Australian Conservation Foundation
Federal environment minister Greg Hunt’s approval of what could become one of the world’s largest coal mines sets back global efforts to combat climate change, the Australian Conservation Foundation said today.
“To approve a massive coal mine that would make species extinct, deplete 297 billion litres of precious groundwater and produce 128.4 million tonnes of CO2 a year is grossly irresponsible,” said ACF President Geoff Cousins.
“At a time when the world is desperately seeking cleaner energy options this huge new coal mine will make the effort to combat climate change all the more difficult.”
If it goes ahead the Carmichael mine would be the largest ever dug in Australia. It would take up five times the area of Sydney Harbour. The climate pollution resulting from burning its coal would be more than New Zealand’s entire annual emissions.
In August the Federal Court set aside Minister Hunt’s original approval of Adani’s controversial proposal to dig the massive coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
Minister Hunt’s re-approval of the Carmichael coal mine flies in the face of rising public opposition to the proposal and scientific evidence that shows the mine would destroy 10,000 hectares of habitat for endangered species, including the largest known population of the southern black-throated finch.
“Tens of thousands of ACF supporters from all over Australia have written to Greg Hunt, asking him to reject the Carmichael mine once and for all,” Mr Cousins said.
“Just as Woodside lost its social license to build a gas factory at James Price Point in the Kimberley, most Australians do not want Adani to dig a massive coal mine and export the coal across the Great Barrier Reef.
“ACF will scrutinise this approval decision and carefully consider our options.
“We will use all appropriate means to stop this mine,” Mr Cousins said.
ACF and other environment groups ran ads in major newspapers in August urging Minister Hunt not to re-approve Adani’s Carmichael proposal.
Adani Carmichael Mine In Queensland Gets Another Green Light From Coalition
The Guardian - Oliver Milman
Australia’s largest coalmine, which green groups consider a threat to the Great Barrier Reef, is approved again only two months after being knocked back in federal court challenge
Australia’s largest coal project, Adani’s Carmichael mine, has again been given the green light by the federal government two months after it was stripped of its approval after a federal court challenge.
The $16.5bn mine and rail development, earmarked for the Galilee basin region of central Queensland, had its federal approval set aside in August after it emerged that Greg Hunt, the environment minister, had not considered its impact upon two vulnerable species, the yakka skink and the ornamental snake.
Hunt has reassessed the project and approved it for a second time, subject to “rigorous conditions” that would protect threatened species.
“The proponent is required to provide a groundwater management and monitoring plan, which must receive approval from myself before mining can commence,” Hunt said.
“The previous decision to approve the project was set aside at the request of the Australian government in August 2015 as a precautionary measure.”
Environmentalists have said the mine will endanger the Great Barrier Reef by increasing the amount of shipping through the ecosystem. The emissions from the burnt coal will also threaten the reef by accelerating ocean acidification and rising water temperature, which can lead to coral die-offs.
Hunt considered information from the Mackay Conservation Group, the Environmental Defenders Office and Australian Conservation Foundation before making the decision.
The Mackay Conservation Group initiated the federal court case that saw the approval overturned and has argued the mine would severely impact groundwater supplies and exacerbate climate change. The court case prompted the federal government to propose new laws aimed at curbing perceived “lawfare” by “vigilante” green groups.
Ellen Roberts, coordinator of the Mackay Conservation Group, said Hunt had failed the Australian people by ignoring the “devastating” impacts of the mine.
“Minister Hunt is sacrificing threatened species such as the black-throated finch and precious groundwater resources for the sake of a mine that simply does not stack up economically,” she said.
“Adjacent landholders are also rightly concerned about the impacts on their property from the billions of litres of water that will be taken from precious groundwater resources.”
Among the 36 conditions placed on Adani is a commitment to “protect and improve” 31,000ha of habitat used by the southern black-throated finch. The site of the mine is one of the threatened finch’s last remaining holdouts.
This protection will be in the form of an offset, where habitat is found elsewhere and secured. A further 135ha and 5,600ha will be offset for the ornamental snake and yakka skink, respectively. Adani will have to pay $1m over 10 years towards threatened species in the Galilee basin.
Adani will also be required to implement all advice from the independent expert scientific committee on coal seam gas and large coalmining development and return 730 megalitres of water each year for five years to the Great Artesian basin to replace water used during mining.
Geoff Cousins, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the approval of the mine is “grossly irresponsible” and indicated further legal challenges may follow.
“At a time when the world is desperately seeking cleaner energy options this huge new coal mine will make the effort to combat climate change all the more difficult,” he said.
“ACF will scrutinise this approval decision and carefully consider our options. We will use all appropriate means to stop this mine.”
Adani has welcomed the decision and said its mining project will bring “much needed economic benefits” to Queensland while protecting threatened species.
“Today’s announcement of the final federal approval for the Carmichael mine and north Galilee basin rail by minister Hunt makes clear that these concerns have been addressed, reflected in rigorous and painstaking conditions,” a company statement read.
“Adani has said for some time now that what is required for companies planning major job creating and infrastructure generating projects in Australia is certainty on approvals.
“It is certainty over the remaining approvals that is now key to the company progressing its plan to deliver mine, rail and port projects in Queensland that will deliver 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, and $22bn in taxes and royalties to be reinvested back into community services.”
The Carmichael mine, originally going to start production in 2017, is set to become the largest in Australia, extracting a maximum of 60m tonnes of a coal a year for export via a new rail line to an expanded Abbot Point port, near the town of Bowen.
Adani has welcomed the decision and said its mining project will bring “much needed economic benefits” to Queensland while protecting threatened species.
“Today’s announcement of the final federal approval for the Carmichael mine and north Galilee basin rail by Minister Hunt makes clear that these concerns have been addressed, reflected in rigorous and painstaking conditions,” a company statement read.
“Adani has said for some time now that what is required for companies planning major job creating and infrastructure generating projects in Australia is certainty on approvals.
“It is certainty over the remaining approvals that is now key to the company progressing its plan to deliver mine, rail and port projects in Queensland that will deliver 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, and $22bn in taxes and royalties to be reinvested back into community services.”
The Coalition and mining lobbyists have vigorously supported the benefits of the mine, despite an Adani contractor admitting in court that it would create far fewer than the 10,000 jobs purported by the government.
The project has been plagued by legal challenges and protests from environmentalists and Aboriginal representatives and complications around its financing. More than a dozen banks ruled out backing the development.
Michael Roche, chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, said: “The exploitation of the technical legal loophole that caused the delay was merely a tactic used by green activists in an attempt to thwart efforts to develop the Galilee Basin.”
Australia’s largest coalmine, which green groups consider a threat to the Great Barrier Reef, is approved again only two months after being knocked back in federal court challenge
 |
| The Abbot Point coal terminal, slated for expansion if mine and rail project goes ahead.
Photograph: Tom Jefferson/Greenpeace
|
Australia’s largest coal project, Adani’s Carmichael mine, has again been given the green light by the federal government two months after it was stripped of its approval after a federal court challenge.
The $16.5bn mine and rail development, earmarked for the Galilee basin region of central Queensland, had its federal approval set aside in August after it emerged that Greg Hunt, the environment minister, had not considered its impact upon two vulnerable species, the yakka skink and the ornamental snake.
Hunt has reassessed the project and approved it for a second time, subject to “rigorous conditions” that would protect threatened species.
“The proponent is required to provide a groundwater management and monitoring plan, which must receive approval from myself before mining can commence,” Hunt said.
“The previous decision to approve the project was set aside at the request of the Australian government in August 2015 as a precautionary measure.”
Environmentalists have said the mine will endanger the Great Barrier Reef by increasing the amount of shipping through the ecosystem. The emissions from the burnt coal will also threaten the reef by accelerating ocean acidification and rising water temperature, which can lead to coral die-offs.
Hunt considered information from the Mackay Conservation Group, the Environmental Defenders Office and Australian Conservation Foundation before making the decision.
The Mackay Conservation Group initiated the federal court case that saw the approval overturned and has argued the mine would severely impact groundwater supplies and exacerbate climate change. The court case prompted the federal government to propose new laws aimed at curbing perceived “lawfare” by “vigilante” green groups.
Ellen Roberts, coordinator of the Mackay Conservation Group, said Hunt had failed the Australian people by ignoring the “devastating” impacts of the mine.
“Minister Hunt is sacrificing threatened species such as the black-throated finch and precious groundwater resources for the sake of a mine that simply does not stack up economically,” she said.
“Adjacent landholders are also rightly concerned about the impacts on their property from the billions of litres of water that will be taken from precious groundwater resources.”
Among the 36 conditions placed on Adani is a commitment to “protect and improve” 31,000ha of habitat used by the southern black-throated finch. The site of the mine is one of the threatened finch’s last remaining holdouts.
This protection will be in the form of an offset, where habitat is found elsewhere and secured. A further 135ha and 5,600ha will be offset for the ornamental snake and yakka skink, respectively. Adani will have to pay $1m over 10 years towards threatened species in the Galilee basin.
Adani will also be required to implement all advice from the independent expert scientific committee on coal seam gas and large coalmining development and return 730 megalitres of water each year for five years to the Great Artesian basin to replace water used during mining.
Geoff Cousins, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the approval of the mine is “grossly irresponsible” and indicated further legal challenges may follow.
“At a time when the world is desperately seeking cleaner energy options this huge new coal mine will make the effort to combat climate change all the more difficult,” he said.
“ACF will scrutinise this approval decision and carefully consider our options. We will use all appropriate means to stop this mine.”
Adani has welcomed the decision and said its mining project will bring “much needed economic benefits” to Queensland while protecting threatened species.
“Today’s announcement of the final federal approval for the Carmichael mine and north Galilee basin rail by minister Hunt makes clear that these concerns have been addressed, reflected in rigorous and painstaking conditions,” a company statement read.
“Adani has said for some time now that what is required for companies planning major job creating and infrastructure generating projects in Australia is certainty on approvals.
“It is certainty over the remaining approvals that is now key to the company progressing its plan to deliver mine, rail and port projects in Queensland that will deliver 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, and $22bn in taxes and royalties to be reinvested back into community services.”
The Carmichael mine, originally going to start production in 2017, is set to become the largest in Australia, extracting a maximum of 60m tonnes of a coal a year for export via a new rail line to an expanded Abbot Point port, near the town of Bowen.
Adani has welcomed the decision and said its mining project will bring “much needed economic benefits” to Queensland while protecting threatened species.
“Today’s announcement of the final federal approval for the Carmichael mine and north Galilee basin rail by Minister Hunt makes clear that these concerns have been addressed, reflected in rigorous and painstaking conditions,” a company statement read.
“Adani has said for some time now that what is required for companies planning major job creating and infrastructure generating projects in Australia is certainty on approvals.
“It is certainty over the remaining approvals that is now key to the company progressing its plan to deliver mine, rail and port projects in Queensland that will deliver 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, and $22bn in taxes and royalties to be reinvested back into community services.”
The Coalition and mining lobbyists have vigorously supported the benefits of the mine, despite an Adani contractor admitting in court that it would create far fewer than the 10,000 jobs purported by the government.
The project has been plagued by legal challenges and protests from environmentalists and Aboriginal representatives and complications around its financing. More than a dozen banks ruled out backing the development.
Michael Roche, chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, said: “The exploitation of the technical legal loophole that caused the delay was merely a tactic used by green activists in an attempt to thwart efforts to develop the Galilee Basin.”
Antarctic Ice Sheets Face Catastrophic Collapse Without Deep Emissions Cuts
The Guardian - Karl Mathiesen
Study finds that a global temperature increase of 3C would cause ice shelves to disappear, triggering sea-level rise that would continue for thousands of years
A team of researchers has found that steep cuts to emissions during the next decade are the only way to avoid a catastrophic collapse of Antarctic ice sheets and associated sea-level rise that will continue for thousands of years.
The study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found that should the global temperature increase to around 3C (5.4F) above the pre-industrial era then the ice shelves that hold back the giant continental ice sheets would be lost over the next few centuries.
This would trigger a collapse that would go on for thousands of years, raising sea levels by 0.6 metres to 3 metres (2-10ft) by the year 2300 depending on how high manmade greenhouse gas emissions remain. Our descendants living in the year 5000 will continue to suffer the consequences of today’s fossil fuel burning, as sea levels continue to rise up to 9 metres (30ft) above current levels.
However, the results leave a narrow opening through which humanity can slip. If temperatures remain within 2C (3.6F), the collapse of the shelves will stabilise and the sheets will remain mostly intact. Sea-level rise from Antarctica would remain within 23cm (9 inches) by 2300.
To achieve this, the authors said the world will have to follow the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) lowest emissions scenario. This requires global emissions to peak around 2020 and decline to below zero by 2100.
In preparation for the climate conference in Paris next month, 150 governments representing 90% of emissions have submitted pledges to cut and curb them. However, these still chart a pathway to a world well above 2C – one analysis suggested they lead to 2.7C (4.9F) of warming, not enough to avoid the runaway decline of the Antarctic ice.
The new study “ultimately confirm[s] the suspicions of earlier glaciologists that the fate of ice shelves largely determines whether Antarctica contributes less than 1 metre or up to 9 metres to long-term sea-level rise”, wrote the California Institute of Technology scientist Alexander Robel in an accompanying comment piece in Nature.
Hilmar Gudmundsson, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, said the changes between 2100 and 2300 were “large and alarming” although the degree of uncertainty was still high.
In 2014, professor Eric Rignot, a senior researcher at Nasa, made the dramatic finding that the west Antarctic ice sheet and its 4 metres (13ft) worth of sea-level rise had already started slipping away. He said the paper’s assertion that the loss of this ice sheet could be stopped was “hardly believable” because the projections lacked reliable modelling of ocean circulation and iceberg calving. He said the loss of the West Antarctic sheet was “inevitable”; the only thing humans could control was how fast it goes.
“Whether we control our emissions or not will only matter in terms of how fast we get there. I find it disheartening that we are still talking about 2C above pre-industrial as a ‘reasonable’ target when we already passed the threshold for a large share of the ice sheets,” he said.
“It is counterproductive to give the impression that we have to figure out a way out of carbon soon, when we really need to do this yesterday,” he said.
The global sea level has risen roughly 20cm (8 inches) over the past century and is already causing problems for communities in low-lying areas. Only a little of this has so far been caused by melting ice; most comes from the expansion of oceans as they warm. But Golledge and his colleagues warned that this would change in the future if Antarctica’s ice sheets began falling into the sea.
Antarctica’s two ice sheets, east and west, cover an area the size of the contiguous US and Mexico combined and would raise the seas 60 metres (196ft) if lost completely, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
The friction of floating ice shelves against the deeply buried rock of the coast slows the flow of ice from the interior. Removing the ice shelves is like taking the chocks from a truck sitting on a slope. Without them, the loss of the giant ice sheets will trigger an “unstoppable” event that will last for thousands of years, said Golledge’s team. Some buttressing shelves have already been lost and others are weakening. Another study this week warned that all may be lost by the end of the century.
At the UN climate summit in Paris, much of the talk will be about the steps that can be taken over the next decade to strengthen each country’s emissions cuts. Professor Andrew Shepherd, the director of the Nerc Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling said the new research added urgency to Paris.
“Ahead of COP [Conference of the Parties, the Paris summit], this new study is a useful reminder that future climate warming might trigger extreme and irreversible ice losses from Antarctica over centuries. But to reliably predict how things could change within the next century, we need to build and use a new class of ice sheet models that can capture the detailed response of each of the continent’s outlet glaciers,” he said.
Study finds that a global temperature increase of 3C would cause ice shelves to disappear, triggering sea-level rise that would continue for thousands of years
 |
| A British Antarctic Survey photo released on 25 March 2008 shows of a chunk of ice that has started to break away from the Antarctic ice shelf. Photograph: Jim Elliott/AFP/Getty Images |
A team of researchers has found that steep cuts to emissions during the next decade are the only way to avoid a catastrophic collapse of Antarctic ice sheets and associated sea-level rise that will continue for thousands of years.
The study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found that should the global temperature increase to around 3C (5.4F) above the pre-industrial era then the ice shelves that hold back the giant continental ice sheets would be lost over the next few centuries.
This would trigger a collapse that would go on for thousands of years, raising sea levels by 0.6 metres to 3 metres (2-10ft) by the year 2300 depending on how high manmade greenhouse gas emissions remain. Our descendants living in the year 5000 will continue to suffer the consequences of today’s fossil fuel burning, as sea levels continue to rise up to 9 metres (30ft) above current levels.
However, the results leave a narrow opening through which humanity can slip. If temperatures remain within 2C (3.6F), the collapse of the shelves will stabilise and the sheets will remain mostly intact. Sea-level rise from Antarctica would remain within 23cm (9 inches) by 2300.
To achieve this, the authors said the world will have to follow the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) lowest emissions scenario. This requires global emissions to peak around 2020 and decline to below zero by 2100.
In preparation for the climate conference in Paris next month, 150 governments representing 90% of emissions have submitted pledges to cut and curb them. However, these still chart a pathway to a world well above 2C – one analysis suggested they lead to 2.7C (4.9F) of warming, not enough to avoid the runaway decline of the Antarctic ice.
The new study “ultimately confirm[s] the suspicions of earlier glaciologists that the fate of ice shelves largely determines whether Antarctica contributes less than 1 metre or up to 9 metres to long-term sea-level rise”, wrote the California Institute of Technology scientist Alexander Robel in an accompanying comment piece in Nature.
Hilmar Gudmundsson, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, said the changes between 2100 and 2300 were “large and alarming” although the degree of uncertainty was still high.
In 2014, professor Eric Rignot, a senior researcher at Nasa, made the dramatic finding that the west Antarctic ice sheet and its 4 metres (13ft) worth of sea-level rise had already started slipping away. He said the paper’s assertion that the loss of this ice sheet could be stopped was “hardly believable” because the projections lacked reliable modelling of ocean circulation and iceberg calving. He said the loss of the West Antarctic sheet was “inevitable”; the only thing humans could control was how fast it goes.
“Whether we control our emissions or not will only matter in terms of how fast we get there. I find it disheartening that we are still talking about 2C above pre-industrial as a ‘reasonable’ target when we already passed the threshold for a large share of the ice sheets,” he said.
“It is counterproductive to give the impression that we have to figure out a way out of carbon soon, when we really need to do this yesterday,” he said.
The global sea level has risen roughly 20cm (8 inches) over the past century and is already causing problems for communities in low-lying areas. Only a little of this has so far been caused by melting ice; most comes from the expansion of oceans as they warm. But Golledge and his colleagues warned that this would change in the future if Antarctica’s ice sheets began falling into the sea.
Antarctica’s two ice sheets, east and west, cover an area the size of the contiguous US and Mexico combined and would raise the seas 60 metres (196ft) if lost completely, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
The friction of floating ice shelves against the deeply buried rock of the coast slows the flow of ice from the interior. Removing the ice shelves is like taking the chocks from a truck sitting on a slope. Without them, the loss of the giant ice sheets will trigger an “unstoppable” event that will last for thousands of years, said Golledge’s team. Some buttressing shelves have already been lost and others are weakening. Another study this week warned that all may be lost by the end of the century.
At the UN climate summit in Paris, much of the talk will be about the steps that can be taken over the next decade to strengthen each country’s emissions cuts. Professor Andrew Shepherd, the director of the Nerc Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling said the new research added urgency to Paris.
“Ahead of COP [Conference of the Parties, the Paris summit], this new study is a useful reminder that future climate warming might trigger extreme and irreversible ice losses from Antarctica over centuries. But to reliably predict how things could change within the next century, we need to build and use a new class of ice sheet models that can capture the detailed response of each of the continent’s outlet glaciers,” he said.