14/02/2019

'We Have Death And Devastation At Every Turn': The Flood Massacre Of Queensland Cattle

The Guardian - |

Almost overnight we have transitioned from drought to a flood disaster zone. There are kangaroos dead in trees, birds drowned in drifts of silt and our beloved bovine family perished in huddled piles
A cow and calf killed by flood waters in Queensland: ‘It is absolutely soul-destroying to think our animals suffered like this.’ Photograph: Jacqueline Curley
After what can only be described as an environmental massacre of mammoth proportions throughout the whole of north-west Queensland, the people of this country are heartbroken.
We live on a family cattle station 60km north of Cloncurry, where we have just received 700mm-plus of rain over seven days, with the majority of that falling over four days. This extreme weather event, equivalent to an inland cyclone, has decimated much of our native wildlife, along with our domestic livestock. They were constantly exposed to wind and cold driving rain for far too long. The majority of the country was either covered in flood water or churned into a bog, making their feed inaccessible.
The cattle became weak, using what energy they had struggling through the mud and pushed by the driving rain. After withstanding these harsh conditions for days on end their energy was depleted and they finally became exhausted simply trying to stay warm and died.
Graziers around the district are working tirelessly to save what they can and also to humanely euthanise those animals that sadly are beyond saving. My son has been flying over and shooting his beloved cattle for several days, which is absolutely gutting – he has grown up with them, their parents, their grandparents and great-grandparents. Helicopters are being used to distribute what fodder we have available to the survivors and right now this is our only form of transportation. The majority of the region is still inaccessible to vehicles and will be for some time.
‘We just couldn’t get the machines to get them out in time. The tears are rolling as I write this, I love these animals and can’t bear to see them suffer unnecessarily. This is why landholders need revolver licences, we are not the cowboys some government ministers try to portray us as. It may be tough love but quick death is better than perishing and starving until they expire, and in conditions like this long barrel rifles are heavy and difficult to carry. Many farmers will have to walk around in clogging mud and shoot hundreds of these poor animals.’ Photograph: Jacqueline Curley 
The scale of devastation here and throughout the north-west is impossible to put into words. There are estimates of hundreds of thousands of domestic livestock having been lost so far during this disaster and it is impossible to put into numbers the impact on the region’s native wildlife. In some of our paddocks we are facing a 95% loss and on average we are estimating approximately 50% losses over all of our family’s flood-affected properties, encompassing approximately 120,000 acres.
Our cattle have been in a significant supplement feeding program, having withstood the last seven years of relative drought. As a result of this our girls were in great condition and we were seeing the beginning of another exceptional crop of calves. Almost overnight we have transitioned from relative drought years to a flood disaster zone. No amount of preparation could have readied our herd for the relentless driving rain and near gale-force winds they had to endure.
On day eight the creek by our houses had dropped and slowed just enough for Robert and Kate to swim across and check on some cows close by. The heartbreaking scene they were confronted with on the other side very quickly turned our fears into the horrific nightmare that not only our family but our extended family, the whole of the north-west, are now battling with. It is unfathomable that our ladies in such a short period of time have lost roughly an incredibly 50% of their body weight. The survivors are a mere shadow of the strong healthy animals they were only a fortnight ago.
As we begin to access our paddocks we are being confronted with death and devastation at every turn. There are kangaroos dead in trees and fences, birds drowned in drifts of silt and debris and our beloved bovine family lay perished in piles where they have been huddling for protection and warmth. This scene is mirrored across the entire region, it is absolutely soul-destroying to think our animals suffered like this.
‘This event was on the same scale as a blizzard in America, no warning, absolutely nothing that could be done to save these animals that just walked in this “cyclone over land”. They stopped and died of cold and flood water here.’ Photograph: Jacqueline Curley 
The scale of destruction this disaster has left in its wake we are only just beginning to discover. The sheer amount of storm water that engulfed the region has demolished fences, exposed pipelines, destroyed water infrastructure, created huge gullies that were once only small seasonal streams, turned roads into rivers and washed dam banks away. Our dam, which was an amazing refuge for birdlife and where I spent many peaceful hours watching them, has been destroyed.
Properties further downstream have been inundated by flood water and reports are coming in of entire herds being washed away. Many homestead complexes have been completely submerged. Here we have been lucky – our houses, sheds and out buildings have remained relatively dry. Others will have lost everything, facing an enormous clean-up on the home front, not just out in the paddock.
Right now – I’m sure I am speaking on behalf of everyone affected – our focus is entirely on the welfare of our animals. In the coming weeks when the surviving animals no longer require our constant care, our focus will shift to the colossal task of clean-up, repair and rebuilding where possible. This will also be the time where many will start the gruelling task of tallying up the horrific financial cost. I fear many families will not be able to recover from this blow financially – in some cases their entire future income has literally been washed away.
Graziers are battling a race against time to get fodder out to their cattle. With so many facing the logistics of such a task all at once, helicopters, hay and aviation fuel are in short supply and many are completely helpless to do anything until their name reaches the top of the list. Local emergency teams and private helicopter companies have been doing an amazing job with what resources they have. They have gone above and beyond the call of duty.
‘Danny Mara getting ready to sling a live heifer out to dry ground, medication and fodder. With a 44 Robinson chopper above.’ Photograph: Jacqueline Curley
This is an absolutely gut-wrenching time for all of us out here, these cattle are not just our source of income: they are our family and, for many of us, our life’s passion. The toll that this will take on our extended agricultural family and our entire local communities, financially and even more so emotionally, really is immeasurable.
Australia, we need your support. Our state and federal governments can do much to help by providing financial funding and disaster assistance packages to help our communities recover and rebuild. The banks can assist by suspending interest repayments on existing mortgages, and writing off significant portions of mortgage debt while our livestock herds rebuild. They own the mortgages on most of this grazing country so they will take a hit with us either way – they may as well let us make a profit for them again down the track.
‘This makes me cry every time I look at these photos. Our crew spent hours here slinging the live heifers out and medicating them. Most still died. They were just the most beautiful mob of stud heifers.’ Photograph: Jacqueline Curley 
It will be four years before many of these people once again have a useful income, which means unless we are back in production again as soon as possible, thriving country communities such as Cloncurry, Julia Creek, Richmond and Hughenden will also perish with us. This is possibly the greatest disaster that our livestock industries have suffered in Australia’s history.
These graphic images should be seen by all Australians so that they have an understanding of our rural life. Empathy for us from our city dwellers will indeed help us to survive and rise again from this catastrophe, just as we have empathy for city dwellers during the many crazy weather events that continually happen in this land. But apart from empathy we need consumer power – insist on buying local produce so we can continue to provide top-quality, homegrown, nourishing Australian beef.

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Melting Himalayan Glaciers: A Big Drop In A Bucket That’s Already Full

The Conversation - 

The source of the Yamuna River, one of the major rivers draining the Himalayas. Anthony Dosseto, Author provided (No reuse)
A new report has warned that even if global warming is held at 1.5℃, we will still lose a third of the glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region. What does that mean for rivers that flow down these mountains, and the people who depend on them?
The HKH region is home to the tallest mountains on Earth, and also to the source of rivers that sustain close to 2 billion people. These rivers supply agriculture with water and with sediments that fertilise soils in valleys and the floodplain.
Some of these rivers are hugely culturally significant. The Ganges (or Ganga), for instance, which flows for more than 2,525km from the western Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal, is personified in Hinduism as the goddess Gaṅgā.
The Ganga River at Rishikesh, as it exits the Himalayas. Anthony Dosseto
When it rains, it pours… literally
Before we get to the effect of melting glaciers on Himalayan rivers, we need to understand where they get their water.
For much of Himalayas, rain falls mostly during the monsoon active between June and September. The monsoon brings heavy rain and often causes devastating floods, such as in northern India in 2013, which forced the evacuation of more than 110,000 people.


2013 floods in Uttarakhand, India.

But the summer monsoon is not the only culprit for devastating floods. Landslides can dam the river, and when this dam bursts it can cause dramatic, unpredictable flooding. Some of those events have been linked to folk stories of floods in many cultures around the world. In the Himalayas, a study tracking the 1,000-year history of large floods showed that heavy rainfall and landslide-dam burst are the main causes.
When they melt, glaciers can also create natural dams, which can then burst and send floods down the valley. In this way, the newly forecast melting poses an acute threat.
The potential problem is worsened still further by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s prediction that the frequency of extreme rainfall events will also increase.

Come hell or high water
What will happen to Himalayan rivers when the taps are turned to high in this way? To answer this, we need to look into the past.
For tens of thousands of years, rivers have polished rocks and laid down sediments in the lower valleys of the mountain range. These sediments and rocks tell us the story of how the river behaves when the tap opens or closes.
Rock surfaces tell us where the river was carving into its bed. Anthony Dosseto
Some experts propose that intense rain tends to trigger landslides, choking the river with sediments which are then dumped in the valleys. Others suggest that the supply of sediments to the river generally doesn’t change much even in extreme rainfall events, and that the main effect of the extra flow is that the river erodes further into its bed.
The most recent work supports the latter theory. It found that 25,000-35,000 years ago, when the monsoon was much weaker than today, sediments were filling up Himalayan valleys. But more recently (3,000-6,000 years ago), rock surfaces were exposed during a period of strong monsoon, illustrating how the river carved into its bed in response to higher rainfall.
Sediments laid down in Himalayan valleys support agriculture, but also tell us the ancient story of rivers that carried them. Anthony Dosseto
So what does the past tell us about the future of Himalayan rivers? More frequent extreme rainfall events mean more floods, of course. But a stronger monsoon also means rivers will cut deeper into their beds, instead of fertilising Himalayan valleys and the Indo-Gangetic plain with sediments.
What about glaciers melting? For as long as there are glaciers, this will increase the amount of meltwater in the rivers each spring (until 2060, according the report, after which there won’t be any meltwater to talk about). So this too will contribute to rivers carving into their beds instead of distributing sediments. It will also increase the risk of flooding from outburst of glacial lake dams.
So what is at stake? The melting glaciers? No. Given thousands or millions of years, it seems likely that they will one day return. But on a more meaningful human timescale, what is really at stake is us – our own survival. Global warming is reducing our resources, and making life more perilous along the way. The rivers of the Himalayas are just one more example.

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Climate And Economic Risks 'Threaten 2008-Style Systemic Collapse'

The Guardian - Jonathan Watt

Environmental and social problems could interact in global breakdown, report says
Hurricane Florence in North Carolina in 2018. The report fears relentless floods and fires in the US could threaten financial institutions. Photograph: Jason Miczek/Reuters
The gathering storm of human-caused threats to climate, nature and economy pose a danger of systemic collapse comparable to the 2008 financial crisis, according to a new report that calls for urgent and radical reform to protect political and social systems.
The study says the combination of global warming, soil infertility, pollinator loss, chemical leaching and ocean acidification is creating a “new domain of risk”, which is hugely underestimated by policymakers even though it may pose the greatest threat in human history.
“A new, highly complex and destabilised ‘domain of risk’ is emerging – which includes the risk of the collapse of key social and economic systems, at local and potentially even global levels,” warns the paper from the Institute for Public Policy Research. “This new risk domain affects virtually all areas of policy and politics, and it is doubtful that societies around the world are adequately prepared to manage this risk.”
Until recently, most studies of environmental risk tended to examine threats in isolation: climate scientists examined disruption to weather systems, biologists focused on ecosystem loss and economists calculated potential damages from intensifying storms and droughts. But a growing body of research is assessing how the interplay of these factors can create a cascade of tipping points in human society as well as the natural world.
The new paper – This is a Crisis: Facing up to the Age of Environmental Breakdown – is a meta-study of dozens of academic papers, government documents and NGO reports compiled by IPPR, a leftwing thinktank that is considered an influence on Labour policy.
The authors examine how the deterioration of natural infrastructure, such as a stable climate and fertile land, have a knock-on effect on health, wealth, inequality and migration, which in turn heightens the possibility of political tension and conflict.
The paper stresses the human impacts go beyond climate change and are occurring at speeds unprecedented in recorded history.
Evidence on the deterioration of natural systems is presented with a series of grim global statistics: since 1950, the number of floods has increased by a factor of 15, extreme temperature events by a factor of 20, and wildfires sevenfold; topsoil is now being lost 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished by natural processes; the 20 warmest years since records began in 1850 have been in the past 22 years; vertebrate populations have fallen by an average of 60% since the 1970s, and insect numbers – vital for pollination – have declined even faster in some countries.
Flames rise from the La Tuna fire near Burbank, California in 2017. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images
These processes amplify and interact with existing social and economic problems, potentially threatening systemic collapse similar to the 2008-9 financial crisis. Back then, a subprime mortgage crisis in the US exposed excessive risk-taking and triggered a global panic and the deepest recession since the 1930s. The IPPR study envisages a similar breakdown could occur if the US suffers relentlessly worsening damage from hurricane floods and forest fires, which would prompt a rush of insurance claims and threaten the viability of financial institutions.
“In the extreme, environmental breakdown could trigger catastrophic breakdown of human systems, driving a rapid process of ‘runaway collapse’ in which economic, social and political shocks cascade through the globally linked system – in much the same way as occurred in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007-08,” the paper warns.
There are other potential cascades. The paper warns of the vulnerability of food systems that rely on just five animal and 12 plant species to provide 75% of the world’s nutrition. The lack of diversity weakens resilience to the growing risks of climate disruption, soil deterioration, pollution and pollinator loss. Previous research – cited by the IPPR – estimates a one-in-20 chance per decade of a simultaneous failure of maize production in the US and China, which provide 60% of the global supply.


Migration is also likely to increase as a result of longer droughts and more extreme heat, particularly in the Middle East and central and northern Africa.
Laurie Laybourn-Langton, the lead author of the report, said the climate crisis was likely to create 10 times more refugees from that region than the 12 million who left during the Arab spring.
“There would be repercussions in Europe. Rightwing groups use the fear of migration, as we saw during the EU referendum in Britain,” he said. “What is that going to look like when far more people are forced from homes due to environmental shocks? What does that mean for political cohesion.”
Several other recent interdisciplinary studies have highlighted the dangers of mutually reinforcing impacts. In December, the authors of a paper published in Science warned the risks were far greater than assumed because 45% of tipping points were interrelated and could amplify one another. Last August, scientists warns these domino effects could push the Earth into an almost uninhabitable “hothouse state”.
Sea water engulfs the church of Pariahan village, north of Manila, Philippines, in November 2018. Photograph: Jes Aznar/Getty Images
Studies of financial and social tipping points are scarcer, but concern is growing. Last month, the top three global risks identified by the World Economic Forum were extreme weather, climate policy failure and natural disasters. Water shortages, accelerating biodiversity loss and large-scale involuntary migration also ranked in the top 10.
“Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe,” its annual risk report warns. “The results of climate inaction are becoming increasingly clear. The accelerating pace of biodiversity loss is a particular concern.”
The IPPR report, which launches a wider 18-month project on this topic, urges policymakers to grapple with these risks as a priority, to accelerate the restoration of natural systems, and to push harder on the “green new deal” transition towards renewable energy. In particular, it says, “the younger generations will need help in finding the energy and a sense of control that often eludes them as they begin to realise the enormity of inheriting a rapidly destabilising world”.
Wider discussion is the first step, according to Laybourn-Langton, who said he was shocked by the paucity of public debate relative to the scale of the problems.
“People are not frank enough about this. If it is discussed at all, it is the sort of thing mentioned at the end of a conversation, that makes everyone look at the floor, but we don’t have time for that now,” he said. “It’s appearing more in media, but we are not doing enough.”

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