Lethal Heating: 04/26/16

26/04/2016

$7.7 Billion Fossil Fuel Subsidies ‘Like Being In Bed With Big Tobacco’

New Matilda - Thom Mitchell

Federal treasurer Scott Morrison.

Calls for an end to fossil fuel subsidies are growing louder in the lead up to Treasurer Scott Morrison's May 3 budget, with a diverse coalition of advocates demanding an end to the $7.7 billion free ride they claim the fossil fuel industry gets each year.
At a press conference in Canberra this morning academics, religious leaders, renewable energy interests and unionists said it was illogical and counter-productive for the government to continue to subsidise fossil fuels if it's serious about transitioning to clean energy.
"Continuing to fund polluters when we know the damage being done to the environment is unforgivable intergenerational theft," said Luke Stickels, from the Australian Education Union.
"It is grossly foolish and unfair. Developing our nation's future is foremost in the minds of educators in schools across the country, but that future is not secure when the government continues to defy the urgent public desire for strong action on climate change," he said.
In a letter sent late March, a group of more than 50 civil society groups spelled out the savings they believe could be made if the government winds back subsidies to the industries which are fuelling climate change. They urged the government to:

End nonagricultural fuel tax credits, boosting the budget by $5.5 billion in 2016/17
End exploration and prospecting deductions for the mining industry ($650m)
End statutory effective life caps for the oil and gas sector ($349m)
End the concessional rate of excise levied on aviation gasoline and aviation turbine fuel ($1.24b)
Confirm that the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility will not invest in fossil fuel projects or in infrastructure that primarily assists such projects

IMAGE: Gerry Machen, Flickr.

This morning, former Anglican Church Bishop George Browning reiterated that the government "must stop handing over billions of our dollars to the fossil fuel industry, whose activities are driving dangerous climate change".
"Science and Christianity are on the same page in urging human responsibility in the face of escalating climate change," he said. "The clock is ticking. We cannot sit on our hands any longer."
Treasurer Scott Morrison will hand down his first budget on May 3, with the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull excepted to pull the trigger for a July 2 double dissolution election shortly thereafter. Tax reform has been at the top of the national agenda in recent months, but the issue of fossil fuel subsidies has not penetrated the mainstream debate.
At the Paris climate conference late last year, Malcolm Turnbull controversially declined to lend Australia's support to a communique signed by over 40 governments which urged the phase out of inefficient subsidies for coal, oil and gas.

IMAGE: Greenpeace.

Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal. As New Matilda reported last week, Greenpeace Australia has crunched the numbers and found that through coal exports alone, Australia will sell off a billion tonnes of carbon this year. Yet the government is working to expand the export coal market, and expects to become the leading seller of liquified natural gas in coming years.
This carbon intensive strategy has drawn an increasingly caustic response. According to the public health Professor Peter Brooks, from the University of Melbourne, Australia's keen alliance with the fossil fuel sector is akin to being in bed with big tobacco.
"Given that the largest contribution to this warming is the use of fossil fuels, don't you think they should come with a health warning much like cigarettes? Our government must stop pumping billions of dollars of our money into this damaging sector," Professor Brooks said.

IMAGE: Chuck Coker, Flickr.

The community has more mixed views, going off a ReachTEL poll from April 12. It found that only 48 per cent of the 2,664 Australians surveyed believe that the claimed $7.7 billion in fossil fuel subsidies is too much, while a minority of 8.5 per cent of respondents believed $7.7 billion was 'too little' a subsidy.
A quarter of respondents said the hand-out was 'about right', and 18.5 per cent of the people surveyed said they 'don't know'.
But the poll also contained troubling results for the government. The ReachTEL poll found 36.4 per cent of respondents would favour a phase out of fossil fuel subsidies ahead of key issues that have cropped up on the national agenda over recent months as the government hunts for savings measures.
An end to taxpayer handouts for polluting industries proves more popular than hiking the GST, a reduction in tax breaks associated with negative gearing, an increase in taxes on capital gains, and a tightening of tax concessions for supernatants.
Ahead of the Paris climate conference last year, the Federal Government committed to reducing emissions by at least 26 per cent on 2005 levels by the year 2030.

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We Already Know 2016 Will Be the Warmest Year on Record—and It’s Only April

Slate - Eric Holthaus

Filming-the-coral-bleaching-at-Lizard-Island3

Coral bleaching at Australia's Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, in March 2016. XL Catlin Seaview Survey

It's now abundantly clear: When it comes to global warming, 2016 is in a class by itself.
On Tuesday, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that March 2016 was not only the warmest March in recorded climate history, it was also the most unusually warm month of any month ever measured, breaking the record set … the month prior.
March was the 11^th consecutive month of a new record warm global monthly temperature, the longest streak since NOAA records began in 1880—a horrendous feat that's led to a bit of complacency in climate circles.
We should not be complacent.
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, calculated that no matter how the rest of the year progresses, there's a greater than 99 percent chance 2016 will be the warmest year on record.
That he's able to say this in April is mind-boggling.
In past record-warm years, we needed to wait until October or November to make predictions with this high of confidence.

Though the current planetary heat wave is likely peaking, it's still rending entire ecosystems and plunging tens of millions of people into food shortages.
On Wednesday, Australian scientists revealed a stark new summary of their comprehensive survey of the Great Barrier Reef: 93 percent of reefs there have experienced bleaching over the past several weeks—which happens when corals become overheated and expel their symbiotic algae, and can quickly lead to coral death.
The imminent death of large parts of the Great Barrier Reef should shock the world.
About 1 billion people depend on coral reefs for their livelihood.
"We've never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before," said Terry Hughes, who led the survey.

The current global boost of heat is linked to El Niño, but experts think El Niño is taking a back seat to human greenhouse gas emissions when it comes to the reasons for the incredible hot streak.
Last month's record warmth touched all ocean basins and all continents, and, together with February—which still ranks as the most unusually warm month in NASA records—the Earth's temperature is going through what amounts to a step change.
The current warm streak is a perfect illustration of what climate scientists have long expected: There are natural oscillations (like the current warming boost from El Niño) overlaid on top of the long-term trend of global warming.
The shift to La Niña, which is expected later this year, will temporarily bend global temperature back down a bit, and likely bring an end to the current streak of record-warm months.
With climate change, not every year will be record warm, but it's quite certain that even if 2017 doesn't top 2016, there'll be a year in the near future that will.

So far, 2016 has been the warmest start to any year on record, with record warm temperatures on every continent and in every ocean basin. NOAA

We've reached a unique moment in the history of humanity's relationship with our home planet: No matter when the current streak ends, the relentlessness with which the global climate system has been breaking records is now unmatched by any moment since industrial civilization began, and likely long before that.
New data show atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa briefly exceeded 409 parts per million on a daily basis around April 10, the highest absolute level in millions of years—and the biggest year-to-year jump on record.
Last month, an analysis by a team of British and American climate scientists showed that the current rate of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide likely has no equal in Earth's entire history, with current levels rising about 10 times faster than the previous fastest era of increase, about 56 million years ago.
We're locking in change that has no precedent, possibly since long before humans and countless other species first evolved. And it's the rate of change that's the big problem here.
Human activity is profoundly changing the planet in a geologic blink of an eye—which is why scientists are worried that everything from migrating birds to fracturing ice sheets to coastal cities won't have time to adapt.
If climate change were slow—playing out over millennia, as in times past—it wouldn't be much of a problem. Instead, in our world, climate change is happening very, very fast.
As the United Nations' leading climate diplomat said on Tuesday after seeing the latest NOAA data, the most recent record is a "stark reminder that we have no time to lose." This urgency has immediate global political implications.
As the Washington Post's Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis point out, "the Earth itself has upped the stakes for the Paris climate accord," agreed to just four months ago and set to be signed at a ceremony in New York this week.
From the tropics to the Arctic, these past few months have pushed the bounds of "dangerous" change the accord was designed to prevent.
An analysis released Tuesday by Climate Interactive and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that even with the pledges made in Paris, the world is still on track for about 3.5 degrees Celsius of warming—and global leaders would need to agree to substantial further reductions before 2020 to meet the Paris target of keeping global warming "well below" 2 degrees Celsius.
That's a huge ask, but the stability of our climate system requires that it happens.

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CSIRO Sets Up Special Climate Centre But Doubts Remain Over Scale Of Cuts

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The CSIRO will split its climate science into two, creating a special unit based in Hobart but leaving in doubt the future of at least 50 climate researchers.
A new CSIRO Climate Science Centre, foreshadowed by Fairfax Media, will coordinate the work of 40 scientists carved out of existing CSIRO teams, and also tap into work by the Bureau of Meteorology and universities.
However, a separate email sent to staff on Tuesday morning shows the Oceans and Atmosphere division which houses the main climate modelling and monitoring units will still shed about 75 of its 140 staff.

All at sea?: Australia's marine science flagship, RV Investigator. Photo: CSIRO

In the email, chief executive Larry Marshall said the agency's executive had used "feedback" on the planned cuts to lower the total number of jobs to go from across the agency to 275 rather than the original 350.
"To achieve this change, we won't be able to make as many new recruitments in the areas as previously planned," Dr Marshall said."Our goal is still for our staffing numbers to return to the current level, but it will take us longer to achieve."
The staff reductions now planned are in Minerals (about 35), Land and Water (about 70), Agriculture (about 30), Manufacturing (about 45), Oceans and Atmosphere (about 75) and Food & Nutrition (about 20), the email to staff said.
While the CSIRO described the new climate science centre as a "win", the reaction from within was dismissive.

CSIRO boss Larry Marshall hopes the new centre will resolve ongoing concerns about climate science's home within the agency. Photo: Daniel Munoz

"It looks like a con," a senior CSIRO climate researcher told Fairfax Media. "Once again, there was no consultation with staff. The plan is to separate the climate scientists into two lots. What are they planning to do with those left out of the centre?"
CSIRO and the Turnbull government have been under pressure since early February to explain why the science agency was planning to cull as many as 110 of its 140 staff within the Oceans & Atmosphere division.
The cuts, which have been pared back after complaints from partner agencies, were part of a plan by Dr Marshall to shed 350 jobs and re-hire a similar number of two years in areas deemed to be more promising for external revenue.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt said CSIRO was an independent agency but added that the government and Chief Scientist Alan Finkel had to intervene "to help broker" a resolution.
"From what was frankly a difficult situation, we worked to engage with the organisation and, I think, to get the longest, deepest national climate program that Australia has ever had," Mr Hunt told ABC Radio.
Labor's shadow industry minister Kim Carr said the new centre appears to be aimed at heading off another damning senate committee hearing on Wednesday.
Dr Marshall was due to attend, along with three other executives, but chairman David Thodey was also due to make his first appearance. Mr Thodey has asked for his evidence to be made in camera and without accompaniment from CSIRO management, Fairfax Media understands.
"The only thing scientific about the new centre is political science," Senator Carr said. "It's been cobbled together as a means to save marginal seats [in Tasmania]. I call on the government to halt the job cuts to CSIRO pending the election."
Dr Marshall said Tuesday's announcement was "a culmination of the ongoing consultation and feedback we've had from our staff and stakeholders, and this new Centre is a reflection of the strong collaboration and support right across our system and the global community".
The response to the original plan to gut climate science at the agency drew criticism from more than 3000 scientists internationally.
The urgency of understanding how fast the climate is changing has been fuelled by record global heat so far in 2016 as the ebbing giant El Nino event in the Pacific adds to the background warming.

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