28/02/2019

The Forgotten Climate Change Crises: Decline In Bogong Moth Numbers Leaves Pygmy Mountain Possums Starving

The Guardian - 

Exclusive: climate change linked to ‘astonishing’ drop in bogong moth numbers, the key food source for possums while breeding 
The mountain pygmy possum population is threatened again because of the dramatic decline in bogong moths. Photograph: Zoos Victoria/AFP/Getty Images
Numbers of unique Australian moths that migrate in their billions to alpine areas have crashed, ecologists say, putting extra pressure on the endangered mountain pygmy possum.
Scientists believe the “astonishing” drop in bogong moth numbers is linked to climate change and recent droughts in areas where the moths breed.
At the same time checks on the endangered mountain pygmy possum, which exists only in Australia’s alpine regions, have revealed dead litters in the pouches of females. The moths are a key food source for the possums as they wake from hibernation.
In 2018, scientists revealed bogong moths were the only known insect to use the earth’s magnetic field to help them navigate from grasslands in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland – sometimes at distances of 1,000km. Around two billion moths are estimated to make the journey.
The ecologist Dr Ken Green has been monitoring bogong moths for 40 years. He said: “Last summer numbers were atrocious. It was not just really bad, it was the worst I had ever seen. Now this year it’s got even worse.”
The moths find caves and cracks in boulders to hide away in a torpor state. A cave at Mount Gingera, near Canberra, has been known to house millions of the moths but last month Green and colleagues counted just three individuals. Searches of about 50 known sites have turned up similar catastrophic absences.
“They haven’t just declined. They’ve gone,” he said. “We have done mountains from down to the Victorian border all the way to Canberra. We have checked every cave we know.”
A site at South Ramshead in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales had just 1,000 moths last year. “That is very, very low,” says Green.
“This year we found just six moths. Last week we went back and there were none.”
Green believes the cause of the crash is drought in the moth’s breeding areas. The Bureau of Meteorology has said the drought was exceptional in those areas, but noted there had been similar dry periods in the 1960s and earlier.

Impact on the endangered mountain pygmy possums
Dean Heinze, an associate at Latrobe University, has been monitoring and researching mountain pygmy possums since the early 1990s. The possum populations are spread across Kosciuszko national park in New South Wales, and in Victoria at Mount Bogong, Mount Higginbotham and Mount Buller.
Scientists think the ‘astonishing’ drop in bogong moth numbers is linked to climate change, with extensive droughts in recent years in locations where the moths breed before migrating to alpine regions. Photograph: Auscape International/Alamy
As the possums emerge from hibernation in September and October, the moths are a key food source as they breed and raise young.
“Bogong moths are an incredible food source and very high in protein. Last year we found that some populations of possums were losing litters. It’s happening again this year. We think that the fewer moths means the possums are carrying less weight and losing the litters.”
In recent weeks Heinze has visited about 12 locations in Victoria and discovered dead litters in female pouches at “most of the sites.”
“It’s a widespread event,” he said. “I inspect the reproductive system of the animal and I look in their pouch to see how many young there are. I have been opening pouches and discovering dead and decomposing young ... For some, the young have been dead for days.
“The concern is that over time, if this happens more frequently we will see declines in the adult population as well. And this is the second year that they have lost litters. The litmus test will be next season.”
Around Mount Buller in Victoria, the possum habitat is fragmented by ski resorts. Captive breeding and release programs have been used to keep numbers up.
“We have put a huge effort into the population at Mount Buller,” says Heinze. “We have brought the population back from the brink and now we have this happening. I’m optimistic, but if we get more of this then it doesn’t look good. Here we are dealing with a species that only occurs in the alps, but what’s impacting it is happening hundreds of kilometres away.”
In 2016, a national recovery plan was agreed for the possum, outlining multiple threats including habitat degradation, predation by invasive cats and foxes and climate change.
A study published in October 2018 and led by scientists at the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage looked at the climate change threats to the possums and the moths. The study suggested the moths had a “reduced survival in a warmer world” and this would “likely further affect survival” of the possums.
Prof Lesley Hughes, an ecologist at Macquarie University and councillor at the Climate Council of Australia, said the potential role of climate change in the decline of the moths and possums were what ecologists and climate scientists had predicted.
“Unfortunately the general predictions of the ecological risks of climate change are now turning into observations for particular species. And it should be no surprise we are seeing these impacts in the alpine zone, long recognised as one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to climate risks.
“Sometimes these changes can appear to happen abruptly – one year there are millions of moths and the next almost none. This shows how particular extreme events, such as droughts or severe bushfires, can suddenly tip a species over the edge, with flow-on effects to others in the ecosystem.”
The environment minister, Melissa Price, said she was aware of the reports of low bogong moth numbers and the government was working with a leading possum researcher “to understand the potential toll that reduced number of moths may be having on the species”.
The removal of feral cats and foxes in Kosciusko national park was helping possum protection, she said, and two government-backed projects were tackling weed infestations, building resilience to climate change, and managing loss of genetic diversity among possums in the Victorian Alpine region.
Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning spokesperson Adrian Moorrees said the reduction in moths “is likely to be due to recent droughts” in NSW and Queensland.
He said tools and processes were being developed “to better monitor and predict the impact of bogong moth populations on endangered mountain pygmy possums.”
A spokesperson for the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage said no litter deaths were reported in NSW possum populations, but the drought was believed to have impacted most species.
He said when moth numbers were low, possums turned to other food sources, including insects, fruits and nectar, adding “OEH will continue to implement the species recovery plans for the mountain pygmy possum.”

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Scott Morrison's Pea-And-Thimble Trick

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Did you notice that the Morrison government has slashed Australia's Paris climate target in half, a detail that somehow escaped scrutiny in the flurry of climate policies announced this week?
No? Well, neither did most of the country.
Backing black: Then federal Treasurer Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal to question time in February 2017. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
On paper, Australia remains committed to cutting 2005-level emissions 26 per cent by 2030.
According to environment department officials called to Senate estimates last week, that means the nation has to reduce - abate - a total of 695 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent in the decade of 2021-2030.
But as we also had confirmed last week, the government plans to use credits earned during the current Kyoto Protocol - the global climate accord Kevin Rudd signed Australia up to in 2007 - to count against the Paris target.
Indeed, the "Climate Solutions Package" released on Monday makes no effort to hide the use of these Kyoto "carryover" credits - even if they're oddly bundled with the unrelated Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro plan.
Source: Morrison Government
So, booking those credits, Australia's 695 million tonnes of abatement task shrinks to just 328 million tonnes. Our Paris goal has just magically become 12.25 per cent, or less than half the 26 per cent "headline" reduction. Again, on paper, the presumed cost of getting off fossil fuels suddenly got a lot smaller. How good is that?
Actually not so good.
For one thing, the Paris accord was meant to be a reset for all nations, in order to more aggressively reduce the greenhouse gas emissions than under Kyoto. Whatever surplus credits nations had built up were not intended to count. That's why Germany, the UK and Sweden were among nations to cancel surplus credits they built up during the Kyoto period.
Second, nations like Russia and Ukraine are eying similar get-out-climate-actions cards.
Third, delays of real action means Australia's emissions, rising since 2014 are likely to continue to do so. Delays in taking decarbonising the economy means missed opportunities and possibly higher costs later.

'Rot forever'
Prime Minister Scott Morrison touts the pea-and-thimble game as a national triumph.
"Australia has been successful," he told 7.30 on Monday.
"We took a...750-million tonne deficit on what was required to meet our 2020 [Kyoto] targets when we were first elected, and that is going to be turned around to a 367-million tonne surplus," he said.
"So we've had a 1.1 billion-tonne turnaround under our management as a result of the climate change action policies we put in place."
Setting aside the utility of those "action policies" - and the jury has a lot ot weigh - the celebration of this "success" is actually premature.
For one thing, the public, once alerted, may not be so accepting of this particular "climate solution".
And analysts such as Malte Meinshausen - who heads the Australian-German Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University and served as a negotiator at climate talks - say United Nations rules reject the use of carry-over credits from the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012) to count for Paris.
"Under Kyoto Protocol rules, there are deliberately no carry-over rules for any credits that sit in the [Previous period surplus reserve]," Associate Professor Meinshausen says.
"Thus, the credits that are shifted after [the first phase of Kyoto] into the [reserve] sit there and rot there forever, but cannot be carried over into any subsequent commitment period."
By his estimate, that would immediately annul the 128 million tonnes - or about a third - of the surplus Morrison is counting.

'Survival'
The second period of Kyoto runs until 2020, and the use of remaining "credits' can't be banked on either.
The Paris rulebook is still be drawn up, but as New Zealand's climate minister James Shaw said last December, the use of such a "surplus" was against the spirit of the Paris accord.
The European Union will also likely want a clarification.
Whether a stink gets kicked up or not depends a lot on federal Labor.
It has dismissed "accounting tricks" but also said it would "take advice" if it won office in May as whether the credits can be used.
However, as Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati told me on Tuesday, climate change is an "existential risk" for Pacific nations such as his as storms intensify and sea levels rise. Accounting changes don't reduce that threat.
"We need to step forward with genuine commitment," he said.
"We're not talking, really, numbers. We're talking about the survival of people."

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The Government Thinks We’re Idiots And Is Not Serious About Reducing Emissions

The Guardian - 

Tackling climate change is tough and Scott Morrison’s latest policy is an insult
We don’t need this current putrid policy from the government. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images 
After Scott Morrison’s announcement of his new climate change policy we know two things – the government still thinks we’re idiots, and they are still not serious about reducing emissions.
I guess we should be grateful that at least the government now realises it needs to look as if it gives a damn about reducing emissions, because for a while they couldn’t even be bothered to do that.
But stuff it. I’m done with giving out prizes for pretence. I’m done with being satisfied with something not even worthy of being called a fourth-best policy. I’m done with the lies.
Do not for one second think this is a policy designed to reduce emissions. It is a political Band-Aid while the actual wound to our economy from its greenhouse gas dependency is open and festering.
It is a fraud, and not even a new one.
It’s the same bulldust that the Liberal National party has been selling the public for nigh on a decade with a different badge. Gone is the Emissions Reduction Fund; say hello to the “Climate Solutions Fund”.
This fund of $2bn over 10 years is not just a rebranding of Tony Abbot’s Direct Action, it is actually a diminishment of it. At $200m a year on average it is less than half the money a year that was spent on Direct Action – a policy that was so laughably bad that a government with any level of shame would quietly have dumped it and pretended it never happened.
Yet, here we are. Nine years after Lenore Taylor ripped apart the Liberal party’s policy of reliance on “soil magic”, we have the prime minister still thinking such measures of carbon sequestration are worth pursuing and will achieve anything close to what is required.
But before we go further, let’s bring out the graphs again.
First the one showing annual greenhouse gas emissions going back to 2004. You’ve seen it before, it shows that yes, a price on carbon reduces emissions:



The next one shows the most recent projections for our emissions. These are the government’s own figures. And they show we are a long way from being on target to reduce emissions by either 26% or 28% below 2005 levels:



So we have that reality, but the prime minister says we will meet the target “in a canter”. Why? Because our target will also include “carryover credits” which comes from exceeding our Kyoto reduction commitment.
That might be defensible if our Kyoto commitment did not already include some dodgy work involving the counting of land use, land-use change and forestry, which allowed us to reach our target even if we actually increased our emissions.
It means we are using dodgy counting of previous dodgy counting to meet our targets.
The University of Melbourne’s Dylan McConnell estimates over half of the reduction will come via this trick accounting method, while 15% will come via “technology improvements and other sources of abatement” which is code for, “dunno, but here’s hoping someone does something good, in spite of our efforts”.
But you don’t really need to be told the ins and outs of this policy. You know it is a terrible joke on us all – the suggestion that we can do what is needed on climate change by spending a mere $200m a year.
With annual GDP of around $1,950bn, that represents just 0.01% this year, and because our GDP will grow, by 2030, $200m will be a mere 0.006% of GDP.
Now let us look at our emissions compared with other nations in the OECD:



Yes, the United States emits a lot more than we do, but when you look at per capita and per GDP you see how integral greenhouse gas emissions are to our economy. Australia is basically the most carbon-dependent economy in the OECD.
Yet the government would have you believe it can all be done painlessly. Just write a cheque for a mere $200m a year – less than is spent on SBS each year, and we’re done?
Do you really think that governments around the world have been avoiding action on climate change for the past three decades because they would have to spend this pathetic amount?
If that was all that was needed, we wouldn’t even be worrying. It would have been done.
The reality is cutting emissions is going to be tough. We are finally paying the bill for 200 years of gorging on carbon for free; and the bill is large.
We need to be honest about this. If it was easy – anywhere near as easy as what Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott or Josh Frydenberg would have you believe – it would have already been done. The reason it hasn’t is because it is bloody hard.
But it needs to happen and I have a few graphs to illustrate why.
First, the average annual temperature over the past 60 years:



Remember when all the climate-change deniers (for deniers they are) said 1998 was the hottest year and the planet had not warmed since then? Well the temperature anomaly of the past five years have averaged almost 40% more than what was reached in that year.
What if we extrapolated out the 20-year trend since 1998 into the future? If we use an absurdly conservative linear trend we reach 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2066 – just 47 years time.
But if we use a more realistic exponential trend line, we get there by 2049. A point at which my 15-year-old daughter would be the same age I am now:



Enough with the lies and fraudulent policy. It is beyond time for politicians to be honest with us. Action on climate change will be tough, and we need to stop pretending it can be done with ease.
What we don’t need is this current putrid policy from the government. They have shown they cannot get serious about the issue; it’s time they got out of the way.

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