Young people rebel on climate

The Age, Nicola Philp, 20 Aug 21,

Some young Australians are now so desperately unhappy with government inaction they feel being arrested and fined is actually less of a cost than the cost to their future if nothing is done.

”…………….the Geo Coral set sail into the ocean towards the King Island region this week to conduct seismic testing, so clearly our governments cannot be serious about their climate targets.

Such news, following the latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, creates ever strengthening ripples of anxiety, particularly among our young people who fear for their future.

Some are now so desperately unhappy with government inaction and the cost on their future they feel being arrested and fined is actually less of a cost than the cost to their future if nothing is done. And so, some took to the water, while others chained themselves to fences and the ship itself.

These protesters want their governments to listen and look beyond the short-term dollar and career stepladder of politics. They are rightfully demanding that the current generations in charge consider what our actions will cost the futures of those still to come………

Governments showing such a broad lack of respect and care is beginning to have very significant consequences for the young and yet-to-be-born generations……….

 https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/young-people-jettisoned-on-climate-vaccines-and-housing-20210819-p58k5i.html—

August 21, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment

Climate change has already hit Australia.

Climate change has already hit Australia. Unless we act now, a hotter, drier and more dangerous future awaits, IPCC warns  https://theconversation.com/climate-change-has-already-hit-australia-unless-we-act-now-a-hotter-drier-and-more-dangerous-future-awaits-ipcc-warns-165396?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2010%202021%20-%202026619923&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2010%202021%20-%202026619923+CID_a4c10fc2998953c0ef465aaf49de1468&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Climate%20change%20has%20already%20hit%20Australia%20Unless%20we%20act%20now%20a%20hotter%20drier%20and%20more%20dangerous%20future%20awaits%20IPCC%20warns

Michael Grose Climate projections scientist, CSIRO, Joelle GergisSenior Lecturer in Climate Science, Australian National University, Pep Canadell, Chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO, Roshanka Ranasinghe, Professor of Climate Change impacts and Coastal Risk, 9 Aug 21,

Australia is experiencing widespread, rapid climate change not seen for thousands of years and may warm by 4℃ or more this century, according to a highly anticipated report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The assessment, released on Monday, also warns of unprecedented increases in climate extremes such as bushfires, floods and drought. But it says deep, rapid emissions cuts could spare Australia, and the world, from the most severe warming and associated harms.

The report is the sixth produced by the IPCC since it was founded in 1988 and provides more regional information than any previous version. This gives us a clearer picture of how climate change will play out in Australia specifically.

It confirms the effects of human-caused climate change have well and truly arrived in Australia. This includes in the region of the East Australia Current, where the ocean is warming at a rate more than four times the global average.

We are climate scientists with expertise across historical climate change, climate projections, climate impacts and the carbon budget. We have been part of the international effort to produce the IPCC report over the past three years.

The report finds even under a moderate emissions scenario, the global effects of climate change will worsen significantly over the coming years and decades. Every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the likelihood and severity of many extremes. That means every effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions matters.

Australia is, without question, warming

Australia has warmed by about 1.4℃ since 1910. The IPCC assessment concludes the extent of warming in both Australia and globally are impossible to explain without accounting for the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities.

The report introduces the concept of Climate Impact-Drivers (CIDs): 30 climate averages, extremes and events that create climate impacts. These include heat, cold, drought and flood.

The report confirms global warming is driving a significant increase in the intensity and frequency of extremely hot temperatures in Australia, as well as a decrease in almost all cold extremes. The IPCC noted with high confidence that recent extreme heat events in Australia were made more likely or more severe due to human influence.

These events include:

• 
  the Australian summer of 2012–13, also known as the Angry Summer, when more than 70% of Australia experienced extreme temperatures
• the Brisbane heatwave in 2014
• extreme heat preceding the 2018 Queensland fires
• the heat leading into the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20.

The IPCC report notes very high confidence in further warming and heat extremes through the 21st century – the extent of which depends on global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

If global average warming is limited to 1.5℃ this century, Australia would warm to between 1.4℃ to 1.8℃. If global average warming reaches 4℃ this century, Australia would warm to between 3.9℃ and 4.8℃ .

The IPCC says as the planet warms, future heatwaves in Australia – and globally – will be hotter and last longer. Conversely, cold extremes will be both less intense and frequent.

Hotter temperatures, combined with reduced rainfall, will make parts of Australia more arid. A drying climate can lead to reduced river flows, drier soils, mass tree deaths, crop damage, bushfires and drought.

The southwest of Western Australia remains a globally notable hotspot for drying attributable to human influence. The IPCC says this drying is projected to continue as emissions rise and the climate warms. In southern and eastern Australia, drying in winter and spring is also likely to continue. This phenomenon is depicted in the graphic below.[on original]

Climate extremes on the rise

Heat and drying are not the only climate extremes set to hit Australia in the coming decades. The report also notes:

• observed and projected increases in Australia’s dangerous fire weather
• a projected increase in heavy and extreme rainfall in most places in Australia, particularly in the north
• a projected increase in river flood risk almost everywhere in Australia.

Under a warmer climate, extreme rainfall in a single hour or day can become more intense or more frequent, even in areas where the average rainfall declines.

For the first time, the IPCC report provides regional projections of coastal hazards due to sea level rise, changing coastal storms and coastal erosion – changes highly relevant to beach-loving Australia.

This century, for example, sandy shorelines in places such as eastern Australia are projected to retreat by more than 100 metres, under moderate or high emissions pathways.

Hotter, more acidic oceans

The IPCC report says globally, climate change means oceans are becoming more acidic and losing oxygen. Ocean currents are becoming more variable and salinity patterns – the parts of the ocean that are saltiest and less salty – are changing.

It also means sea levels are rising and the oceans are becoming warmer. This is leading to an increase in marine heatwaves such as those which have contributed to mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in recent decades.

Notably, the region of the East Australia Current which runs south along the continent’s east coast is warming at a rate more than four times the global average.

The phenomenon is playing out in all regions with so-called “western boundary currents” – fast, narrow ocean currents found in all major ocean gyres. This pronounced warming is affecting marine ecosystems and aquaculture and is projected to continue.

Where to from here?

Like all regions of the world, Australia is already feeling the effects of a changing climate.

The IPCC confirms there is no going back from some changes in the climate system. However, the consequences can be slowed, and some effects stopped, through strong, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.

And now is the time to start adapting to climate change at a large scale, through serious planning and on-ground action.

August 9, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment

Australian cities not prepared for the coming heatwaves- poor urban planning

The heat is coming and we are not prepared for it.

It is not just that large houses on small blocks leave no room for trees,….. The little space left between them provides no room for recreation and serve to increase heat, with side-passages often home to air-conditioning systems that spew heated air across dividing fences.

When he looks at new developments on the fringes of Australian cities, Pfautsch says residents have been abandoned to wholly predictable heat extremes caused by global warming but exacerbated by poor planning regulation.

We’re ending up with dark-roofed, back-to-back, nose-to-front, housing suburbs on the outskirts of Melbourne. And if you add dark, asphalt and concrete surfaces you’re going to get really hot suburbs,”

Why a killer US heatwave points to a stifling future for our cities. Brisbane Times, By Nick O’Malley and Miki Perkins, July 17, 2021 It was the hellish evening temperatures that finally caused the authorities to start busing the homeless into heat shelters where they had access to fans, air-conditioning and water.

Three hours from sundown last Saturday the temperature in Las Vegas peaked at 47.2 degrees, equalling a record set in 2017. By dawn, the temperature had bottomed out at a stifling 34 degrees and begun to rise again.

One person was treated for burns after walking on a pavement and the homeless were bussed from an outdoor shelter to indoor cooling centres in response.

West of the city at Furnace Creek in Death Valley a temperature of 54.4 degrees was recorded. Experts are still checking the reading and debating over whether this was the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth.

In the town of Lytton in British Columbia, a Canadian heat record was set at the end of last month when the temperature hit 49.6 degrees and lingered up there over three days. Authorities attributed hundreds of deaths across the region to the heat, even before wildfire arrived and burnt most of the village to the ground, killing two more.

Before the flames approached one local, Lorna Fandrich, told the New York Times that she’d noticed green leaves dropping off the trees, apparently unable to tolerate the heat. On the coast to the west, millions of mussels and oysters cooked and died in superheated shallow waters.

From his home outside Sacramento Ken Pimlott, the recently retired head of Cal Fire, the agency responsible for fighting wildfires across the state of California, watched on with dread. The height of the northern fire season, he noted, has not even arrived yet.

These temperatures, Pimlott told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, are no longer outliers, but spikes in a new normal in a world not prepared to manage them.

The temperatures have already extended the North American fire season, causing exhaustion among crews who can’t get enough rest from the fire lines and difficulties in keeping up with maintenance demands on equipment. Aircraft once shared with nations like Australia were under greater demand as fire seasons overlapped, he said.

Pimlott’s dread was shared in Australia.

Dr Sebastian Pfautsch, a specialist on urban heat at Western Sydney University, says though Australian attention has drifted from the terrible summer of 2019 and 2020, he fears for the future of residents of some suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne.

The heat is coming, he says, and we are not prepared for it.

Stephen Livesley is an associate professor in forest sciences at the University of Melbourne, and an expert on the benefits of urban forests. “It’s possible we’re going to end up with large neighbourhoods which people in 20 or 30 years’ time will simply avoid,” he says.

This concern is not misjudged, says Professor Christian Jakob, a Monash University atmospheric scientist.

His analysis of the heatwave that struck North America shows that it originated with an unremarkable rainshower on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, not far from Japan.

The shower caused an atmospheric disturbance that in turn created what scientists call a Rossby wave, which was guided towards North America by the jet stream, amplifying as it travelled before breaking upon the shores of the Pacific Northwest.

There the wave caused a high-pressure system. As Jakob explains, air heats under pressure. On the ground, temperatures soared. What caused the temperatures to reach such extremes, though, and what made the system linger long enough to cause such misery and destruction beneath it, cannot yet be explained by science says Jakob.

Until better computer models are created all we can know is that as the climate heats due to global warming such heatwaves will in some areas increase in intensity and duration.

Areas particularly prone to the phenomenon include northern Europe, North America and south-eastern Australia, he says

On the day that Penrith became for a time the hottest place on earth, with temperatures hitting 48.9 degrees on January 4 last year, Keith Heggart’s air conditioner conked out by midday. The manual said it sometimes did that in extreme heat and recommended hosing it down, but due to bushfires water use was banned. Heggart and his young family closed windows against the smoke and the blinds against the sun and sheltered in the living room where a fan pushed around the hot air.

Watching the news from America these past few weeks, Heggart has fretted about the summers to come. His street in Penrith is older than others and there is some shade, some gaps between the houses, but when he looks at the new developments nearby, he despairs.

“There are no trees, there is no shade,” he says. “You could reach out your window and touch the house next door.

When he looks at new developments on the fringes of Australian cities, Pfautsch says residents have been abandoned to wholly predictable heat extremes caused by global warming but exacerbated by poor planning regulation.

Council areas such as Blacktown, Penrith and Campbelltown in Sydney and suburbs like Wollert, Mernda and Mickleham in Melbourne are compelled to absorb growing populations by state governments, but are failing to impose proper planning regulations. Strapped for cash, they have allowed property developers to shape the built environment, he says.

…….. It is not just that large houses on small blocks leave no room for trees, Pfautsch says. The little space left between them provides no room for recreation and serve to increase heat, with side-passages often home to air-conditioning systems that spew heated air across dividing fences.

But Pfautsch sees other wilful mistakes. Unshaded black roads absorb heat during the day only to radiate it at night, extending the heat of day into the evening. This contributes to the urban heat island effect.

Roofs, exterior walls and even driveways created by developers in currently fashionable dark shades serve to exacerbate the impact, he says.

But, according to Pfautsch, the problems begin even before the new suburbs are laid out, when developers clear new sites of all existing trees, ponds and watercourses to maximise space and save on construction costs.

What greenspace remains is often not connected to homes by shaded foot or bike paths.

“It is inhumane to expect people to live like this in the temperatures we anticipate,” he says. “I can’t say it more strongly than that.”………….

Overall, Melbourne lost 0.3 per cent of its canopy between 2014 and 2018. Almost 2000 hectares of trees were cut from the east and south-east, mostly at residential properties……….

We’re ending up with dark-roofed, back-to-back, nose-to-front, housing suburbs on the outskirts of Melbourne. And if you add dark, asphalt and concrete surfaces you’re going to get really hot suburbs,” he says. “When you have high-temperature events intersecting with urban heat islands, you have really, really high temperatures.”

According to Pfautsch, even a concerted effort to increase tree coverage in the suburbs most prone to the heat-island effect will only have limited impact in the years to come………

All this raises thorny questions of environmental and climate justice, Livesley says, as the suburbs most affected are often the most affordable.

“We are pushing some of the most vulnerable people in our society into these low tree, low services environments, with poor public transport infrastructure.”…………

In Mildura, a town near the border in north-west Victoria, temperatures have increased in line with worldwide heating trends. Between 1998-99 and 2018-19 the number of days each year where the temperature went above 35 degrees increased by about 20 days, and the number of heatwaves rose from six to nine.

For residents living in public housing – who faced huge bureaucratic hurdles to having air conditioners installed – recent summers have been a nightmare,………..

not only should we be tackling climate change, we should be totally re-imagining how we build our suburbs.  https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/why-a-killer-us-heatwave-points-to-a-stifling-future-for-our-cities-20210716-p58ae9.html

July 19, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment