Lethal Heating: 05/31/16

31/05/2016

'Sad Truth': Great Barrier Reef May Never Rebound To Previous Health: Scientists

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The Great Barrier Reef is unlikely to recover fully from the huge bleaching event that has killed off more than half its corals in some northern reefs as temperatures rise, scientists say.
Research, including by Tracy Ainsworth from James Cook University, has found that corals have natural mechanisms helping them to acclimatise to rising sea-level temperatures and avoid bleaching.

Coral reefs may be losing their natural ability to acclimatise. Photo: Zoe Richards

However, the ability to cope with heat stress will be overwhelmed by the expected increase in frequency and temperature extremes, according to research published last month in the journal Science by a team led by Dr Ainsworth.
Tom Di Liberto, a meteorologist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, used the findings to argue this week that the rising greenhouse gases are likely to reduce corals' use of "practice runs" in the future.
"[If] ocean waters warm by as little as 0.5C overall, as predicted for the near future, there won't be a pre-stress practice run," Mr Di Liberto wrote in a NOAA blog." Without it, corals are at a greater risk of dying during bleaching, which means reefs are more likely to see a faster decline in coral cover."

Coral reefs have been hit from Australia to the Maldives and beyond by mass bleaching. Photo: James Cook University

"While some recovery will occur over time, the sad truth is that ongoing ocean warming may keep some reefs from ever recovering their previous level of health, diversity, and productivity," he wrote.
In the charts below, NOAA adapted Dr Ainsworth's research to show how the frequency of so-called "protective" moderate heat stress periods on the Great Barrier Reef would decrease as global temperatures increased.

By contrast, the chart below shows how the number of single bleaching events without a "trial run and recovery" period in advance would increase as global temperatures rose.
"The bar charts show how today (at 0C), roughly 80 per cent of bleaching events are preceded by a protective trial run, while only about 20 per cent are not," the blog post said. "As waters warm, that balance is projected to switch."

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, said the fact that bleaching events are happening is an indication of the limits to corals' ability to acclimatise to warmer waters.
On Monday, Queensland scientists said about 35 per cent of the corals in the central and northern Great Barrier Reef were dead or dying, in the reef's third big bleaching event since 1998.
"If you gave corals exposure to heat a couple of weeks before then they were less susceptible when exposed to high temperatures [soon after]. It's a very transitory phenomenon."
"As temperatures rise, you get less and less time at moderate temperatures at which [the corals] can acclimate," said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, who has also published on this ability. "This would only work at the initial rise in temperature but this disappears later on when it gets more extreme."
Corals evolved to cope with rising temperatures, such as the 5-degree warming during 10,000-15,000 years after the last ice age.
"We're doing something similar but over 50-100 years," he said, adding: "It's really a bit of a hopeful pipe-dream" that corals will be able to evolve fast enough to cope.
The fact oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere would also weaken coral skeletons further and their ability to grow back, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.
"We're increasing the number of underwater heatwaves and cyclones, and reducing the ability of corals to grow back," he said. "We're tipping the balance towards reefs that don't have corals on them."
He welcomed Labor's pledge of $500 million during five years to improve water quality in the reef region. The total compares with the $171 million pledged in the May budget by the Turnbull government.
"This isn't going to be solved by a bunch of Band-Aids," he said. "If they are polluted and lying under sediment, they won't grow back."

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Australia’s Censorship Of UNESCO Climate Report Is Like A Shakespearean Tragedy

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef is clearly at risk from climate change, so why would UNESCO agree to censor its own report?

A diver checking the bleached coral at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

That quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet comes to mind: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
The lady in question is the Australian government, which some time in early January saw a draft of a report from a United Nations organisation.
The report, provisionally titled "Destinations at Risk: World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate", outlined how many world heritage sites around the world were being compromised by the impacts of climate change.
Great Barrier Reef. The Australian government doth protest, and UNESCO obliged.
As Guardian Australia revealed last week, all mentions of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, the Northern Territory's glorious Kakadu national park and Tasmania's forests were then removed from the report.
All this, as the reef's worst recorded case of mass coral bleaching makes headlines around the world
So why the whitewash?
In a statement to Guardian Australia, the Department of the Environment made two arguments to justify the request for censorship and neither of them makes any sense.
Firstly, the government argued the title of the report "had the potential to cause considerable confusion".
The title Australia objected to was "Destinations at Risk: World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate". The report was finally published as World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate.
The department said the UN world heritage committee had only last year agreed not to place the reef on its list of sites "in danger".
If the reef then appeared as a case study in a UN report about world heritage sites "at risk" this might confuse people, the department claimed.
But the reality is that the reef is both "at risk" and "in danger" from the impacts of climate change – the government's own science agencies have warned them of this multiple times, not to mention scientists at leading universities around the world.
The only confusing aspect is how a report about world heritage sites and climate change now omits one of the world's most iconic natural wonders that has become a faded poster child for the impacts of global warming worldwide.
Australia's second argument was that having the reef featured in the UNESCO report was further "negative commentary" that "impacted on tourism".
As commentary on The Project pointed out, most people around the world don't choose their holiday destinations by consulting UNESCO reports.
The report was a collaboration of two UN bodies – UNESCO and the United Nations Environment Program – as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a not-for-profit science advocacy group.
Adam Markham, of UCS and lead author of the report, told me he was "not in any of those conversations" about Australia requesting the reef be removed, and that UNESCO had the final say.
He said he was "disappointed" that a Great Barrier Reef case study pegged for the reports was taken out.
As soon as the report was published, Markham updated the case study and published it on the UCS blog, where you can now read the guts of the section the Australian government didn't want published. Guardian Australia also published the censored text.
So why did UNESCO agree to Australia's demands?
I asked UNESCO this, and also whether a note would be added to the report pointing out that mentions of Australia had been taken out.
A spokesperson told me only that the following sentence had now been added to the press release:

At the request of the government of Australia, references to Australian sites were removed from the Report (recent information about the state of conservation of the Great Barrier Reef is available on UNESCO's website here: http://whc.UNESCO.org/en/soc/3234).

UNESCO should not escape criticism here. The organisation's willingness to censor one of its own reports in the interests of nothing more than a public relations exercise is troubling. You have to hope this instance is a one-off.
Adding a line to a press release that has already been sent out is, in my view, a poor response to a serious misstep.
In UNESCO's defence, both the spokesperson and Markham said the report was not supposed to be a comprehensive assessment of every world heritage site – of which there are more than 1,000.
But leaving the Great Barrier Reef out of the report is like writing about the risks of oil drilling without mentioning the Deepwater Horizon, or perchance the tragedy of reviewing the works of Shakespeare without ever mentioning Hamlet.
"This above all: to thine own self be true."

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Decoding The Gibberish Around Climate Change Policies This Election

NEWS.com.au - Charis Chang

Labor leader Bill Shorten visits the Great Barrier Reef which is under threat from climate change. Picture: Jason Edwards

IF YOU are confused about what the major parties are doing about environment policy, you're not the only one. The subject has been bogged down in claims and counterclaims and no where was this more apparent than during a leaders debate on Sunday, and one held at the National Press Club earlier this month between the environment ministers.
How do you make sense of it all? Here's our easy guide to understanding what's going on.

WHY EVERYONE CARES ABOUT THE 'TARGET'
Both Labor and Liberal parties go on and on about meeting targets and this is very important to them because it shows they are 'doing enough'.
The main aim of the game is to limit global warming to "well below" two degrees. It's a target that countries around the world committed to as part of the Paris Agreement.
Just to be clear, climate change has been identified as the biggest risk to future of the Great Barrier Reef, something that Opposition Leader Bill Shorten acknowledged today saying it supports 70,000 jobs and is worth $5.7 billion to the Australian economy.
Two degrees of warming could still see global sea levels rise by as much as half a metre by the end of the century compared to 1985-2005. It would increase the intensity and frequency of bushfires, flooding and droughts. So countries want to stay below it.
The difficulty is how to do this.

WHAT THEY'RE PROMISING
Both major parties committed to a previous target of between five to 25 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.
But last month Labor revealed an ambitious new goal to cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, in line with what the Climate Change Authority recommended to keep warming below two degrees.
The Turnbull Government has also upped the ante, promising to reduce carbon emissions by between 26 and 28 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels. But this is well below the authority's recommendation of 45 per cent to 65 per cent.
So far the government believes it will achieve a five per cent reduction and meet its original goal.
But whoever wins the election is going to have to really ramp up their efforts if they have any chance of meeting their new targets.

Labor leader Bill Shorten visits the Great Barrier Reef. Picture: Jason Edwards Source: News Corp Australia

HOW LABOR WILL MEET TARGETS
OK, we all know what happened last time someone dared to bring in a carbon tax (remember 'ditch the witch'?). Now only referred to in hushed whispers, both parties want to stay well away from any suggestion they could bring in a new tax.
Labor has been a bit braver, openly putting their support behind an emissions trading scheme. This forces companies to bid for permits that allow them to emit carbon emissions. These permits can be traded, used or saved for the future. It also wants Australia to get half of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030.
But details of exactly how its emissions trading scheme will operate after its first two years are vague.
In contrast the Coalition has been careful to stay well away from any suggestion the government's policy could even transition one day to a trading scheme.
It wasn't always this way, former Liberal prime minister John Howard promised to bring one in during the 2007 election. He lost and the rest is history.
But you can't blame the leaders for being a bit sensitive over the matter, PM Malcolm Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership the first time round, over his support for Labor's scheme, while Labor lost the election after it introduced a carbon tax.

TARGET TRICKERY
Australia is one of a number of countries that also supports a 1.5 degree (non-binding) target and this is where it has been accused of trickery.
It agreed to support the tougher target in exchange for other countries allowing it to widen the definition of "emissions".
Carbon emissions from industrial and other sources have actually been increasing but Australia has managed to meet its emissions reduction targets partly because it's now allowed to include changes in land use.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt and representatives from the Coalition's Green Army. Picture: Steve Tanner Source: News Corp Australia

The rate of land clearing in Australia has declined since the 1990s and this is now counted towards the country's emissions reduction target.
Lower electricity demand and the closure of heavy manufacturing has also helped.

SO GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT, WHAT IS 'DIRECT ACTION'?
Here's where it becomes complicated, but bear with me.
The government has said it will reduce emissions through its "Direct Action Scheme".
Some people hate this scheme because it basically involves a huge pool of money ($2.5 billion over four years to be exact) being handed to polluters (mines, farmers etc) to encourage them to stop polluting.
It basically reverses the situation with the carbon tax, where polluters had to pay the government if they polluted.
But Environment Minister Greg Hunt told the National Press Club recently that the program was working. So far the government has purchased 143 million tonnes of carbon abatement using $1.7 billion. This prices carbon at just over $12 per tonne.
In contrast Mr Hunt said Labor's policy would not actually reduce emissions in Australia.
"That is the dirty secret at the heart of their policy ... They are purchasing overseas," Mr Hunt said. However, he would not rule out doing this as well, saying only that the government would do the "bulk of the lifting in Australia".
But some don't think Australia can actually meet its emissions targets using the government's scheme.
Shadow environment minister Mark Butler said Australia was pretty much the only major advanced economy where pollution levels were going up.
Analysis of government data has predicted pollution will rise by about six per cent between now and 2020, compared to dropping eight per cent while Labor was in office.
During the leaders debate on Sunday, the Prime Minister said the government expected to exceed its original target of reducing emissions by five per cent, by nearly 80 million tonnes.
But in order to meet its new 2030 target the government will have to reduce emissions by a further 900 million tonnes between 2020 and 2030.
The Climate Institute think tank has calculated that it could cost a whopping $16 billion to $37 billion a year for Australia to reach its new 2030 target using Direct Action, according to The Guardian.
This is a huge jump from the $2.5 billion over four years that the fund has access to now.

I KEEP HEARING ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS 'SAFEGUARD MECHANISM'?
The 'safeguard mechanism' is due to start in July and has been described as an emissions trading scheme by stealth, but you won't catch the government admitting this.
The scheme will help the government to achieve a five per cent cut in emissions by 2020, and puts a cap on how much big polluters can omit. Mr Hunt has said it would cover 50 per cent of emissions in Australia.
Critics of the government's policy say the safeguard mechanism isn't strict enough to prevent emissions increases.

On a wing and a prayer? Some say the government's environment policy won't meet emissions reduction targets. Picture: Tracey Nearmy Source: AAP

"Eighty per cent of the liable entities won't be impacted at all by the safeguards mechanism," Mr Butler said, pointing to independent analysis that showed it would not cap, let alone reduce emissions from the 20 largest polluters.

REALLY, THEY JUST NEED TO AGREE
While both parties spruik the differences in their policies, there are similarities and increasing calls for them to agree on a common path.
Mr Butler acknowledged that there wasn't one democracy in the world that had a serious climate change policy without some level of agreement between major parties.
"There really is a challenge for the next parliament," he said.
"Otherwise, we'll be in the 2019 election ... again not having made progress in this area."
The Environment Minister admitted the question of bipartisanship was important while conceding it hadn't been sufficiently asked, nor answered, on any side.
Mr Hunt said he thought agreement could be found in his government's safeguard mechanism.
But Mr Butler isn't sold on that idea, saying Labor did not believe in taxpayer money purchasing emissions abatement.
Another sticking point is the emissions reduction target, with the government sticking to its 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 goal, while Labor wants to increase that to 45 per cent. It also wants to double the renewable energy target.
Mr Turnbull said bipartisanship was always desirable for long-term issues but Labor had not explained how much its plan would cost.
"My commitment is to ensure that Australia meets the target we agreed to in Paris," he said.
"When the global community agrees to higher targets, as I have no doubt it will, that we will meet them, too.
"But I believe we should move with the global community rather than taking unilateral action that will not influence global action that may be worthwhile from a political point of view."

Will Australia ever have a bipartisan agreement on climate policy? Picture: Tracey Nearmy Source: AP