Worst Year In NSW For Salmonella, E. Coli As Global Temperatures Increase

Fairfax - Harriet Alexander

NSW recorded its worst figures in at least five years for diseases caused by food poisoning and mosquito bites, as doctors warn climate change is looming as a public health emergency.
Statistics released last week show 2016 was the worst year on record for diseases including legionnaires' disease, salmonellosis, listeriosis, E. coli and dengue fever, which flourish in warmer conditions.

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians has warned that climate change will lead to more disease. Photo: Nicolas Walker

The figures come in an unusual summer for health threats, with months of wet weather causing a fivefold increase in Ross River virus notifications in the Riverina and the migration of the Irukandji jellyfish as far south as Fraser Island.
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians [RACP] has released a position paper that described climate change as a "global public health emergency".
Although Australia was not the most vulnerable nation, its population was already experiencing higher rates of respiratory illness, diarrhoea and morbidity requiring hospital admission during hot days, and higher rates of suicide in rural areas during drought years, it said.
The RACP called for a national climate and health strategy and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases.
The World Health Organisation estimates that global warming will cause an extra 250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050.
Labor's health spokesman Walt Secord said the government should conduct surveillance and monitoring of air cooling systems, consider spraying after flooding and institute a public health campaign alerting families to symptoms.
Legionnaires' disease is spread by contaminated cooling towers for air conditioning units, and health authorities have indicated their extended use in warmer weather might have contributed to the number of outbreaks last year.
Mr Secord said there had been more outbreaks of gastroenteritis in child care centres and nursing homes, including 50 separate outbreaks in June and July, with the protracted warm weather.

Salmonella was rampant in NSW in 2016. Photo: Rocky Mountain Laboratories,NIAID,NIH

"We have air cooling systems pushed to the limits with bacteria thriving in them – and mosquitoes outside carrying tropical diseases previously unknown to NSW," Mr Secord said.
"Unfortunately, we are seeing diseases associated with the tropics being reported further south, such as the State's North Coast – and mosquitoes carrying tropical diseases being found in the State's Central West and in coastal areas.
"It is mind-boggling that the Liberals and Nationals are still denying the impact of climate change on our health."
All the dengue fever cases would have been imported from interstate or overseas as NSW does not have any of the vector mosquitoes.

NSW Director of Health Protection Jeremy McAnulty said there was not enough long term data to draw a definitive link between certain diseases and climate change, and even when a trend was detected it was difficult to isolate warm weather as the cause.
Gastro diseases such as salmonella were more prevalent in summer when the warmer weather made better conditions for bacteria to thrive in food.
"It might be logical that [salmonella] will increase in general over longer periods, but we don't really know," Dr McAnulty said.
"Similarly with mosquito-borne disease it's really unclear what the long term impact will be.
"We're always worried about these things. We talk about what impact climate change might have internationally with various diseases but we're not able to say what that might mean for the coming year."
The RACP's David Harley said it was likely that the risk of certain diseases would increase with global warming.
"Iti's illogical to suggest that the risk won't change and it's illogical to suggest that for some diseases the risk won't increase, but it's a complicated equation," he said.
His own modelling showed dengue fever was likely to become less of a threat in North Queensland as the temperature warmed, but it was possible the optimum conditions for the mosquito would just move south, he said.
2016 was also the worst year for cryptosporidiosis, gonorrhoea, meningococcal, pneumococcal, tuberculosis, influenza A and shigellosis, which have no obvious link to climate change.
It was the best year for chicken pox, which falls under the immunisation program, and Barmah Forest virus, which typically has few cases immediately following a spike because infection gives immunity.
The Climate Council reported last year that there had been a steady increase in the number of deaths in summer over the last four decades, indicating that climate change might already be affecting mortality rates.

Links

• More salmonella cases linked to tainted Red Dirt rockmelons
• Salmonella salad cases across Australia continue to rise
• Climate Impacts on Human Health
• Climate change to widen range of disease-carrying mosquitoes
• Climate change could worsen diseases like Zika virus, experts say
• Climate and Health Program
• Climate Change and Public Health Climate change is thawing deadly diseases

Seeking Shelter From The Storm

The Age - Editorial

It seems 2016 was the year of extremes.
Yes, populism punished the body politic, but we had to seek shelter from more literal storms.

High tide begins to impact on damaged homes at Collaroy on the northern beaches of Sydney. Photo: DEAN LEWINS

The most recent, on December 29, lashed Victoria. The deluge in Melbourne alone turned domesticated creeks decidedly angry. And the roads, well, as the gutters disappeared they conspired against pedestrians and vehicles alike.
Way up north, just a few days before, the Bureau of Meteorology described a Christmas Day storm as a "once-in-a-half-century" weather event. The flooding flashed its way through the Northern Territory.  Uluru  wept unforgettably – majestic cascading streams.

Waterfalls stream down Uluru after record rains. Photo: Parks Australia

In retrospect, we shouldn't have been surprised that 2016 had more mad weather to throw our way.
There were the massive storms and king tides that swept along the east coast of Australia in June, washing away sand, beaches and property, including a swimming pool yanked from its bed and left dangling. As one Sydney local, Craig Graham, said: "I have never seen it come up this high with this amount of storm surge and I've been living here about 40 years."
Meanwhile, out west, the lights went out in South Australia in September when a "once-in-a-generation storm" turned transmission towers into tinsel.
Then, in the same month, another "once-in-a-generation" flood in Forbes in NSW. (Never mind that the same town had been inundated in 2012 by flood waters.)
2016 had indeed turned barking mad. But why? The Bureau of Meteorology provides some context and background to our year of extremes with its annual climate statement. Here are the facts:

• Last year was the world's warmest year on record. The planet's three hottest years are 2016, 2015 and 2014.
• 2016 was Australia's 4th hottest year on record.
• Around Australia  ocean temperatures were the warmest on record.
• We experienced our warmest autumn on record for Australia.
• The 2015/16 El Nino was one of the strongest on record. It brought the warmest wet season on record for northern Australia.
• It was also Australia's wettest May to September on record.

Almost 30 years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established, and in 1990, in its first report, it warned  future warming was likely. Five years later, in its second report, it raised the likely increase of extreme events – heatwaves, landslides due to flooding and so on. With each subsequent  report, the modelling became more sophisticated, the case more compelling. We have had at least two decades of warnings – as the planet's temperature increases, so too will the extreme weather events.
In October this year, the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology released their fourth biennial State of the Climate report. One of the trends it revealed was a shift in the odds towards extreme heat conditions – dubbed the five-fold factor.
From 1951 to 1980, extreme warm months would have occurred about 2 per cent of the time. Now – in the past 15 years – that has increased to more than 10 per cent. As The Age's environment editor Peter Hannam explains, in 2013 alone, there were 28 days of extreme heat. By way of comparison – it took from 1910 to 1941 to tally up 28 such days.
Unfortunately, the Coalition government seems more intent on ignoring climate change. The Prime Minister, who believes in global warming, has played to his sceptics.
While the post-truth phenomenon wreaked havoc through electoral landscapes in 2016, its precursor can be found in the decades-old campaign to undermine the science of climate change.  Lie, obfuscate, accuse. The overwhelming body of evidence is then willfully ignored – or attacked. But it doesn't change the facts: Greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming. The world is getting hotter and the weather is changing.
Unless emissions are contained, our future will be littered with what we now refer to as "once-in-a-generation" events. Unfortunately, they may come almost every year.

Links

• ‘Earth On The Edge’: EU Agency Confirms 2016 As Hottest Year On Record
• 2016 Was The Hottest Year Ever On Australia’s East Coast, Confirms Bureau Of Meteorology
• Annual climate statement 2016
• Australia Had Extreme Weather and Fourth-Hottest Year in 2016
• 2016 was Sydney's hottest year on record
• Record-breaking extreme weather in Australia in 2016 devastates ecosystems
• Earth on the edge: Record breaking 2016 was close to 1.5°C warming
• 2016 'hottest on record' in new sign of global warming, Copernicus organisation says
• 2016 an 'eventful year' of extreme weather events, bureau says

Indian Firm Makes Carbon Capture Breakthrough

The Guardian - Roger Harrabin

Carbonclean is turning planet-heating emissions into profit by converting CO2 into baking powder – and could lock up 60,000 tonnes of CO2 a year

Tuticorin thermal power station near the port of Thoothukudi on the Bay of Bengal, southern India. The plant is said to be the first industrial-scale example of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU). Photograph: Roger Harrabin

A breakthrough in the race to make useful products out of planet-heating CO2 emissions has been made in southern India.
A plant at the industrial port of Tuticorin is capturing CO2 from its own coal-powered boiler and using it to make soda ash – aka baking powder.
Crucially, the technology is running without subsidy, which is a major advance for carbon capture technology as for decades it has languished under high costs and lukewarm government support.
The firm behind the Tuticorin process says its chemicals will lock up 60,000 tonnes of CO2 a year and the technology is attracting interest from around the world.
Debate over carbon capture has mostly focused until now on carbon capture and storage (CCS), in which emissions are forced into underground rocks at great cost and no economic benefit. The Tuticorin plant is said to be the first industrial scale example of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU).
There is already a global market for CO2 as a chemical raw material. It comes mainly from industries such as brewing where it is cheap and easy to capture.
Until now it has been too expensive without subsidy to strip out CO2 from the relatively low concentrations in which it appears in flue gas. The Indian plant has overcome the problem by using a new CO2-stripping chemical.
It is just slightly more efficient than the current CCS chemical amine, but its inventors, Carbonclean, say it also needs less energy, is less corrosive, and requires much smaller equipment meaning the build cost is much lower than for conventional carbon capture.
The new kit has been installed at Tuticorin Alkali Chemicals. The firm is now using the CO2 from its own boiler to make soda ash – a base chemical with a wide range of uses including glass manufacture, sweeteners, detergents and paper products.
The firm’s managing director, Ramachandran Gopalan, told BBC Radio 4: “I am a businessman. I never thought about saving the planet. I needed a reliable stream of CO2, and this was the best way of getting it.” He says the plant now has virtually zero emissions to air or water.
Carbonclean believes capturing usable CO2 can deal with perhaps 5-10% of the world’s emissions from coal. It’s no panacea, but it would be a valuable contribution because industrial steam-making boilers are hard to run on renewable energy.
The inventors of the new process are two young chemists at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. They failed to find Indian finance and were welcomed instead by the UK government, which offered grants and the special entrepreneur status that whisks them through the British border.
The firm’s headquarters are now based in London’s Paddington district. Its CEO, Aniruddha Sharma, said: “So far the ideas for carbon capture have mostly looked at big projects, and the risk is so high they are very expensive to finance. We want to set up small-scale plants that de-risk the technology by making it a completely normal commercial option.”
By producing a subsidy-free carbon utilisation project, Carbonclean appears to have something of a global lead. But it is by no means alone. Carbon8 near Bristol is buying in CO2 to make aggregates, and other researchers are working on making plastics and fuels from waste CO2.
At last, it seems, the race to turn CO2 into profit is really on.

Links

• CO2 turned into stone in Iceland in climate change breakthrough
• UK must move now on carbon capture to save consumers billions, says report
• Treasury cut to carbon capture will cost UK £30bn, says watchdog
• Massive carbon capture investment 'needed to slow global warming'
• Scrapping carbon capture support 'threatens UK climate targets'
• UK cancels pioneering £1bn carbon capture and storage competition
• Plans for carbon-capture power station abandoned
• Carbon capture in UK under threat as study raises doubts
• Government moves to calm carbon capture funding fears