultants based in Australia. This means that soft-hat issues – like providing islanders with education and culturally appropriate psychological services – are under-supported.
The Brisbane Declaration calls on governments, aid agencies, academics and international development organisations to do better. Among a series of recommendations aimed at preserving Pacific Island communities and ecosystems, it calls for the agencies to “actively incorporate indigenous and local knowledge” in their plans.
At the heart of the recommendations is the need to establish mechanisms for ongoing conversations among Oceanic nations, to improve not only understanding of each others’ cultures but of people’s relationships with the environment. Key to these conversations is the development of a common language about the social and cultural, as well as economic, meaning of the natural environment to people, and the building of capacity among all nations to engage in productive dialogue (that is, both speaking and listening).
This capacity involves not only training in relevant skills, but also establishing relevant networks, collecting and sharing appropriate information, and acknowledging the importance of indigenous and local knowledge.
Apart from the recognition that Australians have some way to go to put themselves in the shoes of our Pacific neighbours, it is very clear that these neighbours, through the challenges they have already faced, have many valuable insights that can help Australia develop policies, governance arrangements and management approaches in our quest to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
This article was co-written by Simone Maynard, Forum Coordinator and Ecosystem Services Thematic Group Lead, IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management.
Climate change is turning cities into harsh, sweltering hotspots http://grist.org/article/climate-change-is-turning-cities-into-harsh-sweltering-hotspots/By Brian Kahnon Aug 5, 2017Tina Johnson has a sense of place. She’s a fourth-generation New Yorker who lives in the same apartment in West Harlem’s Grant housing development that her grandparents lived in. She calls that apartment her anchor, and the nine buildings that make up the development towering above 125th Street — home to roughly 4,400 residents spread across nine high rises — a small town.
“I have fond memories [of here] and this sense of belonging I want my children to have,” she said.
To keep that sense of place is going to take some work, though. Changes outside that “small town” nestled in a city of 8 million will only compound the stresses altering West Harlem..A mix of poverty, a lack of services, and aging infrastructure already make West Harlem one of the most vulnerable communities in Manhattan.
Climate change is putting further stress on Johnson and the 110,000 people that call the neighborhood home. And the biggest threat is rising temperatures.
As carbon pollution turns up the planetary heat, the impact is clearest on what’s happening to extremely hot days: They’re becoming more common and more intense.
New York has averaged three days above 95 degrees F over the past 20 years. If carbon pollution continues on its current trend, by 2075 that number is likely to increase to 31, according to a new Climate Central analysis.
Myriad cities across the country will be far worse off, though. Continue reading →
Another 93MW of solar PV was installed on Australian homes and business in the month of July, as booming markets in every state continue to deliver the nation’s best year to date, with a total of 568MW installed so far in 2017.
In its latest monthly market update, solar analysts Sunwiz said the solar PV market had maintained the record-breaking momentum of the previous two months, painting a picture of “a market that is level – at exceptionally high levels.”
According to Sunwiz, this July marked the second highest ever for registrations in that month, maintaining the record solar tally for any year to date that has put the market 47 per cent ahead of the same time last year.
The report notes that part of the reason for this sustained PV market momentum is that every state is doing so well at the same time, not least Western Australia, which is having its best ever start to the year.
Of course, one significant down-side to the booming installation market has been the sudden drop in small-scale renewable energy certificate (STC) prices – which, as we reported here, caught many PV installers off-guard and pushed up the cost of installing solar by around 10 per cent for households and small business.
According to Sunwiz, STC prices – which last month fell from around $40 to as low as $26 – are likely to keep falling as long as the STC creation rate continues to exceed the target, “something we feel is very likely to happen,” it says.
“So expect a soft STC price that will only turn north in early 2018.”
Elsewhere, the report notes that commercial solar systems of larger than 10kW notched up record high monthly and tri-monthly figures, with 33 per cent of volume in June down to commercial installations.
In July the proportion of commercial fell slightly to 31 per cent, as the volume in the 6-10kW range expanded to 20 per cent of the market.
NSW again led the pack on commercial installs, although it was briefly overtaken by Victoria and then Queensland, “but rounded out July on top again” after Victoria stalled and then Queensland fell, the report says.
In the residential market, average rooftop solar system sizes remained steady at and average of 6.5kW, sustaining a new record.
Extreme weather could kill 150,000 people each year in Europe by the end of the century, say scientists. Hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to deadly weather events by 2100, researchers warn, Independent, Andrew Griffin Science Reporter @_andrew_griffin 5 Aug 17 , More than 150,000 people could die as a result of climate change each year in Europe by the end of the century, shocking new research has found.
The number of deaths caused by extreme weather events will increase 50-fold and two in three people on the continent will be affected by disasters, the study – that serves as a stark warning of the deadly impact of global warming – found.
The research by European Commission scientists lays out a future where hundreds of thousands of people die from heatstroke, heart and breathing problems, and flash flooding. It describes a world where droughts bring food shortages, people are at an increased risk of being killed by disease and infection, and the countryside is ravaged by wildfires. Continue reading →
Billions lost in nuclear power projects, with more bills due, Fox Business, By SEANNA ADCOX August 05, 2017 COLUMBIA, S.C. – A decade ago, utilities were persuading politicians around the country to let them spend big to go nuclear…..
With a dozen or more nuclear power projects being developed around the nation, cost savings could be found through simultaneous construction.
State legislators were sold. In South Carolina, they even passed a law allowing utilities to charge customers up front and to recoup their investments even if the projects never produced a kilowatt. Several other Southern states also passed “pay-as-you-go” laws.
This week, having spent more than $10 billion, executives with South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper acknowledged that all their assumptions were wrong.
Worse still: Consumers may have to pay billions more on the rusting remains of two partially-built reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station north of Columbia.
“When we started, there was talk of a nuclear renaissance restarting a whole industry in the U.S.,” said Santee Cooper’s chief financial officer, Jeff Armfield. He was among several executives recommending the project be abandoned. The board of the state-owned utility unanimously agreed at a public meeting Monday.
Most of the 18 nuclear projects pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a decade ago have been aborted or suspended indefinitely. None of the 7 projects the NRC licensed are operational. Only one is still being built, in Georgia, at a cost of $100 million a month. Southern Company financial documents filed Wednesday say the project, slated to cost $14 billion, could cost $25 billion or more if completed…….http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/05/billions-lost-in-nuclear-power-projects-with-more-bills-due.html
With excessive heat warnings and temperatures reaching the triple digits from northern California through Washington state (places where air conditioning is far from a given), it’s a bit hard to fathom that this week should have been even hotter.
All-time records could have been set up and down the coast, if it hadn’t been for the thick smoke streaming down from more than 100 massive forest fires in British Columbia, about 500 miles north.
Equis plans 1,000MW solar farm in heart of Queensland’s gas country, REneweconomy By Giles Parkinson on 7 August 2017 Singapore-based renewable energy developer Equis Energy has announced plans to build a 1,000MW solar farm – which would be Australia’s largest – in the heart of Queensland’s coal and gas region in the Surat Basin.
The Wandoan solar farm, to be built near the town of the same name, adds considerably to the huge pipeline of wind and solar projects in Queensland, which now stands at more than 4,000MW.
Wandoan won approval from the Western Downs Council late last week and will begin construction when the first of several negotiations on off-take agreements is complete.
The $1.5 billion project is expected to be built in stages, and Equis could go bigger – this plant is likely to cover 1,400 hectares but is has more than 5000 hectares available.
Equis is taking advantage of existing infrastructure, including new transmission assets, which has been built to support the gas industry. Demand for energy is highest in the region because of the gas export industry.
Equis is also planning to build the 127MW Tailem Bend solar project in South Australia, to be built near a 28M diesel plant owned by Snowy Hydro.
That solar farm will begin construction when negotiations for contracts are concluded, and Equis also has an interest in the 150MW Collinsville north solar farm, where PPAs are also under construction, and other projects in the pipeline in South Australia and NSW.
All project are considered to be “battery storage ready”…….
How Congress Is Cementing Trump’s Anti-Climate Orders into Law These efforts are mostly flying under the radar, but they could short-circuit lawsuits and make it harder to restore environmental protections. Inside Climate News, Marianne Lavelle 31 JULY 17,
How NRDC will fight Trump’s attack on our environment.
President Donald Trump marvels at his own velocity when he boasts about dismantling the Obama climate legacy. “I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before,” he said at a recent White House event.
But while Trump focuses on speed, his allies in Congress appear increasingly concerned about the durability of the president’s fossil fuel directives.
In recent weeks, they have advanced a handful of legislative measures that echo and extend various presidential orders meant to boost coal, oil and gas production and set aside consideration of climate change.
These moves may seem redundant, but they could provide bulletproof armor during future challenges to Trump’s agenda.
“They are … covering their bases by trying to legislate the rolling back of these safeguards because the process to repeal, undo or rewrite a regulation is as lengthy as the public process that helped establish the standard in the first place,” explained Melinda Pierce, chief lobbyist for the Sierra Club. “And, of course, any attempt to roll back environmental or public health standards can and will be challenged in court.”
“The Trump administration is attacking every environmental and health protection we have,” said Sara Jordan, legislative representative for the League of Conservation Voters. “If these legislative proposals get passed, it will make it that much harder for the next administration to restore environmental protections.”
That’s why Congressional Republicans are racing to write his instructions into law.
“We need to put the legislative stamp of approval on what the Trump administration is doing,” said Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) during a recent debate on the House floor.
The House already has voted to fast-track Trump’s withdrawal of a clean water rule and to streamline future environmental reviews over cross-border pipelines like Keystone XL. Now, GOP members are pushing forward legislation to bolster Trump’s revival of federal coal leasing, and to bar government regulatory agencies from considering the future damages caused by greenhouse gas pollution.
‘A Very Slippery Slope to Government by Fiat’
The courts have already started chipping away at the Trump administration’s edicts. A federal appeals court ruled July 3 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot simply suspend an Obama-era rule on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. And a federal judge ruled last month that the Army Corps of Engineers had moved too hastily to permit the Dakota Access pipeline project, without considering environmental justice impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
Environmental groups, states, and tribes have planned or filed lawsuits over virtually every aspect of the Trump energy agenda. “We’re going to meet them in court, we’re going to sue them, and we’re going to prevail,” Mitchell Bernard, chief counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a video the environmental group produced.
But Congress could short-circuit that litigation strategy with measures like the provision passed by the House last week allowing withdrawal of Obama’s “Waters of the U.S.” rule without public notice, comment or any of the other requirements that apply to federal departments and agencies. The Trump administration already has begun rescinding the rule, which was written to protect wetlands from dredge and fill material and created new permitting and reporting requirements that the oil, gas and coal industry abhor. The rider that the GOP tucked into an $800 billion budget bill would hurry the repeal and reduce possibilities for legal challenge……….
These Efforts Are Flying Under the Public Radar
Most of the legislative proposals shoring up the Trump energy agenda originate in the House, and their fate is unclear in the Senate, which already has rejected an effort to undo Obama-era methane regulations by legislative fiat, and where appropriators are less tolerant of budget riders.
Still, Senate negotiators may feel pressured to go along with some provisions to pass budget legislation that would keep the government up and running after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
Senate supporters of the Trump energy agenda already have introduced their own version of the “Ozone Standards Implementation Act” that the House passed on July 18. That bill would help EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt delay implementation of the Obama administration’s standards regulating smog emissions for a year. The House-passed legislation would give states until 2025 to comply with the revised standards and would change long-standing law to allow the EPA to revise the standards every 10 years instead of every five.
Both the NRDC and a coalition of environmental, health and labor groups have published online running tallies of budget provisions that affect regulations, but they lament that the Congressional efforts to cement the Trump agenda have not received attention while the health care repeal effort and Russia investigations crowd out media coverage.
Trump falls flat with climate change retreat, Markets, not politics, drive energy sector’s push to cut greenhouse gas emission Ft.com by: Ed Crooks, 7 Aug 17, US Industry and Energy Editor On Friday, the US state department submitted a notification to the UN that the administration intended to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement reached in 2015. The statement, confirming the decision that President Donald Trump announced in June, is at one level momentous. The world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is quitting a deal that the governments of leading European countries have described as “a vital instrument for our planet”. In terms of the consequences for the global energy industry, however, its impact has so far been negligible.
Of course, the full implications have yet to play out. But in the nine weeks since Mr Trump announced that leaving the agreement would be “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty”, energy companies around the world have been making plans that suggest their views on the outlook have not changed in any significant way.
The most important reason for that is that moves towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions are going with the grain of energy markets, regardless of political decisions. The plunging costs of renewable power and electricity storage, the rise of electric cars, the availability of cheap gas for power generation, and the prospect of abundant supplies of oil, for a while at least, all point towards investment decisions that would curb emissions.
The comments from oil companies reporting earnings over recent weeks have provided a stark illustration of that point. For years, environmental groups have been raising concerns about stranded assets: projects that cannot be viable in a world where greenhouse gas emissions are constrained.
When they first started making that argument, with oil at about $100 per barrel, it was often a tough sell, says Andrew Grant of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which has pioneered analysis in this area. Now, he adds, they are “pushing at an open door”.
The central idea is that in a world where fossil fuel consumption is curtailed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, investment in high-cost assets is likely to be wasted………..
Whatever happens to international climate policy in the aftermath of Mr Trump’s decision, unless some other shock comes along to shake the industry out of its current mindset, downward pressure on costs and caution on investment decisions are likely to remain the prevailing rules. https://www.ft.com/content/2f687cfe-7abb-11e7-9108-edda0bcbc928
How The Dream Of America’s ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ Fizzled, WBUR, August 06, 2017, Molly Samuel A decade ago, utility executives and policymakers dreamed of a future powered by a new generation of cheap, safe nuclear reactors. Projects to expand existing nuclear plants in South Carolina and Georgia were supposed to be the start of the “nuclear renaissance.”
But following the decision last week by two utilities to scrap the expansion at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina, that vision is in tatters. There’s now just one nuclear expansion project left in the country, its future is also uncertain.
That remaining project is an expansion at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plantin eastern Georgia. As recently as five years ago, then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu visited Plant Vogtle and declared the project the start of “the resurgence of America’s nuclear industry” and a critical part of President Obama’s energy strategy………
Both the Georgia and South Carolina nuclear projects racked up billions of dollars in cost overruns and delays. Then earlier this year, Westinghouse, which was building the reactors in both states, went bankrupt, blaming high construction costs for its problems.
Why doesn’t this otherwise excellent article mention green energy supplied by Powershop? I’m poor and I use renewable energy, (on scheme that supports community projects, too) from Powershop.
Poor households are locked out of green energy, unless governments help, REneweconomy, By Alan Pears on 7 August 2017, The Conversation
The underlying issue is the fundamental change in energy solutions. As I pointed out in my previous column, we are moving away from investment by governments and large businesses in big power stations and centralised supply, and towards a distributed, diversified and more complex energy system. As a result, there is a growing focus on “behind the meter” technologies that save, store or produce energy.
What this means is that anyone who does not have access to capital, or is uninformed, disempowered or passive risks being disadvantaged – unless governments act.
The reality is that energy-efficient appliances and buildings, rooftop solar, and increasingly energy storage, are cost-effective. They save households money through energy savings, improved health, and improved performance in comparison with buying grid electricity or gas. But if you can’t buy them, you can’t benefit.
In the past, financial institutions loaned money to governments or big businesses to build power stations and gas supply systems. Now we need mechanisms to give all households and businesses access to loans to fund the new energy system.
Households that cannot meet commercial borrowing criteria, or are disempowered – such as tenants, those under financial stress, or those who are disengaged for other reasons – need help.
Antinuclear 