Wetlands Discovery Opens New Doors For Australian Climate Research

Fairfax - Tony Moore

Scientists say the surprising discovery that North Stradbroke Island's Ferngully Lagoon dated back more than 200,000 years, and other wetlands on the island more than 40,000 years, could reshape climate change research on the Australian continent.
Researchers from the University of Queensland and the University of Adelaide made the discovery after they took core samples from the 16 wetlands on North Stradbroke Island.

John Tibby and Cameron Barr take core samples from Duck Lagoon, North Stradbroke Island. Photo: Tony Moore

Previously, scientists believed Australian wetlands date back to the Ice Age, about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.
The discovery showed North Stradbroke Island was an exception.

Researchers John Tibby, Lydia McKenzie, Jonathan Marshall and Cameron Barr take core samples from Duck Lagoon, North Stradbroke Island. Photo: Tony Moore

The science is published in the Journal of Quaternary Science, which studies Australian wetlands.
The South Australian lead researcher John Tibby released the results on Monday, with Queensland government scientist Jonathan Marshall.
Dr Marshall, the principal scientist with the Queensland Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation, said the research demonstrated North Stradbroke Island was "an Australian exception" during those dry times.
"We cored and dated 16 wetlands on the island and found six dating to the ice age or earlier, with one being more than 200,000 years old," Dr Marshall said.
Dr Tibby, from the University of Adelaide, said there were more wetlands on North Stradbroke Island dating back to the Ice Age than anywhere else in Australia.
"Australia was much drier during the last Ice Age than it is today, as most of the water was held in large ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere," he said.
“Right across Australia, there were few wetlands during this time, which raises the question: Where and how did plants and animals survive that needed permanent water?
"The island, and possibly even the region itself, may have been a refuge from dry climates.”
The Moreton Bay side of North Stradbroke Island has a string of wetlands.
Dr Tibby said their research showed Ferngully Lagoon, to the north of Blue and Brown Lakes on the bay side of North Stradbroke Island, was 200,000 years old.
"The instinctive thing is that you would expect that lakes and swamps that exist on sand, because North Stradbroke Island is a sand island, is that they are likely not to have existed for a long period of time," he said.
"So the fact that these lakes and swamps have existed for a long time suggests that on average it has been wet in the region for most of that period of time, which is in contrast to what we think we know about the rest of the Australian continent.
"We have very, very few locations where we have wetlands that have persisted through since the end of the last Ice Age."
The Ice Age began slowly about 100,000 years ago, reached its peak between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago and gently warmed.
The discovery would allow researchers to study the history of vegetation changes, eventually over the past 200,000 years, by looking at fossilised pollens.
This research would be compared to other research, which was "inferring" past rainfall in the region.
Dr Tibby said researchers would use core samples to look into the impact of human arrival in south-east Queensland and the impact on vegetation.
"Whether those two things together had a role in causing the extinction of the giant animals, the megafauna and then what happened to fire practices with Indigenous people using the landscape," he said.
"It has been hard to get good answers to those questions because we have had so few good sites."
The science suggested the island may have had permanent wetland areas when Australia’s climate was at its driest.
Dr Tibby said the persistence of these wetlands were linked to the island’s groundwater systems, which acted as water reservoirs during periods of rainfall deficit.
“During what was otherwise a particularly dry period in Australia’s ancient past, these persistently moist regions are thought to have played a unique role in maintaining biodiversity,” he said.
Dr Tibby said being able to research the North Stradbroke Island wetlands further would help understand longer-term climate change.
“It will greatly improve our understanding about the drivers of both local and regional climate variability.”
Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation traditional owner Darren Burns said the new scientific evidence confirmed the existence of local natural resources – local spring and water supplies - which the Quandamooka people used to live on the island they knew as Minjerribah.
Science Minister Leanne Enoch, herself a Quandamooka women from Minjerribah, said the research had the potential to change thinking about how climate changed in south-east Queensland.
“Until now, few Australian sites had offered detailed information about what was happening at wetlands since the last great ice age, which peaked around 15,000 years ago,” Ms Enoch said.
“...The significance of this research is that it greatly adds to our understanding of the ancient climatic changes that shaped our country, our wildlife and our first peoples.”

Links

• 'Time is running out': Ex-UN climate chief has some advice for Turnbull
• Nothing to see here, say climate deniers
• States leave federal government in the shade
• Deeper carbon cuts for power sector would cut prices: RepuTex
• Rich must help poor nations prepare for extreme events
• CommBank rules out lending to Adani's Carmichael coal mine
• 'Disgrace': Australia's emissions increase accelerates

For Energy Security, The Failing Liddell Coal Plant Is The Last Thing We Need

The Guardian - Ben Oquist*

Confusion reigns over whether the government will, or can, keep the ageing power station going. But there’s a much better way to ensure grid reliability

‘Throughout 2016-17 the 45-year-old power station’s average capacity was only 54%.’ Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters

Coal fails in the heat. And so it did on 10 February 2017, as the heatwave that sparked South Australia’s blackout rolled across into NSW and emergency load-shedding was required in Australia’s biggest state. The Liddell power station failed to perform and could only operate at below half-capacity. In fact, throughout 2016-17 the 45-year-old power station’s average capacity was only 54%. It almost never operates at peak performance.
To increase grid reliability, the last thing you would want to do is rely upon an underperforming, old power station prone to failure during heatwaves.
But the good news is that Australia does not have to wait until after 2022 to put in place an energy security solution. Consumers can pay less, pollution can be cut and the grid made more reliable without waiting to keep a coal plant open which may or may not have a seller or a buyer.
Demand response technology reduces peak demand to keep the grid stable. Cloud computer software is used to control a potential fleet of millions of domestic and commercial devices, from smelters to residential air conditioners, aggregating them into what the CSIRO calls a “virtual power plant”. From the consumer’s perspective, it is as easy as taking a selfie on a tram.
A recent Australia Institute report into demand management showed this emerging industry will be worth US$36bn by 2025, more than tripling from 39 GW to 144 GW. The International Energy Agency benchmark is that demand response can mitigate about 15% of peak demand. Australia is at less than 1%.

In 2002 Warwick Parer, who previously had been John Howard’s energy minister, recommended to state and federal energy ministers that “negawatts” (negative megawatts) of saved energy should be able to compete in the wholesale energy market with megawatts of generated energy. Fifteen years later we are still waiting for this simple market reform, which would allow companies and consumers to provide demand response, without any government subsidies.
Rather than letting modest measures such as demand response compete, politicians are too easily captured by grand designs for fixing the national electricity market. If they ever happen, like Snowy Hydro 2.0 or keeping open Liddell, they would come online by some time in the 2020s.
But by next summer, demand response “negawatts” could deliver. In March EnerNOC committed to providing 100MW to South Australia by 1 December 2017, if the market was open to negawatts, as Parer recommended. Greensync, an Australian start-up, said it could deliver 300MW of negawatts across the National Electricity Market.
Frydenberg has promoted the fact that the Australian Renewable Energy Agency is funding a project with the Australian Energy Market Operator, aimed at delivering 160MW of demand response by this summer. The tenders for this DR Round trial proposed 1,938MW of capacity could be delivered by December 2018. By way of comparison, Liddell has a capacity of 2,000MW – and even that has been drastically reduced due to its age.
If the grid is under stress when the mercury rises this summer, every megawatt counts and this trial could be expanded. Australia is in the midst of a massive and inevitable transition. Ten coal plants have closed in less than a decade and this economic decline is irreversible.
In the short term, to provide stability and lower prices the Australian Energy Market Commission should get on with implementing the five-minute rule. Reforming the market so that wholesale electricity is traded every five minutes would help level the playing field between megawatts and “negawatts”, spur big investment in battery storage and help to stabilise the grid.
In the longer term, energy and climate policy will need to be fully integrated. Already the Australian Energy Council, which represents coal and gas generators, calculates that the political bickering on energy has led to an investment drought that is costing consumers the equivalent of a $50 a tonne carbon price. This policy stalemate is not just pushing up prices; it is pushing the grid to its limits and creating the risk of blackouts.
But there is something we can do about power prices and reliability for this summer and it is not by debating what an ageing coal plant in NSW will or will not be doing in six summers’ time.

*Ben Oquist is executive director of the Australia Institute

Links

• Liddell power station: five extra years could give government $1bn rehab bill
• Energy committee head says Liddell station 'about stuffed' and loan mechanism needed
• AGL rejects Turnbull call to keep operating Liddell coal-fired power station
• The day Australia was put on blackout alert
• Coal and the Coalition: the policy knot that still won’t untie
• FactCheck Q&A: is coal still cheaper than renewables as an energy source?
• Finkel’s Clean Energy Target plan ‘better than nothing’: economists poll
• A perfect storm. An insider's view of failure of climate change policy in Australia
• The true cost of keeping the Liddell power plant open
• Coal-powered AGL boss Andy Vesey finds it's easy being green
• How will the reduced Renewable Energy Target affect investment? 
• Australia’s biggest emitters opt to ‘wait and see’ over Emissions Reduction Fund 
• What about the people missing out on renewables? Here’s what planners can do about energy justice
• Time for pragmatism, not panic, for the electricity market

Pope Francis Slams 'Stupid' Climate Change Deniers

Al Jazeera

Pontiff calls on politicians to take scientists' advice as he raises alarm over global warming after major storms.

Pope Francis is one of the world's most high-profile campaigners on environmental issues [Andrew Medichini/Pool/Reuters]

Pope Francis has sharply criticised climate change deniers as "stupid" in the wake of a spate of powerful hurricanes that have wreaked havoc in the US, Mexico and the Caribbean.
"Those who deny it [climate change] should go to the scientists and ask them," the pontiff said on Monday during an in-flight press conference on the return leg of a five-day Colombia trip. "They speak very clearly."
As his charter plane flew over some of the recently devastated areas en route to Rome, Francis added: "I am reminded of a phrase from the Old Testament, I think from the Psalm: 'Man is stupid, he is stubborn and he does not see.'"
The pope's comments came as Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century, caused widespread destruction across the French Caribbean islands, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Haiti and the US state of Florida. At least 38 people have been killed so far from the Category 5 superstorm.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Katia bore down on the east coast of Mexico, leaving at least two dead.
Far out in the Atlantic, Hurricane Jose, a Category 2 storm, having brushed past the Caribbean also poses a potential threat to the US east coast.
Last month, Hurricane Harvey, one of the worst storms to hit the US mainland in 12 years, led to unprecedented flooding in the southern US state of Texas.

'Moral responsiblity'
Francis is one of the world's most high-profile campaigners on environmental issues, actively supporting efforts to combat climate change and its consequences.
He said individuals and politicians had a "moral responsibility" to act on advice from scientists, who had clearly outlined what must be done to halt the course of "catastrophic" warming.
"These aren't opinions pulled out of thin air," he said. "They are very clear. They [world leaders] decide and history will judge those decisions."
Recalling last month's news that a ship crossed the Arctic without an icebreaker for the first time, Francis said: "We can see the effects of climate change, and scientists clearly say what path we should follow."
While regularly criticising politicians, the pope has made caring for the environment a hallmark of his papacy.
He wrote an entire encyclical about how the poor in particular are most harmed when multinationals move in to exploit natural resources.
During his visit to Colombia, Francis spoke out frequently about the need to preserve the country's rich biodiversity from overdevelopment and exploitation.
Among world leaders, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly made a case against climate change.
In June, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, which binds countries to national pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.


What's behind world's recent extreme weather events?

Links

• What you need to know: Hurricane Irma and its impacts
• State of denial: Trump vs climate change
• Hurricane Irma gives Florida coast-to-coast pummelling
• Facing Hurricane Harvey