Lethal Heating: 01/11/16

11/01/2016

Springvale Coal Mine Approval Faces Challenge Over Impacts To Sydney's Water

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Chris Jonkers of the Lithgow Environment Group says the East Wolgan swamp is among the upland swamps damaged by the Springvale coal mine. Photo: Wolter Peeters

The Baird government's approval of a Blue Mountains coal mine expansion contravenes its own planning policy, say environment groups who have begun legal action to overturn the decision.
The 13-year extension of the Springvale coal mine, located near Lithgow, was backed by the Planning Ministry and secured final approval from the independent Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) last September.
The underground mine will produce as much as 4.5 million tonnes of coal a year from 20 new longwall panels, and continue to discharge untreated waste water into the upper Coxs River.

Springvale coal mine near Lithgow. Photo: Supplied by Centennial Coal

The river flows through the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and is the second-largest source of water for Sydney's main water reservoir at Warragamba Dam.
Environment groups led by 4nature are challenging the approval in the Land and Environment Court, arguing the move is not compliant with the 2011 State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) covering Sydney's drinking water catchment. The policy permits approvals only for projects that have a neutral or beneficial effect on the area.
Andrew Cox, 4nature's president, said the groups had found no evidence the government had taken the SEPP into account when approving the project.

Mine workers Adam Powell and Darrin Francis, at the Springvale mine near Lithgow. Photo: Wolter Peeters

The mine will release 19 megalitres a day of waste water – containing salts, metals and other materials – with the flows making up as much as two-thirds of the water in the river at the discharge point.
"How can you possibly rationally conclude that the mine isn't lowering water quality?" Mr Cox said.
Gary Whytcross, director south for the NSW Environment Protection Authority, told Fairfax Media in July that "there's no doubt there will be impacts" for the Coxs River from the mine discharges, with the high salinity the main concern.The first legal challenge of the particular SEPP may affect future mine approvals, Mr Cox said.
"It could set an important precedent for development in the catchment, he said. "Other coal mines in the catchment will have to demonstrate that they have a neutral or beneficial impact."

'Strict limits'
The Environmental Defenders Office of NSW filed the case on December 18, and the court will next consider the matter on February 12, 2016. Operations at Springvale would not be affected until a final court ruling, 4nature said.
"It is important that the community is able to ensure that decisions are legally robust, and we respect the EDO's right to take this action following the decision by the independent [PAC]," Rob Stokes, Planning Minister, said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Planning and Environment said, the approval had followed an extensive consultation process including state agencies, independent experts and a "rigorous assessment of all environmental, economic and social impacts".
Since the approval includes "strict limits" on the salinity of discharges "the department concluded the mine extension would have a beneficial effect on Sydney's drinking water catchment, compared to the mine's previous operations", the spokeswoman said.
Opponents, though, say they will argue the comparison should be made with the absence of discharges, not the previous workings of the mine.
Fairfax Media also sought comment from the mine's owner, Centennial Coal.

Untreated
Keith Muir, director of the Colong Foundation for the Wilderness, said he raised the SEPP issue with the PAC prior to its approval.
The waste water had previously been sent to the Wallerawang power station before it closed down. Mr Muir has proposed the waste water be transported for treatment and use at the mine's main customer, the nearby Mt Piper power plant – a course only noted by the PAC as an option.
"It isn't diluted and there is no reduction in the impact on the environment," Mr Muir said, adding that upland swamps had also been affected along with the river.
NSW Greens mining spokesman Jeremy Buckingham said the protection of Sydney's drinking water catchment was a crucial principle that should not be compromised.
"It's obvious that coal mining will be detrimental to the quality of water in the drinking water catchment, so the PAC should not have approved this mine extension.
"Protection of our drinking water catchments should be enshrined in legislation rather than relying on a planning policy that is routinely ignored or bypassed by planning authorities," Mr Buckingham said.
The local Lithgow Council has supported the mine's continuation, arguing that hundreds of full-time jobs and royalties approaching $200 million were at stake. The mine is Mt Piper's only coal source, with the plant providing 15 per cent of the state's electricity.

Antarctic Scientists Head To Biological Hotspot Studying Climate Change In Southern Ocean

ABC News - Kieran Jones

Dr Andrew Constable and Dr Gwen Fenton from the Australian Antarctic Division prepare to sail on the latest research mission to the Southern Ocean. ABC News: Kieran Jones

For the first time since Sir Douglas Mawson's Antarctic expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s, scientists will be conducting climate studies in the area known as the Kerguelen Plateau, in the Southern Ocean.
The Kerguelen Plateau, hundreds of kilometres north of Mawson Station, is one of only three lines of longitude where the Antarctic Circumpolar Current flows across the Antarctic continental shelf, the deep ocean and subantarctic islands.
That makes it one of the most highly productive regions for polar plants and animals, and valuable toothfish, icefish and krill fisheries.

A map showing the location of the Kerguelen Plateau, about 2,000 km north of Mawson and Davis Stations. Supplied: AAD

A team of 44 scientists and support staff is preparing to depart Hobart on Monday for a two-month mission on the Antarctic Division's Aurora Australis, to study the impact of climate change in the Southern Ocean.
Researchers are concerned that global warming is reducing the ring of ice cold water around Antarctica, in turn destabilising the region's delicate ecosystem.
Dr Andrew Constable from the Australian Antarctic Division said an increase in global temperatures could see a reduction in the area populated by krill.
"If the habitat reduces in size and contracts towards the Antarctic continent, then that will mean there's probably going to be less food for the animals that feed on krill," he said.
"Things like whales, seals, penguins, sea birds and so on, and we're particularly interested in knowing about whether the production of krill will change as well."

Australian scientists aboard the Aurora Australis conducting climate research in the Southern Ocean. Supplied: Wendy Pyper, ADD

The concern is that the area in the ocean where it is cold enough for krill to exist will shrink significantly, due to changes in water temperature.
"What we're wanting to do is identify what factors contribute to the northern distribution of that habitat, and is that northern distribution going to move to the south," Dr Constable said.
The expedition will be an international effort, involving six ships from Australia, Japan the USA and France.
From an Australian perspective, this could be one of the last dedicated marine science expeditions for the Aurora Australis before it is decommissioned and a new ice breaker arrives.

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Era Of Climate Science Denial Is Not Over, Study Finds

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Conservative thinktanks in the US engaging in climate change have increased their attacks on science in recent years, a study of 16,000 documents finds.

Is the era of climate science denial over? A new study suggests not. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images

Is organised climate science denial finished?
After global heat records were continually broken over the last decade, and as sea levels rose and scientists reported the accelerated melting of polar ice sheets, you might be forgiven for thinking the debate over climate change had shifted.
No more arguing over the science? It’s more about the policy now, right?
Well, wrong. At least according to a new study that has looked at 15 years worth of output from 19 conservative “thinktanks” in the United States.
“We find little support for the claim that ‘the era of science denial is over’ - instead, discussion of climate science has generally increased over the sample period,” the study concludes.
The conservative thinktanks under the microscope are the main cog in the machinery of climate science denial across the globe, pushing a constant stream of material into the public domain.
The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, analysed more than 16,000 documents published online between 1998 and 2013 by mainly US groups like the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.
Contrary to some commentators, the study found attacks on science had increased in later years. At the same time, the thinktanks were focusing less on policy issues.

Chart from a 2016 study in the journal Global Environmental Change showing the output of conservative thinktanks on climate change between 1998 and 2013. Photograph: Global Environmental Change

To come to that conclusion authors Dr Travis Coan, of the University of Exeter, and Dr Constantine Boussalis, of Trinity College Dublin, analysed 8300 articles, 3000 reports, 100 interview transcripts, 680 open letters and press releases and 3400 “scientific” reviews.
So did the result surprise them? Coan told me:

One the one hand, we were aware that many in both the media and academia believed that science denial was on the decline.
However, this didn’t fit with our casual reading of the skeptical literature and thus a major impetus of the paper was to put this idea to the test.
Though, with that said, we were a bit surprised by the ‘rise’: my prior expectation was that the denial of science and policy, at least on average, has remained relatively constant. This does not appear to be the case.

Not only had the attacks on science increased but thinktanks had also ramped up their climate change output in recent years, the study found.
But was it possible the study’s clear declaration that “the era of climate science denial is not over” might no longer stand, given that the study period ended in August 2013?
After all, since then we have seen the record for the hottest year on record broken twice and, for the first time, more than 190 nations agreeing in Paris to keep global warming to “well below 2C”.
Coan agreed this was “certainly possible”, but “there are also reasons to speculate that the trend has continued.” He said:

We are currently working on a study with John Cook that looks at science and policy related themes (amongst other items) in the top 50 climate skeptic blogs through 2015. The topic structure (i.e. discourse) is very similar, and sometimes identical, to the conservative thinktanks and there is reason to think that these two time series move together. For the blogs, we find that the increase in science-related skepticism continues right through 2015. Again, these results are preliminary, but suggest that the ‘end of science denial’ - at least among these actors - might be wishful thinking.

The study explained these thinktanks “provide a multitude of services to the cause of climate change scepticism”. These included:

offering material support and lending credibility to contrarian scientists
sponsoring pseudo-scientific climate change conferences
directly communicating contrarian viewpoints to politicians
disseminating sceptic viewpoints through a range of media

Many of the 19 thinktanks analysed in the study have in the past accepted funding from fossil fuel interests, such as oil giant Exxon and the billionaire Koch brothers.
In October 2015 a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found thinktanks that had taken corporate funding from the likes of Exxon and the Kochs were more likely to produce material designed to polarise the climate change issue.
Exxon is currently facing an investigation from the New York attorney general into whether it lied to the public and investors about the risks of human-caused climate change.
Dr Justin Farrell, the author of the PNAS study, told me he was pleased to see more research into conservative thinktanks.
“We are still years away from fully understanding the extent of contrarian influence on climate change politics during the last 20 years,” he said.
The latest study seems to show that thinktanks began to concentrate more on attacking the science in around 2003 but it took until about 2010 for science attacks to overtake policy discussions. But why did this happen?
One possible reason, speculates Coan, is the effect of the 2009 illegal hacking of climate scientist’s emails from a server at the University of East Anglia.
While subsequent investigations found no wrongdoing, conservative thinktanks and commentators ran hard with the “scandal” – and some still do – claiming scientists were part of a grand conspiracy to deceive the world.
Dr Aaron McCright, of Michigan State University, who studies climate science denial, said the rising attacks on science appeared to have coincided with the election of Democrat Barack Obama as US president in late 2008. He said:

The Right no longer controlled the Executive Branch or Congress... at least for the first few years of the Obama Administration.. and thus no longer had as much power inside the government to block climate change policy as they did under George W. Bush. So, they - and a considerable part of industry - ramped up denial activism after 2008 to the high levels we have seen since.

McCright said the “denial machine” had since expanded from think tanks to include bloggers and fake grassroots campaigns and was now “more diverse and seemingly ubiquitous.”
He said conservative think tanks had influenced the public’s understanding of climate change and the way policymakers had reacted to it, in two ways.
First, he said in recent decades US Republicans had used thinktank materials in committee meetings and hearings “to justify inaction on climate change”.
Second, thinktank materials had been taken up as the standard talking points for conservatives.
“Indeed, I would argue that anti-environmentalism - and climate change denial more specifically - has become a central tenet of the current conservative and Republican identity.”
Dr Riley Dunlap, of the Oklahoma State University, and who has partnered with McCright on several influential studies, told me:

While conservative thinktanks were involved in denial from the outset - 1989 at least - we have argued they really moved to the forefront in the late 90s when BP and then other companies pulled out of the industry-led Global Climate Coalition that had arguably been the most powerful force in denial. In fact, the conservative thinktanks were upset that oil companies were ‘caving in’ to the IPCC, and decided to take the lead. This also really shifted the basis of denial from economic self-interest to ideological opposition – the commitment to neoliberalism’s distaste for all government regulations.

McCright added that “knowing what is going on is one thing” but knowing what to do about it was more challenging. I’ll leave you with his thoughts.

Opposing policy is one thing. Undermining, denying, obfuscating, etc. science is another. I wish I had a powerful, simple solution to counter the climate change denial movement, but I don’t. Nevertheless, at the very least, we can continue to drag them from the shadows and into the bright light of day, vigilantly document their activities, and regularly call them out over what they are doing.

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