08/12/2018

Malcolm Turnbull Asked To Front Reef Inquiry

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has been asked to front the Senate inquiry into his government's controversial $443 million grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation early next year.
The request comes as state and federal environment ministers meeting in Canberra on Friday failed to agree on the wording over climate action, and a separate report identified a heavy environmental toll if the Galilee Basin coal mines including Adani's proposed Carmichael project proceed.
Malcolm Turnbull is not about to leave centre stage. Credit: Janie Barrett
Mr Turnbull has been offered any dates "that would be appropriate between now and early February", and at "your preferred location" for a public hearing into the controversial grant to the non-profit organisation announced last April.
The former prime minister's attendance is voluntary and it is understood he is the final witness the committee wants to interview. The inquiry has also won an extension to provide its final report by February 13.
The grant surprised even the foundation, which at that point had just six full-time employees. It also bypassed established government agencies such as the CSIRO and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Meanwhile at a meeting of environment ministers in Canberra, the Labor-led state and territory ministers criticised Melissa Price, the federal Environment Minister, for again omitting climate change from the agenda of the regular gathering.
"The science is frightening, unequivocal and clear - we are running out of time," the Labor ministers said in a statement. "We must take swift and strong measures to reduce emissions now."
"Yet the response of successive Liberal prime ministers has been one of delusion and deliberate inaction - and it is unacceptable that any action on climate change has again been left off the agenda at today’s meeting of environment ministers," they said.
Ms Price later told journalists that the ministers had had "a very good conversation", but could not agree on common wording. The minister will attend global climate talks in Poland from Sunday.
The environment ministers also secured only an agreement in principle over a national waste policy to deal with the country's mounting recycling issues after China limited waste imports.
NSW, Queensland and Victoria agreed to work together "to deliver real outcomes when it comes to waste", Gabrielle Upton, NSW Environment Minister, said.
"We disagree on many things, but on this issue, urgent national action is required," Ms Upton said. "The Commonwealth is now locked into playing a clearer real role in terms of leadership and funding."
Separately, the federal government has its "bioregional assessment" of the cumulative impacts on groundwater, creeks and rivers from opening central Queensland's Galilee Basin for mining.
Despite only modelling seven of 17 proposed coal and gas developments - including the Adani mine - the report predicted widespread impacts over 1.4 million hectares and as much as 6285 kilometres of streams.
“Given that the Suttor River is the target of Adani’s plans to extract up to 12.5 billion litres of water per year, this should be enough to ensure that project is rejected once and for all," Lock the Gate, an anti-mining group, said in a statement.
“It’s clear from this analysis that mining the Galilee Basin will have a very significant and irreversible impact on our water resources," including damaging as many as 181 wetlands, the group said.
Leeanne Enoch, Queensland's Environment Minister, said the Palaszczuk government "takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously and makes its decisions based on the best available science".
“At this point in time, the government is undertaking the work to allow consideration of the declaration of a cumulative management area over the Galilee Basin," Ms Enoch said.
“This allows government to consider the combined impacts of projects.”
Carmel Flint, a spokeswoman for Lock the Gate, said water was "the key to survival in such a dry region".
"The full scale of the water impacts exposed here should lead to urgent action by the Queensland government to reject the final water management plan which Adani are seeking to have approved before Christmas," she said.

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Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga Says Australia's Climate Change Inaction Undermines Its 'Pacific Pivot'

ABC - Stephen Dziedzic

The Prime Minister of Tuvalu Enele Sopoaga has warned Australia that its "Pacific pivot" risks being fatally undermined by its climate change policies ahead of crucial talks in Poland.


Mr Sopoaga says there's no point talking about economic growth unless climate change is addressed (The World)

Key points
  • Tuvalu's PM made the comments ahead of COP24, the most important climate talks since the Paris agreement
  • He says Australia's return to the Pacific undermined by climate change inaction
  • Tuvalu is particularly vulnerable to climate change, being made up of low-lying atolls
Australia has unveiled an ambitious suite of policies to cement its position in the region and push back against China, including a massive new infrastructure bank and an ambitious move to electrify much of Papua New Guinea.
But Mr Sopoaga has declared climate change could "totally destroy" his tiny Pacific nation, and he called on Australia to help fight it by blocking the contentious Adani coal mine in Queensland and making deeper cuts to carbon emissions.
"We cannot be regional partners under this step-up initiative — genuine and durable partners — unless the Government of Australia takes a more progressive response to climate change," Mr Sopoaga said.
"They know very well that we will not be happy as a partner, to move forward, unless they are serious."

Tuvalu's low-lying atolls are particularly vulnerable
Fuel drums are being used as sea walls to provide protection against coastal erosion in southern Funafuti, Tuvalu. (Oxfam: Rodney Dekker)
Delegates from almost 200 countries are gathering in the city of Katowice for the COP24 talks, the most important UN meeting on global warming since the landmark Paris deal.
The talks are designed to get all 195 countries to agree to a binding set of conventions in order to reduce carbon emissions.
Tuvalu is made up of nine low-lying coral atolls and its highest point is only 4.5 metres above sea level, making it particularly vulnerable to climate change.
US President Donald Trump has already pulled the US out of Paris and Mr Sopoaga warned the world risked "going backwards" unless countries made concrete commitments to cut pollution.
He also revealed all Pacific nations — including Australia and New Zealand — would sign a "new declaration" on climate change during the talks in Poland.
"The idea is to further project to our world the necessity and imperative of collective actions against climate change," Mr Sopoaga told the ABC.
"There's no point of talking about economic growth unless you deal with the issue of climate change and sea level rise."
Pacific nations tip-toe around Canberra
Abbot Point is located about two hours south of Townsville, near vast coal reserves Adani is looking to exploit. (Supplied)
Some Pacific nations have been pushing for the declaration to specifically call for coal mining to be phased out.
But Mr Sopoaga indicated Pacific nations had agreed to use softer language in order to get Australia on board.
"It will focus on the necessity of moving to renewable-energy-based economies which is safe and friendly to the environment, and impress on all parties the need to develop renewable technology," he said.
Mr Sopoaga wasn't purely critical of Australia — he praised Prime Minister Scott Morrison for resisting calls to get out of the Paris deal, and said Australia was "seriously looking" at taking a more ambitious approach on renewable energy.
But he pleaded with the Coalition to prevent Indian company Adani from pressing ahead with its plan to open a new coal mine in Queensland, although the project has been scaled down.
"This will only go into causing a lot of serious damage to the environment, and eventually causing destruction to the people of the Pacific", Mr Sopoaga said.
"So it is my strong prayer that Australia will reconsider opening this new coal mine."

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The 'Great Dying': Rapid Warming Caused Largest Extinction Event Ever, Report Says

The Guardian - 

Rapid global warming caused the largest extinction event in the Earth’s history, which wiped out the vast majority of marine and terrestrial animals on the planet, scientists have found.
The mass extinction, known as the “great dying”, occurred around 252m years ago and marked the end of the Permian geologic period. The study of sediments and fossilized creatures show the event was the single greatest calamity ever to befall life on Earth, eclipsing even the extinction of the dinosaurs 65m years ago.
Up to 96% of all marine species perished while more than two-thirds of terrestrial species disappeared. The cataclysm was so severe it wiped out most of the planet’s trees, insects, plants, lizards and even microbes.
Scientists have theorized causes for the extinction, such as a giant asteroid impact. But US researchers now say they have pinpointed the demise of marine life to a spike in Earth’s temperatures, warning that present-day global warming will also have severe ramifications for life on the planet.
“It was a huge event. In the last half a billion years of life on the planet, it was the worst extinction,” said Curtis Deutsch, an oceanography expert who co-authored the research, published on Thursday, with his University of Washington colleague Justin Penn along with Stanford University scientists Jonathan Payne and Erik Sperling.
The researchers used paleoceanographic records and built a model to analyse changes in animal metabolism, ocean and climate conditions. When they used the model to mimic conditions at the end of the Permian period, they found it matched the extinction records.
According to the study, this suggests that marine animals essentially suffocated as warming waters lacked the oxygen required for survival. “For the first time, we’ve got a whole lot of confidence that this is what happened,” said Deutsch. “It’s a very strong argument that rising temperatures and oxygen depletion were to blame.”
The great dying event, which occurred over an uncertain timeframe of possibly hundreds of years, saw Earth’s temperatures increase by around 10C (18F). Oceans lost around 80% of their oxygen, with parts of the seafloor becoming completely oxygen-free. Scientists believe this warming was caused by a huge spike in greenhouse gas emissions, potentially caused by volcanic activity.
The new research, published in Science, found that the drop in oxygen levels was particularly deadly for marine animals living closer to the poles. Experiments that varied oxygen and temperature levels for modern marine species, including shellfish, corals and sharks, helped “bridge the gap” to what the model found, Payne said.
“This really would be a terrible, terrible time to be around on the planet,” he added. “It shows us that when the climate and ocean chemistry changes quickly, you can reach a point where species don’t survive. It took millions of years to recover from the Permian event, which is essentially permanent from the perspective of human timescales.”
Over the past century, the modern world has warmed by around 1C due to the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, rather than from volcanic eruptions.
This warming is already causing punishing heatwaves, flooding and wildfires around the world, with scientists warning that the temperature rise could reach 3C or more by the end of the century unless there are immediate, radical reductions in emissions.
At the same time, Earth’s species are undergoing what some experts have termed the “sixth great extinction” due to habitat loss, poaching, pollution and climate change.
“It does terrify me to think we are on a trajectory similar to the Permian because we really don’t want to be on that trajectory,” Payne said. “It doesn’t look like we will warm by around 10C and we haven’t lost that amount of biodiversity yet. But even getting halfway there would be something to be very concerned about. The magnitude of change we are currently experiencing is fairly large.”
Deutsch said: “We are about a 10th of the way to the Permian. Once you get to 3-4C of warming, that’s a significant fraction and life in the ocean is in big trouble, to put it bluntly. There are big implications for humans’ domination of the Earth and its ecosystems.”
Deutsch added that the only way to avoid a mass aquatic die-off in the oceans was to reduce carbon emissions, given there is no viable way to ameliorate the impact of climate change in the oceans using other measures.
The research group “provide convincing evidence that warmer temperatures and associated lower oxygen levels in the ocean are sufficient to explain the observed extinctions we see in the fossil record”, said Pamela Grothe, a paleoclimate scientist at the University of Mary Washington.
“The past holds the key to the future,” she added. “Our current rates of carbon dioxide emissions is instantaneous geologically speaking and we are already seeing warming ocean temperatures and lower oxygen in many regions, currently affecting marine ecosystems.
“If we continue in the trajectory we are on with current emission rates, this study highlights the potential that we may see similar rates of extinction in marine species as in the end of the Permian.”

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