Lethal Heating: 10/01/16

01/10/2016

Climate Change Is Driving Dangerous And Unpredictable Weather

Fairfax - Professor Mary Heath*

Something strange is going on with the weather. It might be spring, but that hasn't stopped snow falling in the ACT. Or, wet weather forcing the territory's major flower festival to close for the second day running. In Victoria, farms that were dying of thirst only months earlier have had dams fill too quickly – flooding parts of the state.
In South Australia we're dealing with a storm that has been described as "cyclonic", "super" and a one-in-50-year event.

It might be spring, but that hasn't stopped snow falling in the ACT. Photo: Clare Sibthorpe

I live in a sleepy Adelaide suburb, the sort of place where droughts are front of mind, not flooding rains. My house is near a creek that is dry for most of the year. I have lived beside it for almost 20 years with little concern, but a fortnight ago the State Emergency Service issued what would become the first of many warnings.
I arrived home in time to see the creek burst its banks, sending a torrent of muddy water down our street and another a block away. Neighbours at the top end of the street were flooded almost immediately. I spoke to one woman who looked up from the TV to realise a tide of muddy water was coming in under the door and across her carpet.

A large tree toppled over in the inner southern suburb of Springfield in Adelaide. Photo: Twitter/Lauren Rose

I helped move sandbags and direct traffic out of our street, where a lake was rapidly forming. In the end, I was lucky. Having just experienced that "one-in-50-year" event, colour me surprised to discover another on the way a fortnight later.
The bureau warned this would be worse. Given the previous flood, and warnings of gale-force winds, I decided to take precautions this time: lifting precious items onto higher surfaces, packing away anything that could fly away, requesting sandbags, finding candles and getting out the gumboots.
Then the storm that everyone in Australia has been reading about arrived. The power went off, and the rain came.
As I write, rain is still falling and the winds are strong. The flood risk for the state, including my nook, has not yet peaked. Friends and relatives in the north of the state have fallen silent; they may be without power for days rather than hours. My thoughts are with the people whose homes have been damaged or destroyed, who are cold and without information.
The striking thing about all of this, from where I sit, is the fact that two once-in-50-year events have occurred in a fortnight. Meteorologists with long careers say they have never seen such a ferocious storm in our state.
The weather is rewriting history, because climate change is here on an otherwise quiet suburban street. Climate change is driving ever more dangerous and unpredictable weather that means predictions of what will happen once in 50 years, based on past data, will bear no resemblance to what we must deal with in the future.
It's time for the politicians, who claim to have our best interests at heart, to stop pretending that we can have power security based on fossil fuels without paying for it with a future that we are only glimpsing now, following the first tornadoes I remember hearing of in our state tearing across the land and ripping steel pylons out of the ground like playthings.

*Mary Heath is an Associate Professor at Flinders University, and has lived in Adelaide since 1975

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Landmark Paris Climate Change Treaty To Come Into Force Amid Alarm Over 'Signals From The Natural World'

The Independent - Ian Johnston

Expert says the 'breakneck speed' at which the Paris deal is being ratified could be because of '16 straight months of record-breaking temperatures'

Demonstrators form a human chain on the Champs de Mars during the Paris climate summit. Getty

The Paris climate change deal – hailed as a landmark step in the fight against global warming – is to be ratified by the European Union in a move that will bring the international treaty into force.
EU ministers approved the ratification at an extraordinary meeting of the Environment Council.
The agreement, already ratified by the US and China, the world's biggest polluters, becomes binding after at least 55 countries who are responsible for 55 per cent of total emissions formally sign up.
Ratification by the EU, which is responsible for 12 per cent of global emissions, would take it over the threshold, allowing the treaty to come into force before the end of this year, some four years earlier than planned.
Concern has been growing over the pace of climate change, with a group of leading climatologists warning this week that the planet could hit 2C of warming – the level at which it is thought the effects will become dangerous – by 2050 or even sooner.
They warned that the measures promised at Paris would not be enough and called for the "doubling or tripling" of efforts.
The EU ministers' decision is expected to be backed by the European Parliament next week, after which the EU will formally submit its ratification to the United Nations – before individual countries such as the UK have done so.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said: "I am happy to see that today the member states decided to make history together and bring closer the entry into force of the first-ever universally binding climate change agreement.
"We must and we can hand over to future generations a world that is more stable, a healthier planet, fairer societies and more prosperous economies.
"This is not a dream. This is a reality and it is within our reach. Today we are closer to it."
Miguel Arias Cañete, EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, admitted that some had doubted the 28-nation bloc would be able to agree to act so quickly.
"Today's decision shows what Europe is all about: unity and solidarity as member states take a European approach, just as we did in Paris," he said.
"We are reaching a critical period for decisive climate action. And when the going gets tough, Europe gets going."

'Dangerous' climate change could arrive as early as 2050

The UK's climate change and industry minister, Nick Hurd, gave the green light to adopting the Paris agreement at the meeting.
"The Paris climate agreement is an ambitious and landmark deal. I welcome today's agreement, pushing forward EU ratification of the Paris climate change agreement," he said.
"Following the Prime Minister's announcement last week at UN General Assembly, the UK will complete its domestic approval process by the end of the year."

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Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said the speed at which the deal was being approved was "truly remarkable".
"It's striking not only in the context of global climate talks, which for so many years moved at glacial pace – it's very unusual for Governments to bring any major treaty into force in less than a year," he said.
"It's tempting to say that this breakneck speed is the result of signals from the natural world, such as having 16 straight months of record-breaking temperatures and the final refutation of the 'global warming pause' narrative.
"But another equally important factor is in many nations, led by China, a clean energy revolution is taking off driven by economics as well as climate concerns – which makes cutting emissions much easier."
He agreed the pledges made at Paris were not enough to keep global warming well below 2C – the target agreed at the summit.
"But the Paris deal contains measures to 'ratchet up' national commitments, and its astoundingly quick entry into force raises the prospects of tighter emission cuts down the line that could yet steer the world away from dangerous climate change, as the majority of citizens globally want," Mr Black added.
Molly Scott Cato MEP, the Green Party's spokesperson on EU relations, said the EU had been "crucial for the fight against dangerous climate change", setting targets that "prevented our Government from totally crushing the renewable energy sector".
"But as we prepare to leave the EU it is a worrying fact that many of those who campaigned to leave and are now steering our course and are deeply sceptical about climate change and not remotely interested in pushing for a renewable energy transition," she said.
"So it is critical at this time that climate campaigners, those from the renewable energy sector, progressive politicians; indeed, anyone who cares about a safe and secure future, work together. We need to pile pressure on the government to sign the Paris Agreement without further delay."

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Smart Networks Will End 1950-Style Energy Arguments

New Daily - Rob Burgess

Smart grids, as with the internet, will not fall over if attacked at one point. Photo: Getty

Don’t be fooled by the political posturing over South Australia’s state-wide blackout – the really important question is not whether an “over-reliance on renewable energies” was to blame, as deputy PM Barnaby Joyce asked.
South Australian senator Nick Xenophon tried to get a bit of mileage out the same question, and Prime Minister Turnbull threw a sop to the climate-sceptics in his party-room by calling the event a “wake up call” on renewables.
What none of the leaders have acknowledged, however, is that the 1950s centralised power model that fell over on Wednesday is already doomed – with or without the wind-farms so despised by the likes of Mr Joyce.

We’re all in the dark
The news media, too, has been slow to throw off the idea that large power stations, owned by energy-generation oligopolists, will continue to dominate 21st century power supply.
They won’t, because while politicians bicker and the media weigh one centralised-power argument against another, in the background an unstoppable energy revolution is underway.
The New Daily covered this historic shift a year ago, when it became clear that new technologies were unleashing market forces that will overtake the centralised model.
The key technologies are solar power and a new generation battery storage systems that give households and businesses the ability to sell, as well as buy power.

Tesla Powerwall: one of the devices giving consumers choice about how they buy and sell power.

Lithium-ion batteries such as the Powerwall, now being sold into Australia by electric-car manufacturer Tesla, put power ‘consumers’ in control.

Energy-source agnostic
Whether the storage systems are charged by roof-top solar, by some distant wind, gas or coal-fired station, or whether they are kept topped-up by excess energy from a local-council owned storage facility, these systems will allow users to buy and sell energy with any source they choose.
In power markets, peer-to-peer trading through existing grids will ensure that if an interstate interconnector blows up, smaller regional and local grids won’t fall over.
And energy trading won’t just be between giant energy firms and consumers.
Already, if a large shopping centre with a solar array on its roof is generating too much power on a sunny day, it can use a ‘wheeling access arrangement’ to ‘wheel’ that energy to another buyer looking for cheaper power – a large factory, for instance.

Jemma Green of Perth-based firm Power Ledger – raising capital for energy trading.

Jemma Green, co-founder of the Perth-based energy start-up Power Ledger says that soon this kind of arrangement will become available to anyone who needs to buy and sell power “peer to peer” – including households.
Her firm has developed a sophisticated “energy trading platform, allowing people to buy and sell power without using an electricity retailer”.
It’s important to note that the energy grid infrastructure in South Australia, or anywhere else, will be the means through which peer-to-peer selling will take place – and to that extent will still be a monopoly.
And base-load power from centralised power stations will still move across those grids – though as a smaller percentage of the energy used.
Importantly, given the South Australian power failure, supply cannot be destroyed by freak weather events, or, as seen twice in the Crimean Peninsula in the past year, by terrorist attacks.
Large commercial peer-to-peer trading is already taking place and small scale trading is on its way – New Zealand energy firm Vector is pressing ahead with a trial of the Power Ledger trading platform, and Ms Green tells me her firm has begun a capital-raising scheme which is attracting international investors.
Which firms ultimately prosper in the smart-grid future is yet to be seen.
But one thing is certain – politicians trying to impose their preferred energy mix on Australia consumers will find they are only tilting at windmills, so to speak.

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