Lethal Heating: 03/16/18

16/03/2018

The Temperature Is Rising ... And So Is The Death Toll

Fairfax - Professor Hilary Bambrick*

I've investigated the impact of climate change driven extreme weather on public health for 20 years.
The research shows the links between the two couldn't be clearer - extreme weather events such as severe heatwaves, bushfires and supercharged storms are placing Australian lives at risk.

The threats to our lives from extreme weather isn't limited to heatwaves, but extends to more severe storms and floods and more intense and 'out of season' bushfires. Photo: AFP

As we continue to burn fossil fuels such as coal and gas, more carbon pollution is released into our climate system, causing more intense, more severe and more frequent extreme weather events, which in turn, will continue to place increasing pressure on health systems, emergency services and our communities.
Globally, we've just experienced the hottest five year period ever recorded, stretching from 2013 to 2017, and this month parts of Queensland were hit with a severe heatwave, breaking February averages by more than 10 degrees.
The reality is that Australia will become warmer and drier as a direct result of intensifying climate change as heatwaves continue to become hotter, longer, and more frequent.
Severe heatwaves are silent killers, causing more deaths since the 1890s than all of Australia's bushfires, cyclones, earthquakes, floods and severe storms combined.
Over the past decade, severe heatwaves around Australia have resulted in deaths and an increased number of hospital admissions for heart attack, stroke, respiratory illness, diabetes and kidney disease.
Older people, young children, and those with chronic health conditions are at high risk, but so are outdoor workers and our emergency responders.
In January 2009, Melbourne suffered three consecutive days of above 43 degrees, while elsewhere in Victoria it came within a whisker of 49.
There were 980 heat-related deaths during this time, which was around 60% more than would normally occur at that time of year.
Morgues were over capacity and bodies had to be stored in refrigerated trucks.
A few years earlier in 2004, Brisbane experienced a prolonged heatwave with temperatures reaching up to 42 degrees in February, which increased overall deaths by 23%.
The threats to our lives and livelihoods from extreme weather isn't limited to heatwaves, but extends to more frequent and more severe storms and floods, more intense and 'out of season' bushfires, and widespread and prolonged drought.
Of course, we’re used to extreme weather in Australia, so much so that it is embedded in our cultural identity.
From ancient Indigenous understandings of complex seasons and use of fire to manage landscapes, to Dorothea McKeller’s 1908 poem My Country, to Gang Gajang’s 1985 anthem Sounds of Then (This is Australia), we sure like to talk about the weather.
But climate change is making these events more and more deadly, and we can’t afford to be complacent.
So what do we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from extreme heat and other events?
We can check in with our friends, family and neighbours on extreme heat days and we can strive to make our health services more resilient and responsive, but this doesn't deal with the cause.
Without rapid effective action to reduce carbon emissions we're locking ourselves into a future of worsening, out of control extremes.
Ultimately, to protect Australians from worsening extreme weather events and to do our fair share in the global effort to tackle climate change, we have to cut our greenhouse gas pollution levels quickly and deeply.
Reducing our carbon pollution means a healthier Australia, now and in the future, with fewer deaths, fewer ambulance call-outs, fewer trips to the hospital, and reduced costs to the health system.
The only thing standing in the way of Australia tackling climate change is political will.

*Professor Hilary Bambrick is a member of the Climate Council and heads the School of Public Health and Social Work at QUT.

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If Business Leaders Want To Regain Our Trust, They Must Act On Climate Risk

The Guardian - Ian Dunlop*

Empty rhetoric from corporates is not enough as climate change is accelerating far faster than expected

‘Already one of the world’s largest carbon polluters when exports are included, Australia is complicit in destroying the conditions which make human life possible’ Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Business leaders seem astonished that community trust in their activities is at an all-time low, trending toward the bottom of the barrel inhabited by politicians. To the corporate leader dedicated to the capitalist, market economy success story of the last 50 years, that attitude is no doubt incomprehensible and downright ungrateful.
But it is hardly surprising given continuing scandals and declining ethics across the corporate and banking worlds, driven by the pernicious impact of short-termism, rising inequality and undue political influence; in large part the outcome of the oxymoron of “pay-for-performance” remuneration. So how is trust regained? The need for stronger leadership, ethics, greater transparency, open communications and improved culture feature prominently in current responses.
But a far more fundamental requirement is ignored, namely that business must lead on really critical issues, particularly the point raised long ago by economist Kenneth Boulding: “Anyone who considers economic growth can continue indefinitely in a finite system is either a madman or an economist”. The constraints Boulding anticipated have now arrived, as burgeoning population and economic growth crash into global biophysical limits which cannot be circumvented.
Those constraints, encompassing resource shortages, biodiversity loss and pollution in various guises, do not feature in the capitalist economic lexicon, as technology and the market are supposed to overcome all as we march toward the sunlit uplands of the neoliberal nirvana. In the real world, the entire growth model under which Australia and global economies operate, is no longer sustainable; it sowed the seeds of its own destruction some time ago and is rapidly driving itself into the ground as growth rates decline. This is the great “black elephant” of business and politics; a known, knowable fact that no one wants to acknowledge – the unmentionable in the recent Business and Governance Summits around the country, as our leaders strive to compound the problem with self-defeating subterfuges to maximise growth, not least corporate tax cuts and trade agreements.
To the community, these constraints are increasingly obvious as the quality of life for the average person deteriorates in myriad ways. The rhetoric of much-vaunted corporate social responsibility no longer holds water when our supposed leaders are not prepared to address the issues that really count for our survival, let alone prosperity.

These range from basic considerations such as ensuring food and water availability, to the creation of genuinely sustainable global societies. However, the first priority must be human-induced climate change, manifest as the lack of an atmosphere into which we can continue dumping carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture and deforestation, without causing catastrophic consequences.
Climate change is accelerating far faster than expected, to the point where it now represents an existential threat to humanity, that is a threat posing permanent large negative consequences which will be irreversible, an outcome being locked in today by our insistence on expanding the use of fossil fuels. This should be a major concern in Australia given that we are more exposed than most, but instead our leaders would have us embark on massive fossil fuel expansion. Already one of the world’s largest carbon polluters when exports are included, Australia is complicit in destroying the conditions which make human life possible. There is no greater crime against humanity.
The economic and social impacts will be devastating unless that policy is rapidly reversed. The unprecedented hurricane season in the Atlantic, bushfires in the Californian winter, extreme heat in many parts of South Asia and rapid heating of the Arctic with associated instability in the northern hemisphere weather system, are only the most recent portents of what is to come. The worst outcomes can only be avoided now by emergency action, akin to restructuring economies on a war-footing.
It finally seems to be dawning on corporate and investor leadership that climate change is a real and present danger which is not going away.
Company directors are personally liable for failing to assess and act upon climate risk, but the greenwash continues. Major corporates parade their credentials in support of serious climate action, but none of their scenarios and policies are in line with the Paris objective of constraining global temperature increase “well below 2.0C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.50C”.
Fortunately, as understanding of the risks improves, regulatory pressure mounts. The recommendations triggered by Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, via the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) are gradually being taken up, with companies voluntarily disclosing the impact which a 2C policy framework would have on their organisation, assuming such a framework was ever put in place (by governments?). Progress, but reactive and certainly not leadership. The question that must be answered is: “what are you doing proactively as a company to create a 2C world” – more realistically closer to 1.5C, as it is now patently clear that 2C is far too high?
If business genuinely wishes to regain trust, it must proactively face up to the challenge posed by climate change and initiate emergency action. Beyond that, it must open up honest debate on a new economic model to replace conventional growth. It is the only way business will be sustainable in the 21st century with a real social licence to operate.
In Churchill’s words: “Sometimes we have to do what is required”.

*Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors

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Rain Or Shine: New Solar Cell Captures Energy From Raindrops

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

New device is designed to prevent power output plummeting when the sun isn’t shining – but practical application is still some years off

Researchers want to create a hybrid device that harvests kinetic energy from water as well as solar power from the sun. Photograph: Getty Images

A solar panel that can generate electricity from falling raindrops has been invented, enabling power to flow even when skies cloud over or the sun has set.
Solar power installation is soaring globally thanks to costs plunging 90% in the past decade, making it the cheapest electricity in many parts of the world. But the power output can plummet under grey skies and researchers are working to squeeze even more electricity from panels.
The new device, demonstrated in a laboratory at Soochow University in China, places two transparent polymer layers on top of a solar photovoltaic (PV) cell. When raindrops fall on to the layers and then roll off, the friction generates a static electricity charge.
“Our device can always generate electricity in any daytime weather,” said Baoquan Sun, at Soochow University. “In addition, this device even provides electricity at night if there is rain.”
Other researchers have recently created similar devices on solar panels, known as triboelectric nanogenerators (Tengs), but the new design is significantly simpler and more efficient as one of the polymer layers acts as the electrode for both the Teng and the solar cell.
“Due to our unique device design, it becomes a lightweight device,” said Sun, whose team’s work is published in the journal ACS Nano. “In future, we are exploring integrating these into mobile and flexible devices, such as electronic clothes. However, the output power efficiency needs to be further improved before practical application.”
Sun said the field was developing fast and expects to produce a prototype product in three to five years. Other scientists in China have also used Tengs on solar cells to harvest some power from the wind, an approach Sun said could be added to his device. The top layer of the Teng is also grooved to help focus more light on the solar cell.
“The idea is interesting – a hybrid device that harvests kinetic energy from water without destroying the output of the solar cell during sunny times,” said Varun Sivaram, at the Council on Foreign Relations, US, and author of a new book on solar power. “There’s lots of nice engineering, like using one layer to do double duty as a component of the Teng as well as trap light for the solar cell.”
However, Varun said the power the device generates from falling rain needs to be significantly higher to start making an overall difference to a solar panel’s output. “It’s really not clear whether this is a big deal or not – I suspect it’s not.”
Prof Keith Barnham, at Imperial College London, said the hybrid device gave an important advantage in making it more compact and efficient. But he said: “Wind power is clearly the most effective and complementary power source to PV – and it works equally well in the rain!”
Other innovations in solar panel design include using the mineral perovskite as a flexible and efficient material, using so-called “quantum dots” and researching artificial photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to produce liquid and gas fuels.

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