30/04/2017

For A Horrible Glimpse Into Australia's Dark Future, Look To Trump's Views On Coal

The Guardian - 

The ugly end of decarbonisation is being yanked in different directions by political messaging, in both the US and Australia
As renewable energy and gas become cheaper in the US, Trump is promising a shining, coal-powered future. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
 Every big step in the process of decarbonisation is marred by unshakeable ideological allegiances. This is the frustrating and tragic clockwork of climate action: there are always echoes of a plan, but they're buried underneath political posturing.
Renewable energy has broad bipartisan support. The shutdown of coal is a different story. There are no popular solutions for the ugly end of climate action. Can we thread a needle through the ever-shifting ethical challenges of surgically removing a technology that still forms a major part of our society?
The recent shutdown of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station isn't Australia's first coal closure, but the event activated the denial of coal's inevitable demise in those tasked with forward thinking. This pattern of denial is a haunting forecast of what we'll see when the closure of coal intensifies in Australia.
Coal's destiny isn't a secret. The European Union has pledged no new coal plants after 2020. China and India have seen a pointed decline in coal growth. The UK's last lump of coal will glow red in 2025. Though the International Energy Agency forecasts many more decades of coal, primarily in Asia, that's a testament to the strength of incumbency than any long-term viability.
Hazelwood's French owner, Engie, is "making climate a priority" – so much so that Hazelwood's closure was announced with only a few months' notice. It was Australia's oldest, dirtiest, most inefficient and expensive power station. It felt sudden, but that's because we have not been paying attention.
On the day of Hazelwood's closure, painted signs were hung alongside rows of helmets scrawled with messages of support, sentimentality and anger. "GOD HATES GREENIES", "FUCK THE GREENIES" and "SHUT DOWN BY GREENS + LABOR" all popped up in my Twitter feed on that day, alongside demands for the power station to be kept open.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott urged the government to intervene to meet these demands. The philosophy of government refusing to meddle in free energy markets was forgotten in the face of fewer fossil-fuelled electrons hurtling through the grid. The plea was rejected by the prime minister, but within days Malcolm Turnbull was blaming the closure of the power station on Victoria's Labor premier, Daniel Andrews, despite Hazelwood having been privatised under the Kennett government in the late 90s, before Engie's economic decision.
For the Labor party, there's no easy way to contextualise the deactivation of this historic, coal-powered machine within the frames of workers' rights and environmental protection. Celebrating the removal of such a profoundly significant source of emissions seems somewhat callous in the context of 750 humans being left without jobs in a town heavily dependent on the power station and coalmine.
Conversely, focusing solely on employment seems narrow and shortsighted, like odd disregard for the rest of us, breathing the same air and relying on the same atmospheric system. Hazelwood's contribution to total emissions was far greater than its contribution to generation of electrical power, but most discourse focused on the stability of the grid rather than emissions reductions.


Total facility-type electricity sector emissions and generation data from the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) database

The nuances and contradictions of coal closure don't fit neatly into any party's over-arching narrative. Nevertheless, the Greens initiated a Senate inquiry into the closure of coal-fired power stations, with the aim of investigating how a transition away from coal might be managed.
Even that exercise was split into ideological shards – the Greens (normally accused of runaway fanaticism) produced a level-headed final report, while Labor and the Liberal party produced dissenting reports that fractured any hope of a potential tripartisan pathway. Resounding retreat was the outcome.
For a horrible glimpse into a dark potential future for Australia, you need only glance at US president Donald Trump's views on coal-fired power, and the cruel system of false hope he's using to draw votes in US towns reliant on fossil fuels for employment.
As renewable energy and gas become cheaper in the US, Trump paints himself as the saviour of communities due to be hit hardest, promising a shining coal-powered future. The magnitude of this fantasy is not to be underestimated. Even the founder and chief executive of the largest privately held coal-mining firm in the US told Trump to tone it down, as Trump raised his executive pen to a slew of environmental regulations. It's the hulking momentum of the free market in the US that is shrinking demand for carbon-intensive fuels. Trump's promises go beyond lies. They are irresponsible, and they condemn thousands to a treacherous future.
Long-term plans to deal with the challenges of American coal decline are seen as political suicide in regions relying on the extraction and burning of a substance that has become politically, socially, economically and environmentally unviable.
Political flight, instead of political fight, isn't a uniquely Australian phenomenon. The major parties in Australia are yet to turn the echoes of a plan into reality, and so we're left vaguely toying with the immature fantasies of Trump.
We can't continue with a weather-beaten mess of policy that is being yanked daily in different directions by the minuscule attention span of political messaging. There is really only one way out of this: ditch the denials, accept reality, and make a serious plan for the inevitable demise of coal.

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Yes, Climate Change Matters: International Scientists Appeal To Trump On His First 100 Days

The Conversation -  |  |  | 

Bill Nye the Science Guy leads a crowd of scientists in the April 22 2017 March on Science in Washington, DC. Aaron Bernstein/Reuters
US President Donald Trump has called global warming a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese and appointed a foe of environmental regulations to head up America’s Environmental Protection Agency.
On April 22, which annually marks Earth Day, thousands of scientists around the globe marched to defend the role of science, research and facts in society today against repeated attacks from the White House.
New York’s March for Science drew an estimated 20,000 people. Stephan Schmidt
As the US president rounds the bend of his first 100 days, The Conversation Global has invited scientists from Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe to explain why climate change is real, and how it’s impacting life where they live.

Maty Konte - Climate change is ‘not gender neutral’
The UN goal of achieving inclusive and sustainable development across the world by 2030 will be impossible without the participation of women in developing nations, including in Africa. But empowering women will be impossible if we don’t do something to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Climate change hinders the empowerment of many poor women and girls from rural areas. First, women represent more than half the workers in the agricultural sector in Africa, where insufficient infrastructure is exacerbated by the effects of climate change.
Women also spend a considerable number of unpaid hours walking long distances to bring firewood and clean water for drinking and bathing home on a daily basis. Climate change makes both water and firewood scarce, forcing these women and girls to trek further to reach the few areas where fresh water and wood can still be found.
Gathering firewood before school gets harder as woodlands become more scarce. Antony Njuguna/Reuters
On these vital journeys, they risk being raped or kidnapped; the longer the trip, the greater the risk.
Climate change thus also impacts girls’ education in rural regions of the developing world. Because girls must fetch household necessities before class in the morning, harder-to-find water and wood increases school absenteeism. That slows down their learning, as does the fatigue engendered by increasingly arduous morning and weekend routines, which makes it harder to concentrate on math and language lessons.
A Zulu Carnival show before COP17 in Durban. Rogan Ward/Reuters 
All of these impede the potential achievement of girls and women. School dropouts and loss of female human capital due to climate change consequences will have negative repercussions on the economy and on the next generation.
Climate change is not gender neutral. It reduces economic opportunities for the most vulnerable people in the world, who are more often than not women and children.
Failing to act goes against women’s empowerment and is yet another handicap for all the efforts that have been put forward for inclusive development.

Shobhakar Dhakal - Asia has hotter days and warmer nights
Asia already alternates from one extreme to another. Heatwave frequency has increased in many regions, as evidenced by droughts during the monsoon season, but we’re also seeing wetter conditions across Central Asia and frequent flooding in eastern Asia and India.
Across Southeast Asia, temperatures have been increasing at a rate 0.14°C to 0.2°C per decade since the 1960s, coupled with a rising number of hot days and warm nights and a decline in cooler weather. Today, scientists are projecting temperature rises of 3°C to 6°C in Asia if no action is taken.
Seas are also projected to rise by 0.4m to 0.6m by the year 2100, while growing warmer and more acidic.
All of this would be dangerous for the people who live in impacted areas. Due to projected sea-level rise and extreme climate events, millions of people along the coasts of South and Southeast Asia will likely be at risk from coastal and river flooding, with the potential for widespread damage to human settlements. We can also anticipate heat-related deaths and water and food shortages resulting from drought.
Southeast Asia has begun responding to these threats to a certain extent, developing early-warning systems for climatic events, reforesting mangrove forests, managing water resources better and protecting coasts from flooding.
Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva statue during Typhoon Dujuan in Quanzhou, 2015. China Daily China Daily Information Corp - CDIC/reuters
This region is also actively cooperating to pursue the ambitious renewable energy target set by the Paris Agreement.
If the current US administration reverses Obama-era environmental efforts and pushes fossil fuels domestically, it will set Asia and the world on a dangerous, possibly irreversible path. It will also erode the credibility of the United States when it makes international commitments and damage much-needed American leadership in science and the environment.
Climate change is anthropogenic, and changes are already evident. Business as usual is a scientifically well-stated concern. We have a chance to keep global temperatures at under 2°C from pre-industrial levels if we act fast and stick together. I sincerely hope the Trump administration will give this crisis more serious thought.

Sandrine Maljean-Dubois - It’s a ‘race against the clock’
The message from science is clear: we are in a race against the clock.
In adopting the Paris Agreement, states around the world agreed on clear and ambitious targets to contain global warming and to limit global temperature increases. They outlined a trajectory of progressive decarbonisation of our societies by the end of the century.
It was the signal the markets were waiting for after years of chaotic negotiations. Businesses, banks, investment funds, local authorities, individuals – so many economic actors – are following world leaders down this path. Pushed to innovation, they are advancing ahead of their competitors. They will create the technologies and jobs of tomorrow.

spiral_2016_large
Spiralling global temperatures from 1850-2016 (full animation) Ed Hawkins

The fact is, undoing Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, as Trump has recently done with the swipe of a pen, will produce only a limited environmental effect. Reactivating coal plants can be detrimental in the long run but coal is no longer competitive, so the move is impracticable and short-sighted.
But it sends a very negative signal to the world. The US is the world’s second-biggest producer of greenhouse gasses, and it had previously exercised decisive leadership in the COP process along with top-producer China. Considering the importance of American financial contributions to international bodies such as the secretariat of the UN climate action branch, the Green Climate Fund and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, American disengagement threatens to undermine this fragile and too-timid dynamic.
Coal will sink this ship. Stephan Schmidt
The individual commitments of states are insufficient to achieve the objectives they have collectively set themselves. The Paris Agreement contains the tools needed to push countries to progressively up the ante on their national contributions, but without political will they will likely go unheeded. And it is precisely this that the US is now undermining.
For the American economy and for the world, for environmental, health and economic reasons, for present and future generations, we must immediately repudiate coal. History will frown on you for doing otherwise, President Trump!

Joice Ferreira - Brazil alone cannot save the Amazon
The Brazilian Amazon – the largest rainforest in the world and a region of national, regional and global importance – already faces an existential threat from raging wildfires and extreme flooding engendered by climate change.
Further global warming may push the forest’s biome beyond the point of no return.
Given the importance of the 6.9 million km² the Amazon for biodiversity and ecosystem services, that would bring unprecedented problems not just to Brazil or the Amazon region but the entire world.
Deforestation has long threatened the Brazilian Amazon, now climate change-related flooding, fire and drought do too. Nacho Doce/Reuters
In the last decade, the Amazon has experienced three intense droughts (2005, 2010 and 2015), interspersed with extreme flooding events. The droughts saw rivers run dry, killing millions of fish and isolating rural communities that rely on rivers to get around.
On land, huge tracts of forests burned as never before. In 2015 alone, fire ravaged some 9,500 km² – an area the size of the US state of Vermont. Millions of people suffered severe impacts from those events, as they saw their livelihoods and health endangered, crops ruined, transportation imperilled, hydropower disabled. All this affects the wider general economy, of course.
Such changes can trigger cascading effects on the region. Droughts, for example, render the forest more vulnerable to fire; lack of rainfall also leads to a massive loss of carbon absorption capacity due to reduced plant growth and tree death. After the 2005 drought, for example, about five billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted into the atmosphere.
A mural of the Amazon’s indigenous defenders. Nacho Doce/Reuters
The end of the seasonal monsoon rains that the Amazon generates across the region would spell disaster for South American breadbaskets such as Argentina and Brazil.
Brazil cannot deal with this global threat alone. We need strong action from developed countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from the United States.
Governments must take immediate measures to avoid further degradation of this delicate, critical biome. If the US reneges on its leadership and refuses to enforce environmental regulations and international agreements to curb climate change, the world will pay the price.

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Coral-Bleaching Database Puts Australia Second Worst In The World

ABC News - Annie Guest

Bleached and unbleached coral from Fiji (Supplied: Simon Donner)
Key points:
  • New database includes 80 per cent more reports of coral bleaching than existing databank
  • Links higher water temperatures to an eight-fold increase in the likelihood of bleaching
  • Before the 1990s there were few coral bleaching events
Scientists have compiled a new global database of coral reef mass-bleaching events that shows the likelihood of bleaching increased eight-fold from the late 1990s.
The new database includes 80 per cent more reports of coral bleaching than the existing databank, with Australia having the second-worst record.
It also demonstrates the relationship between higher water temperatures and bleaching.
The database was put together by three researchers from Canada and Australia who personally contacted scientists and divers from around the world, and trawled thousands of research papers to bring it together.
Simon Donner, climate scientist from the University of British Columbia and the lead author, said they had created the "most comprehensive historical database of reports of coral bleaching from around the world".
"The largest number of reports actually comes from the Caribbean, and part of that is due to the extensive bleaching event that happened in 2005 and then again in 2010," he said.
"After that the largest number of reports comes from Australia and the Great Barrier Reef."
Simon Donner, the lead author of the new global database. (Supplied)
The scientists' work, published in the journal Plos One, has almost doubled the existing database of mass coral-bleaching events around the world.
It has linked higher water temperatures to an eight-fold increase in the likelihood of bleaching from the late 1990s.
"There's so few records before even 1990 and that's not because there were no scientists studying reefs or that people weren't diving, it's because bleaching events were not happening very often," Professor Donner said.
"We have this database from time zero up to 1990 [and] there's only about 250 records — then after that there's another 7,000-plus."

Once vibrant reefs 'now graveyards'
The new database has been welcomed by the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the University of Queensland.
"I'm personally very interested in that because it's an ability to get baseline and the amount of change," he said.
"And then hopefully identify areas that might be more robust than others to the climate change coming along.
"If we can identify those, we can then really focus our attention on making sure that they get through to the Paris agreement conditions — stabilise temperatures by mid-century.
"It's really important that we get this sort of information."
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg recently examined reefs around the Maldives Islands, after doing a baseline survey two years ago and said what he found was shocking.
"The amount of coral that's been lost across vast parts of that archipelago system — reefs that were vibrant, full of fish, full of coral, are now graveyards," he said.
"And, it's not just in one or two places, it's across most of the archipelago.
"It's a really serious indicator of this new climate regime that we seem to have entered."

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