Lethal Heating: 07/19/16

19/07/2016

Muddying The Waters On The Great Barrier Reef

ABC Media Watch

An article in The Australian suggests there is division among scientists on the danger posed to the Great Barrier Reef. But who is making these claims? But now to the Great Barrier Reef, where the worst-ever outbreak of mass coral bleaching has killed a quarter of the coral on one of the world's natural wonders.
Last month, some 2500 of the world's coral reef experts met in Hawaii and agreed to send a letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, warning him that:

Coral reefs ... are threatened with complete collapse under rapid climate change.
— 13th International Coral Reef Symposium, Letter to Malcolm Turnbull, 25 June, 2016

And urging the Australian government to:

... stop endorsing the export of coal, and specifically to stop or revoke the approval of new mines, including those in Queensland ...
— 13th International Coral Reef Symposium, Letter to Malcolm Turnbull, 25 June, 2016

That letter was widely reported by the Australian media, including:

The Guardian
The Daily Mail
SBS
Nine News
and Buzzfeed.

While overseas,

The LA Times
The Jakarta Post
Canada's CBC
and Mashable

also thought it a big enough story.
But surprise, surprise, one place you couldn't read it was in The Australian whose Environment Editor Graham Lloyd has written several recent stories suggesting coral bleaching ain't as bad as many have claimed:

Great Barrier Reef spared worst of coral bleaching wipe-out
— The Australian, 22 March, 2016

Great Barrier Reef: scientists 'exaggerated' coral bleaching
— The Australian, 4 June, 2016

Great Barrier Reef management top class, says UN chief
— The Australian, 7 June, 2016

Graham Lloyd's latest article on the subject, which appeared just as the Hawaii symposium ended, was headlined:

GREAT BARRIER BATTLEGROUND
— The Australian, 24 June, 2016

With a subtitle to explain that:

The bleaching of parts of the reef is dividing the scientific world
— The Australian, 24 June, 2016

But was this actually right?
Those coral reef experts meeting in Hawaii say no.
Indeed, Professor Ruth Gates, president of the International Society for Reef Studies, which co-organised the symposium, told Media Watch:

Almost every single member of the conference of 2500 people stood up saying that they felt that bleaching and climate change pose a significant threat to the existence of coral reefs. There's really no discussion about whether or not it's serious. It is very serious. There is no debate about it.
— Professor Ruth Gates, President, International Coral Reef Symposium, 30 June, 2016

Graham Lloyd found a debate nevertheless.
Thanks firstly to Professor Peter Ridd of James Cook University, whose views Lloyd has written about before.
Ridd told Lloyd that reef science can't be trusted, because it's only peer reviewed.
Which is a bizarre claim, and one that one of Australia's leading coral reef scientists Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg told Media Watch was:

... just ridiculous.
— Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor of Marine Science, University of Queensland, 29 June, 2016

Adding that peer review is:

... the same process we use when we're studying aeronautics, which produces planes that we travel on ...
— Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor of Marine Science, University of Queensland, 29 June, 2016

Lloyd's report then rehashed a couple of his other recent themes.
That fears about the health of the Barrier Reef have been exaggerated.
And that coral is resilient and can recover from bleaching.
Which, one of his experts assured us, is just:

... "part of a natural selection process from which better-adapted populations can emerge".
— The Australian, 24 June, 2016

One of the two people telling Lloyd that the Barrier Reef will repair itself is an American biologist called Jim Steele.
So, is he regarded as an expert on coral? Answer, No.
Is he known to be an expert on oceans? No, again.
So is he a famous climate scientist? No he is not.
Indeed, when we asked Professor Gates about him, she told us:

I don't know who this person is and if they were anyone serious in the field, I should know them.
— Professor Ruth Gates, President, International Coral Reef Symposium, 30 June, 2016

A little bit of digging reveals that Jim Steele is ex-director of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus of San Francisco State University, where, according to his bio:

He has taught the World of Plants, Nature Study, Natural Sciences for Teachers, Bird Banding, and Bird Identification by Song classes ...
— San Francisco State University

His bio also tells us:

Jim taught at Everett Middle School and Wallenberg High School as a science teacher ...
— San Francisco State University

But possibly of more interest to The Australian than those modest qualifications is the fact that Steele is known to be a climate sceptic and has self-published a book on the subject.
But how and why does someone like him get to be quoted as an authority on coral and the Great Barrier Reef?
We put that to The Australian's Graham Lloyd ... and he pointed us to Watts Up With That, the world's most popular climate sceptic website, where Steele recently published an essay on coral bleaching, in which, according to Lloyd:

... he analyses and synthesizes peer-reviewed coral literature some of which suggests sustained bleaching during the early 20th century.
— Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor, The Australian, Email to Media Watch, 3 July, 2016

But wasn't Jim Steele just a fringe player in the coral debate, we asked Lloyd. To which he replied:

The papers presented by Steele are not fringe.
— Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor, The Australian, Email to Media Watch, 3 July, 2016

Adding

His bird watching expertise is irrelevant.
— Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor, The Australian, Email to Media Watch, 3 July, 2016

Now those who are familiar with Graham Lloyd's work will know that it's not the first time Media Watch has ripped into some of his climate science reporting

And we've often criticised him for giving too much weight to fringe science and dissenting views.
And according to Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Lloyd's recent work on the Barrier Reef also fits this pattern.

What he's doing is taking a sniff of there being something different to the scientific perspective and promoting it as a widely held belief. It's scandalous. To have someone in such a position of power in the Murdoch press saying these sorts of things is really shocking.
— Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor of Marine Science, University of Queensland, 29 June, 2016

Looking at Lloyd's latest coral bleaching report from her base in Hawaii, the president of the International Society for Coral Reef Studies, Professor Ruth Gates, reaches a similar conclusion, telling Media Watch:

It feels politicised for me and it's not balanced and it's worrying. It feels disingenuous at some level to be putting these views forward which aren't representative of the science.
— Professor Ruth Gates, President, International Coral Reef Symposium, 30 June, 2016

So we asked Lloyd if he believed his reporting should reflect the views of mainstream science. And he told us bluntly:

It clearly does.
— Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor, The Australian, Email to Media Watch, 3 July, 2016

Well, I guess that's a matter of opinion. And it must be said that in his latest report Lloyd does put forward the mainstream view as well.
But he doesn't tell readers for example, that Jim Steele's real expertise is not in coral but in birds.

Rooftop Solar Power To Be Mandatory In Dubai By 2030

CleanTechnica - Jake Richardson

The political leader of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, recently announced the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, which includes a number of renewable energy targets.
Perhaps most notable is that all rooftops in the city will have solar panels by 2030.
Some might say, however, it's the goal of solar generating 75% of the city's energy by 2050 that is more remarkable.
On the way to achieving this goal is the requirement that 25% is generated by solar by 2030.
Others might say the biggest story is the low-interest financing for clean energy that will be available because of a $27 billion investment to create the Dubai Green Fund.
The size of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park project has also been increased to 5,000 MW by 2030.

Imre Solt, Wiki Commons

"The strategy we are launching today will shape the energy sector over the next three decades. Our goal is to become the city with the smallest carbon footprint in the world by 2050," explained Sheikh Mohammed. Most of Dubai's electricity currently is generated by burning natural gas.
The United Arab Emirates has about one-tenth of the world's oil reserves, so it is very striking that such an emphasis would be placed on the growth of new solar power. Dubai has about 4 billion gallons of oil reserves and a population of approximately 2.1 million. The UAE's population is 9.3 million.
It is very commendable to set such large, yet achievable, renewable energy goals. In a sense, vigorously supporting clean, renewable energy seems to mesh well with Dubai's ethos, which seems to be "building rapidly and in an impressive fashion."
Of course, increasingly, solar power makes sense economically as well as environmentally. "When you have vast amounts of open land and an incredible solar resource like these countries do, the underlying structural driver is to conserve oil and gas for export and produce power from other alternative sources, even in the context of recent declines in commodity prices," explained Stephen J. Auton-Smith, director at Ernst & Young.
Energy storage wasn't mentioned, but it often makes sense to add battery systems to fill in gaps in electricity production.

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Are Seawalls The Best Answer To Rising Sea Levels – Or Is Retreat A Better Option?

The Guardian - Rebecca Dargie

While barriers are the most widely used methd of protecting coastal homes and infrastructure in Australia, landscape architects must consider other options

June's devastating storms damaged beachfront homes on Sydney's northern beaches. Some are calling for a seawall to be put in place. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

The extraordinary pictures of subsumed gardens and a swimming pool wrenched from the ground by the giant waves that battered Sydney's northern beaches last month have revived debate about seawalls and the impact of human attempts to keep the rising ocean from our doors.
Given their spectacular locations, the homes in the frontline of raging waves are usually valuable property. Attempts to fortify them are met with resistance from ecologists and other beach users, who say the houses should not have been built there in the first place.
They object to seawalls because they stop the beach from being a dynamic system, in which wind and waves continually reshape the shore. Natural processes will usually redeposit much of the lost sand back on to beaches in the weeks after a storm. But where there is a seawall, heightened waves run up the shore and slam against it. The beach can't move backwards, so the sand disappears.

Sydney storm damage on northern beaches captured by drone

But seawalls, like dykes, levees and berms, have been used across the world for centuries to protect homes and other assets. From Sydney to São Paulo to New York, a sea-level rise of even a few centimetres can threaten to swallow homes and highways, inundate sewage treatment plants, and contaminate water supplies. Whether faced with king tides or swelling rivers and lakes, planners in coastal and estuarine urban settings must find a way to brace against the impacts of climate change.
Some schemes address the wider landscape. New York's Big U, an ambitious berm project, will effectively raise the bank of the East river almost three metres – well above Hurricane Sandy's high-water mark. Others approaches consider making individual structures more adaptive, such as buildings on stilts, or houses that float – either permanently or when the land is inundated.
In Australia, seawalls are the most widely used method of protecting waterfront properties and infrastructure. While many object to their use, moves to minimise their visual and ecological impact are continually being refined.
David Rissik, deputy director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility which supports decision makers in managing sea-level rises, says while Australians have become used to being able to hold back the ocean, the location, structure and materials used for seawalls are under much greater scrutiny than in the past.
"Where people have taken over places where there is natural migration of riverbanks or open coast, seawalls have allowed them to live," he says.
Rissik is sanguine about the concentration of infrastructure around Australia's coast. "From a pathway from the beach, a local economy grows and, once that is established, it anchors people to that area and change is very difficult."
The row about whether a seawall should be built on a stretch of coast in Collaroy has raged since the shoreline of the northern Sydney suburb was subdivided more than 100 years ago. When the beach retreated during high seas, the then beach shacks were undermined. Records show major erosion occurred in 1920, seven shacks fell into the sea in 1945 and one was washed away in 1967. But, as Rissik says: "People forget and they build there again."
While Collaroy is among few beaches worldwide where researchers have a 40-year unbroken record of the changes to the coast through survey techniques, Rissik says coastal experts don't have a great knowledge of where sediment supplies and erosion are in many other parts of the country.
Queensland's Gold Coast is an exception. Maintaining the beach's amenity is so vital for tourism that planners have established a comprehensive strategy for coastal management. Under its A-line scheme, the city council allows seawalls under strict regulation. When developers want to build one it must be effectively behind the dunes, acting as a last line of defence, but buried by sand and hidden from view. The costs of dredging and distribution of sediment are enormous but compliance keeps protests to a minimum.
David Hatherly, a landscape architect whose company Vee Design has won acclaim for its redesign of the waterfront at Yeppoon on Queensland's central coast, says the prospect of rising sea levels was completely ignored in his brief from the council that commissioned him. "I don't think we in Australia have done a very good job of understanding our coastal environment," he says.
Cyclone Sid in 1998 caused the worst floods in Townsville's history, destroying much of the infrastructure on the Strand, the city's foreshore focal point. As part of the restructure, artificial headlands were built to hold the sand and prevent longshore drift. It's a typical response, Hatherly says. "We're coming up with these hard engineering solutions to fight nature. Artificial headlands, seawalls … they are Band-Aid solutions. The most cautious thing to do would be to maintain proper buffer zones."
Responses to sea-level rises fall under the three broad categories, Rissik says: defence, accommodate and retreat. Seawalls and levees are the most obvious defences, along with "soft options" such as mangroves and vegetation. Human-made dunes can be used to lessen wave energy.
Accommodation approaches include the development of areas in cities that allow us to continue to live, work and play where we do now, while rising seas and occasional floods take place around us. Futuristic versions of this could see communities built on piled foundations, where structures are screwed into the ground, surrounded by wetlands and beaches.
Rissik describes the retreat option as the point when we recognise we cannot cope with the impacts of a rising ocean and move to areas better suited to habitation. Hatherly points to the 2011 Queensland floods as an example of an extreme weather event which he expected would make a strong case for the retreat option.
"But people are already flocking back to the river's edge with limited concern for the possibility of flood," he says. "They won't relinquish those locations as long as governing authorities allow rebuilding."

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