14/05/2018

Pollution Jumps As Australia Buries Its Head In The Sand

Climate Council

AUSTRALIA’S greenhouse gas pollution levels have jumped yet again, with the latest national government data released just days after climate change was forgotten in the Federal Budget.
Climate Council Acting CEO Dr Martin Rice said the Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory released overnight shows an increase of 1.5% in greenhouse pollution levels over the last year (December 2017).
“This is now the third consecutive year Australia has seen an increase in greenhouse gas pollution levels. Yet, the Federal Government continues to bury its head in the sand, despite the climate siren sounding for years,” he said.
Australia's pollution data was released days after climate change was forgotten in the federal budget. (Image: ABC News/Matt Roberts)
 “This increase in emissions comes just days after the Federal Government failed to introduce any funding measures to tackle intensifying climate change in the 2018 Budget.”
“Australia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the developed world, with worsening extreme weather events including severe heatwaves, supercharged storms, heavy rainfall, flooding, droughts and bushfires.”
“In fact, just this week we have seen Tasmania hit with extreme rainfall and flooding, with rainfall records smashed in the city of Hobart over a 24 hour period.”


Dr Rice said Australia was at serious risk of further cementing its reputation as a ‘global climate laggard’ following the release of the new data.
“As nations such as New Zealand continue to show true climate leadership, Australia’s recent track record should serve as an embarrassment,” he said.
“The solution is here. Australia must demand credible climate and energy policy that embraces our renewables boom, while transitioning away from ageing, polluting and inefficient fossil fuels.
“The window of opportunity to tackle climate change is rapidly closing and Australia must do its fair share instead of looking the other way, all while our greenhouse gas pollution levels rise year after year.”



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Solar And Wind Could Ease Australia's Water Shortage

Fairfax - Cole Latimer

Australia is one the world's top 20 water-stressed nations but a shift to more renewable energy could lessen the nation’s water pressure.
A report by the World Resources Industry identified Australia as one country vulnerable to water stress where the potential for cheap renewable energy, solar and wind as opposed to fossil fuels, could reduce water consumption country-wide as these technologies use minimal - or zero - water.
AGL's Liddell power station next to Lake Liddell, its main source of water. Photo: Simone De Peak
"By better managing their limited water resources and investing in the right energy systems these renewable forms of energy can help countries meet their increased demand for electricity without adding carbon emissions or consuming water," the World Resources Institute's manager for water, Tianyi Luo, said.
"This could be particularly beneficial in countries where growing populations, farms and industries are already competing for scant water supplies"
A major issue with coal-fired generation is the amount of water it consumes.
Every megawatt hour of electricity generated by coal withdraws around 60,700 litres and consumes about 2600 litres of water.
In the financial year to date, Australian's have consumed 147 terrawatt hours of electricity, about 73 per cent of which comes from coal, which equates to around 455 billion litres of water.
Major hydro generation projects such as Snowy Hydro, which is set to play an even greater role in the nation's energy mix, are solely reliant on Australia's vulnerable water supplies.
Increased solar usage can help slash water consumption by the energy industry.
Energy production accounts for around 10 per cent of the world's water consumption, the International Energy Agency's 2016 World Energy Outlook stated.
South Africa's Cape Town is the world's first major city to potentially run out of water, as climate change, major droughts and heavy water usage sapped water supplies. During Sydney's last major drought, water levels in the Warragamba dam fell as low as 30 per cent.
The costs of water rises as its scarcity grows with Infrastructure Australia forecasting an annual water bill of $2500 by 2040.
The WRI report ranked Australia 17th for its potential solar power. It has a level of 232.5 in global horizontal irradiance wattage per metre squared, a measure of the strength and concentration of the solar power hitting a solar panel, which is 58 million petajoules of energy, or about 10,000 times the nation’s annual energy consumption.
The size of a solar farm needed to power all of Australia would cover about 6270 square kilometres or approximately 0.1 per cent of the country.
This potential put it only just behind Iran but ahead of Kuwait and Israel. Yemen was rated first.
Australia ranks highly for potential wind power.
However, Australia is falling well short of its utilising its solar potential, a global energy expert said.
"Australia is not living up to its potential for power generation. It should be aiming for 100 per cent renewable energy, but Australia is up against the older, entrenched fossil fuel industry," chief executive of energy investor Energiya Global Capital, Yosef Abramowitz, told Fairfax Media.
Solar energy currently accounts for around 5 per cent of Australia’s total power generation.
Australia ranks fifth for high levels of wind power for water-stressed countries, with an average wind potential of 6.1. metres a second. It ranked ahead of the US, but just behind Bahrain.
A recent report by the University of Technology, Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures said Australia’s potential onshore wind resources could power the nation 12 times over, but currently only account for six per cent of energy generation.

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Here’s How Much Carbon Dioxide Emissions Have Increased Since The Industrial Age

Newsweek - 



Three atoms—one carbon and two oxygen—bond to create a molecule that has defined an era: the age of industry. In the last 150 years, carbon dioxide emissions have soared as we have grown reliant on fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil.
Sea levels are rising, crops are failing and diseases like malaria are spreading as the planet chokes under a heady cloud of man-made carbon dioxide.
This chart maps 150 years of carbon dioxide emissions. CDIAC/Statista 
According to data released by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), humans have pumped more than 400 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since 1751. About half of this total, the CDIAC reported, was released from the late 1980s onwards. The use of solid and liquid fossil fuels—sources like coal and oil—produced about three-quarters of the total. In 2014 alone, burning fossil fuels and creating cement released about 9.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide. This level was an all-time high.
After more than 30 years in operation, the CDIAC closed its doors last September. Its data has since been exported to a number of other centers, including the NOAA’s Ocean Carbon Data System and the California Institute of Technology.
An oil refinery produces petroleum and gas. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
This year already, scientists have warned about melting Arctic ice, extreme weather facing the U.S., and the collapse of marine life. French President Emmanuel Macron advocated for a transition to a “low carbon” global economy last week when he addressed members of the U.S. House and Senate.
“I believe in building a better future for our children, which requires offering them a planet that is still habitable in 25 years,” he told the audience. “Some people think that securing current industries and their jobs is more urgent than transforming our economies to meet the global change of climate change. I hear these concerns, but we must find a smooth transition to a low carbon economy.”
His words came in sharp contrast to those of President Donald Trump, who has vowed to take the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.
The U.N. will meet in Katowice, Poland at its Climate Change Conference (COP 24) in December to try and address some of the problems of climate change. Experts are currently discussing policy options and technological innovations in Bonn, Germany, in advance of the meeting.

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NASA Program To Track Greenhouse Gas Is Cancelled

AFP

A chunk of ice falls from the Perito Moreno Glacier at Los Glaciares National Park, near El Calafate in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz, on March 10, 2018. AFP/File / Walter Diaz
A NASA program that cost $10 million per year to track carbon and methane, key greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, has been cancelled, a US space agency spokesman said Thursday.
The end of the program -- called the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) -- which tracked sources and sinks for carbon and made high-resolution models of the planet's flows of carbon -- was first reported by the journal Science.
"Now, President Donald Trump's administration has quietly killed the CMS," the report said, describing the move as the latest in a "broad attack on climate science" mounted by the White House.
The journal said NASA "declined to provide a reason for the cancellation beyond 'budget constraints and higher priorities within the science budget.'"
It also quoted US space agency spokesman Steve Cole as saying there was no mention of the CMS in a budget deal signed in March, which "allowed the administration's move to take effect."
Cole, responding to a request for comment from AFP, said Trump proposed cutting the CMS project and four Earth science missions last year.
After much deliberation, Congress decided they wanted those four space missions to be funded, writing them into the budget bill they passed in March 2018, he said.
But since CMS was not among them, it was cut as proposed, Cole said, describing the entire process as a joint effort by lawmakers and the executive branch.
Existing grants would be allowed to finish but no new research would be supported, he said.
Trump has already announced the US pullout from the 2015 Paris climate accord, a deal signed by more than 190 nations to slash polluting emissions from fossil fuels.
Cole told AFP that Trump has proposed cancelling another Earth science mission, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3), for next year, though it did receive funding for fiscal year 2018.
According to Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University's Center for International Environment and Resource Policy in Medford, Massachusetts, the CMS cuts jeopardize efforts to verify the emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate deal.
"If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement," she told the journal Science.
Canceling the CMS "is a grave mistake."
Cole, however, said in an email that the "winding down of this specific research program does not curb NASA's ability or commitment to monitoring carbon and its effects on our changing planet."
"In fact, GEDI, a new ecosystem carbon-monitoring instrument, is set to launch to the International Space Station this summer."

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