With help from floating data-collectors, a new study reveals the impact greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion are having on the Southern Ocean. Inside Climate News, Sabrina Shankman SEP 24, 2018 The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is warming at an alarming rate—twice that of the rest of the world’s oceans. Now, researchers have developed more powerful evidence pointing to the human causes.
Great Barrier Reef scientists told to focus on projects to make government look good
Emails tabled in Senate inquiry recommended ‘trade-offs’ to Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Guardian, Ben Smee @BenSmee 26 Sep 2018
Great Barrier Reef scientists were told they would need to make “trade-offs” to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, including focusing on projects that would look good for the government and encourage more corporate donations, emails tabled in the Senate reveal.
The documents, including cabinet briefing notes, contain significant new details about the workings of the foundation and the government decision to award it a $443m grant, including:
- The executives of mining, gas and chemicals companies – and international financial houses that actively back fossil-fuel projects – were among the guests at a six-star retreat hosted by the foundation less than a month after the grant was announced;
- The media companies Foxtel and Fairfax and the tech giant Google are among a tightly held list of donors to the foundation;
- The only CSIRO employee contacted about the grant before the announcement in April was in Patagonia, and did not get the email. Documents have previously revealed that the government’s peak science agency was cut out of the decision to award the grant;
- In August, as scrutiny of the grant intensified, public servants pushed to block a long-planned meeting between the then science minister, Michaelia Cash, and the head of the foundation, Anna Marsden, because of concern about the “optics”.
Emails sent by staff at the Australian Institute of Marine Science outline how government expectations, the ability to leverage private donations and public perceptions “may drive the [foundation] to prioritise shorter-term research initiatives in order to demonstrate progress and return on investment”.
“Where it becomes challenging is that … interventions with the largest future benefit also take the longest to develop,” the institute’s executive director of strategic policy, David Mead, wrote in an email to colleagues.
“Among other trade-offs, we will need to determine to what degree we focus on quick wins or whether we progress longer-term strategic interventions and accept that we will only partially progress them during the next five years (perhaps with little outward visibility of success/progress).”
The emails also reveal an initial state of uncertainty about how a $100m allocation for reef restoration and adaptation would be handled……. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/26/great-barrier-reef-scientists-told-to-focus-on-projects-to-make-government-look-good?CMP=share_btn_tw.
Greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion causing Antarctic Ocean to heat up
What’s Causing Antarctica’s Ocean to Heat Up? New Study Points to 2 Human Sources
Adani coalmine: most Queenslanders want water licence revoked, poll finds
‘A poll conducted for Lock the Gate found a majority of Queensland voters want water rights taken off Adani and given to farmers. Guardian, Ben Smee www.theguardian.com/profile/ben-smee @BenSmee , 23 Sep 2018 A majority of Queensland’s voters want the government to cancel the Adani mining company’s 60-year unlimited water extraction licence
amid growing concern about the severity of the drought.
‘Polling conducted by ReachTel for the environmental group Lock the Gate shows concern about water extraction by Adani, and the impact on agriculture, is strong among conservative voters.
‘Almost 70% of all voters agreed the licence,
to extract groundwater for the Carmichael coalmine,
should be revoked to safeguard water for farmers. …
‘The national coordinator of the Lock the Gate Alliance, Carmel Flint, said the results showed “incredible support across the political spectrum
to put water above mining and look after Queensland farmers”.
The national coordinator of the Lock the Gate Alliance, Carmel Flint, said
the results showed “incredible support across the political spectrum
to put water above mining and look after Queensland farmers”.
‘“I think this really does reveal that as this drought really bites,
people don’t accept that we can hand over vast quantities of water to Adani,” she said. … ‘
Read much much more of BenSmee’s comprehensive,groundbreaking, interesting article:
www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/23/adani-coalmine-most-queenslanders-want-water-licence-revoked-poll-finds
Labor holds meeting with industry, on emissions reduction, as COAL-ition holds private dinner with coal-nuclear lobbyist Trevor St Baker
Pro-coal Coalition MPs schedule private dinner to discuss ‘Australia’s energy future’ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/20/pro-coal-coalition-mps-schedule-dinner-to-discuss-australias-energy-future. Monash Forum sets up dinner with Trevor St Baker Trevor St Baker who is director of SMR Nuclear Technology company. as business tells Labor to stick with national energy guarantee, Guardian, Katharine Murphy Political editor@murpharoo 20 Sep 2018 The pro-coal Monash Forum is attempting to convene a private dinner when federal parliament resumes in mid-October with Trevor St Baker, part-owner of the Vales Point coal generator and founder of the business electricity retailer ERM Power.
Australia’s Minister For The Coal Lobby, Angus Taylor’s false statement about carbon emissions
Claim we’re on track to meet emissions targets is false, New Daily, James Fernyhough,
Here is what he wrote in the Australian Financial Review on Tuesday:
“[E]missions reductions are the least of our problems, with every prospect we will reach the 26 per cent reduction below 2005 levels ahead of schedule and without interventions.”
This, he implied, justified the Morrison government’s decision to do nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and focus instead exclusively on price and reliability.
But The New Daily looked into Mr Taylor’s claim, and the evidence suggests it is in one sense downright false, and in another seriously misleading.
Let’s address the seriously misleading aspect first.
Under the Paris Agreement, Australia has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
According to Mr Taylor’s department, Australia is on track to woefully miss the 2030 target.
On page 11 of this document from December last year, the Department of Environment and Energy projects that if no new emissions-reduction policies are implemented (as none have been), our greenhouse emissions will be just 5 per cent below 2005 levels – not 26 per cent, as Mr Taylor seems to claim.
Mr Taylor’s figures appear at a glance to be off by a massive 21 percentage points……….
The Morrison government has scrapped the NEG – the policy that triggered Malcolm Turnbull’s downfall – and has made it clear it will not replace it with anything.
So we are once more back to where we were – on track to miss all our emissions reductions targets.
Minister Taylor’s office did not respond when presented with the evidence that his statement was false. https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2018/09/18/energy-ministers-claim-carbon-emissions-false/
Oh dear! Coal-loving Angus Taylor’s electorate wants action on climate change
Energy minister’s electorate backs higher emissions reduction target, poll shows
ReachTel poll of Angus Taylor’s voters finds 42.3% want Australia to cut emissions more deeply, Guardian, Katharine Murphy Political editor@murpharoo19 Sep 2018 More voters in the electorate of the new energy minister, Angus Taylor, support an emissions reduction target for electricity and a higher national target than the Paris commitment than oppose those positions.
12.5b litres of water for Adani coal project – no environmental impact statement needed
Adani plans to draw 12.5b litres of water and there will be no environmental impact statement, ABC By national environment, science and technology reporter Michael Slezak 18 Sept 18 Adani’s plan to take 12.5 billion litres of water from a river in drought-stricken Queensland is a step closer to happening, according to environmental groups, after the Federal Government decided the project did not need a full environmental impact assessment.
Key points:
- Federal Government decides Adani water plan does not need environmental impact statement
- Mining giant wants to take 12.5 billion litres of water from Queensland river
- Environmentalists say the move is “appalling and dangerous”
- Adani says it will work with Government to “complete the required assessment”
To build and run its proposed Carmichael coal mine, Adani wants to extract water from the Suttor River in central Queensland for up to 60 years, expand a dam there, and build a 60-kilometre pipeline to transport the water to its mine.
Federal law requires that if coal mines are likely to have a significant impact on the country’s water resources, they must undergo a full environmental assessment, which would be scrutinised by an independent scientific committee.
But Adani argued that “water trigger” only applied if the water was used in the extraction of the coal, and that the water they would take from this river would not be used that way, but instead for practices like washing coal and dust management.
Environmental lawyers have previously said that argument does not hold water.
On Monday, the federal Department of the Environment decided the water trigger did not apply to the project and that it did not need to undergo a full assessment with an environmental impact statement………..
Water project will ‘avoid full scrutiny’
“As one of the driest continents on Earth, water is the lifeblood of inland Australia,” anti-Adani campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation Christian Slattery said.
“It is disappointing that while Queensland suffers through severe drought, the water infrastructure for Adani’s massive polluting coal mine will avoid full scrutiny under Australia’s national environment laws,” he said.
Anti-mining group Lock The Gate Alliance described the move as “appalling and dangerous”.
“This is another special deal for Adani that puts our water resources at risk during a terrible drought and hangs Queensland graziers and communities out to dry,” spokesperson for Lock the Gate Alliance Carmel Flint said.
Arianne Wilkinson, a lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia, said the decision to submit Adani’s proposal to the weaker form of assessment was disappointing.
“Their proposal should be given the full assessment under federal environmental law,” she said…….http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/adani-plan-for-12.5b-litres-of-water-to-avoid-impact-assessment/10262764
Adani’s Carmichael coal project massively downsized, but still a climate threat
Adani’s rail line cut shows project is on life support but still a threat to climate, Guardian
The short answer is this is the latest in a string of changes that have massively downsized both the Carmichael project and the bigger plans to develop the Galilee Basin. The longer answer is that, despite optimistic talk about a long-term future for coal, the writing is on the wall. The only way to make money out of coal is to do so quickly, before the present gradual decline turns into a collapse.
The original Adani proposal, put forward in 2010, was for a mine producing 60m tonnes of coal a year. The coal would be transported along a completely new 388km standard gauge rail line to a newly built terminal at Adani’s Abbot Point coal terminal. The coal would then be shipped to Adani’s rapidly expanding fleet of coal-fired power stations in India, most notably the 4,620MW plant at Mundra. The oft-repeated claims of 10,000 jobs and billions in revenue (much inflated by spurious economic analysis) refer to this initial proposal.
The rail and port expansion would allow the shipping of Adani’s 60m tonnes a year. In addition, it would allow the opening up of the entire Galilee Basin, with potential exports of up to 300m tonnes a year. Other proposed mines in the region are owned by firms such as GVK Hancock and Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal. Such a development would make it far more difficult for the world to reduce carbon dioxide emissions enough to stabilise the global climate.
As prospects for coal declined, and finance dried up, however, the project was cut back in 2017 to a first stage, with planned exports of 25m tonnes a year. Initially, the rail and port components of the project were left unchanged, with the idea that they would be used in subsequent stages. In early August, however, Adani dropped the idea of building a second port terminal, opting instead to ship Carmichael coal through its existing terminal, which is badly underutilised.
The other shoe dropped on Thursday with the announcement that the massive new rail line would be replaced with a connection to Aurizon’s existing line. Meanwhile, staff numbers at Adani’s Townsville headquarters have been slashed.
The combined effect of the cuts is to keep the Adani project alive for the moment, while closing off any realistic prospect of a massive expansion in the Galilee Basin as a whole. That’s a decidedly mixed prospect. On the one hand, 25m additional tonnes of carbon a year would be bad for the global environment. On the other hand, the catastrophic prospect of 300m tonnes a year appears to have been averted. ………
the future for coal looks bleaker than ever. The “pipeline” of future coal plants in China and India has shrunk massively, with cancellations far outweighing new announcements……..https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2018/sep/16/adanis-rail-line-cut-shows-project-is-on-life-support-but-still-a-threat-to-climate
Scott Morrison’s lump of coal not enough: he needs a fairy tale on climate change
Scott Morrison needs a plan to cut emissions but all he has is a fairytale
Contrary to Scott Morrison’s deceptive boast – Australia is on track to miss Paris climate targets
 Australia on track to miss Paris climate targets as emissions hit record highs https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/14/australia-on-track-to-miss-paris-climate-targets-as-emissions-hit-record-highs
NDEVR Environmental data suggests Australia will miss targets by 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide under current trajectory, Guardian, Lisa Cox, 14 Sept 18, [good graphs on original] Australia remains on track to miss its Paris climate targets as carbon emissions continue to soar, according to new data. The figures from NDEVR Environmental for the year up to the end of June 2018 show the country’s emissions were again the highest on record when unreliable data from the land use and forestry sectors was excluded. It is the third consecutive year for record-breaking emissions. NDEVR replicates the federal government’s national greenhouse gas inventory (NGGI) quarterly reports but releases them months ahead of the official data. Previous NDEVR figures have been within 1% of the official figures when eventually released. The government has yet to publish any emissions data for 2018. Its last update was for the year to December 2017, which it published in May and showed Australia’s emissions continue to soar. NDEVR’s report projects Australia will miss its Paris targets by about a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide if emissions continue on their current trajectory. It projects that emissions, excluding land use, will be 558m tonnes, the highest since records began in 2002. It finds that transport emissions were the highest on record in the final quarter of the 2018 financial year and continue to rise. NDEVR said this was due to the rapid increase in the use of diesel fuel in both passenger cars and heavy transport. Emissions from stationary energy and fugitive emissions continue to trend upwards. The rise in stationary emissions is mostly attributable to energy industries excluding electricity generation NDEVR’s report projects a drop in emissions from the electricity sector for the final quarter of the 2018 financial year because of a reduction in total electricity generation in the national electricity market states and an increase in generation from renewables. But Matt Drum, the managing director of NDEVR Environmental, said Australia was still not on track to meet its Paris targets. “Tracking the Paris trend line, they’re still heading north and missing Paris by a long way and our 2050 two-degree target by an even greater margin,” he said. “The data’s telling us clearly again that we’re not on a trajectory to meet our targets, there’s no effective policy to meet our targets, but we’re still hearing commentary from the government that we’re on track to meet our targets.” |
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Darebin Council, Victoria leads the way on climate change action
It’s not too late to act on climate change, The Age, Paul Gilding 11 Sept 18, People engaged in the climate debate are often bewildered by society’s lack of response. How can we ignore such overwhelming evidence of an existential threat to social and economic stability?
………. What is relatively new is that scientists and experts are increasingly acknowledging that nothing less than a massive global mobilisation on a WWII scale is required to address the catastrophic risks posed.
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and a senior advisor to Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union recently argued that “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.”
All around us examples of what these consequences might be are increasingly tangible. Whether it be wild fires in northern Sweden, refugee crises, extreme ice melt in the Arctic, submerged airports in Japan or severe droughts, people are feeling climate change live……………
Darebin in Melbourne. This local council looked rationally at what the science told them – that we face a crisis and the only logical response is to declare a climate emergency. And so they did. In consultation with their community, they then developed the Darebin Climate Emergency Plan.
Why is this significant? Because this is how systems change. Ideas take hold and spread. Darebin has since been followed in the US with a small but growing list of elected bodies in regions and cities also declaring a climate emergency. First came Montgomery County, Maryland , since joined by Richmond, Berkeley and Los Angeles in California, and Hoboken, New Jersey. This is not emerging spontaneously, but through active organising by groups dedicated to the task like The Climate Mobilisation.
Yes, it’s frustrating that these things take time. Therefore, knowing we can still “win” is key. Towards this end I co-wrote nearly 10 years ago a journal paper, The One Degree War Plan, with Professor Jorgen Randers, showing how achieving 1 degree of warming was surprisingly realistic with a WWII style mobilisation. Recently along the same lines, The Climate Mobilisation developed a “Victory Plan” to show what a WWII style economic mobilisation across the USA could look like.
So on the surface, Darebin Council inviting a group of experts like myself to suburban Melbourne to discuss what a climate emergency means might not seem much. But it is a crucial part of a process whereby we first normalise the idea that we face an existential crisis. Next we will come to accept that the only rational response is a WWII-like economic mobilisation to eliminate global net carbon dioxide emissions within a decade or so.
Find this hard to imagine? It is. But as we learnt from Churchill in 1940, when we shift our thinking to “what is necessary”, what we can achieve is quite extraordinary. Or as Nelson Mandela said: “It always seems impossible, until it’s done.”
Paul Gilding is a Fellow at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/it-s-not-too-late-to-act-on-climate-change-20180911-p50318.html?crpt=index
Australian Communities Foundation Divests $90 Million From Fossil Fuels
A leading Australian foundation is entirely divesting its $90 million corpus investment portfolio from fossil fuels to focus on environmentally sustainable investments. Pro Bono News, 12th September 2018, Luke Michael, Journalist, Australian Communities Foundation has transitioned its portfolio to an ethical investment approach over the past three years, and on Wednesday pledged to fully divest from fossil fuel investments.ACF CEO Maree Sidey told Pro Bono News the change was driven by their donors.
“We made that move because our donors have very strong values around social justice and taking a sustainable approach to the environment,” Sidey said.
“And we were asked by our donors to really start thinking about our investments and how we were aligning our investments with the social outcomes that we wanted to see through our distributions.”
ACF’s commitment means no new investments in the top 200 oil, gas, or coal companies, and selling any of these existing investments within five years.
The organisation will turn its investment focus to climate solutions such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and water efficiency…………
The commitment is part of a global DivestInvest announcement at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco.
The global DivestInvest movement has commitments from almost 900 organisations – with combined assets of $6.2 trillion – to stop investing in fossil-fuel companies.
Clara Vondrich, global director of DivestInvest Philanthropy, welcomed ACF’s commitment, noting that “any mission-based philanthropy that pours grant dollars into programming while remaining invested in fossil fuels is treating symptoms while ignoring the cause”. https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2018/09/australian-communities-foundation-divests-90-million-fossil-fuels/
Senator Matt Canavan ridicules climate health report, days after climate health expert wins Liberal safe seat
Canavan ridicules climate health report, days after climate health expert wins Liberal safe seat, REneweconomy, 12 September 2018 Stakeholders – including from government, universities, the health sector, and aged and childcare workers – also voiced concerns about food and water insecurity, malnutrition, worsening chronic, cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, and children’s health and development.
But Canavan, who appears to have a new role in the Coalition Cabinet as minister for Not Taking Climate Science Seriously, dismissed the work as seemingly drug influenced, and based on “imaginary” threats.
“This report reads like it was written during poetry slam night at the happy herb cafe,” the senator reportedly told The Courier-Mail, a Murdoch newspaper, on Wednesday……..https://reneweconomy.com.au/canavan-ridicules-climate-health-report-days-after-climate-health-expert-wins-liberal-safe-seat-73431/
68% of Australians want govt to set genuine emissions targets to meet our Paris climate commitments
Climate poll shows Morrison politically vulnerable as more voters back action https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/12/climate-poll-shows-morrison-politically-vulnerable-as-more-voters-back-action
Number of Australians concerned about impact of climate change and wanting coal phased out rises, Guardian, Katharine Murphy Political editor @murpharoo12 Sep 2018 A growing number of Australians are concerned about the impact of climate change, and more than half of a survey of 1,756 voters believe the Morrison government needs to stay in the Paris agreement, despite Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US.
A study tracking voter sentiment for more than a decade, funded first by the Climate Institute and now by the Australia Institute, finds 73% (up from 66% in 2017) of respondents concerned about climate change, and a clear majority, 68%, believes the government should set domestic targets to comply with our Paris commitments.
An increased 67% want coal-fired power to be phased out within 20 years, up from 61% in 2017.
The findings suggest the Morrison government is politically vulnerable on climate change at the next federal election. The prime minister has declared Australia will not pull out of Paris but also abandoned the national energy guarantee that imposed an emissions reduction target on the electricity sector. Continue reading
Australia is going backwards on climate change action, as Morrison govt, Trump-like, spruiks “success”
Just before Christmas last year, the Australian Government published a report which suggests that — without significant policy change — Australia will miss that commitment by a long way. Emissions in 2020 will be just 5 per cent below 2005 levels, according to the official projections and — without further measures to cut them — emissions will grow by 3.5 per cent on 2020 levels in the 10 years to 2030.
In other words, we’ll go backwards in the coming decade..
There’s a certain Trump-like quality to Australia’s discourse on emissions reductions, ABC 11 Sep 18 By Stephen Long ,
It seems to be high on the list of the Morrison Government’s talking points: the claim that we’re “on track” to meet our commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris climate accord.
The PM reckons we’ll meet the targets “in a canter”.
“We’re on track to achieve them,” the new Environment Minister, ex-mining industry lawyer and mining executive Melissa Price, also reassured radio listeners, adding that she supports the construction of new coal-fired power stations.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne — back from meeting Pacific Islands leaders whose nations literally face an existential threat from climate change — joined the chorus, as did Energy Minister Angus Taylor.
Australia is on track to “meet and exceed” the Paris commitments, according to Trade Minister Simon Birmingham.
“We are already more than meeting the 26 per cent that was set down in the Paris agreement,” National Party leader Michael McCormack confidently told David Spears on Sky News, though when pressed, he was a bit unsure about what information that claim was based on. Continue reading
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