Are Australians Really Prepared To Let The Great Barrier Reef Die?

Fairfax - Geoff Cousins*

All over the world the Great Barrier Reef is making front page news. The world is watching how Australia exercises its duty of care over this most loved international icon.
'As warming seas kill off one of the world's natural wonders, researchers are calling for urgent action,' Britons read in The Guardian newspaper this week. 'Last chance to save Great Barrier Reef, warn scientists', the headline read.

Sir David Attenborough back at the Great Barrier Reef.  Photo: Atlantic Productions



Inside, a double-page spread with large colour photos was headed, 'Bare bones: how climate change is bleaching the world's reefs to death'.
The BBC has also been covering the damage to the reef by coral bleaching, a direct result of warmer than usual water. 'About 35 per cent of corals in the northern and central parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef have been destroyed by bleaching,' the UK's most trusted news service reported.
In the USA, agenda-setting media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times ran similarly bold and urgent news pieces.
People around the world are worried about the reef, which is in Australia's care.
Australia's national daily also put the reef on the front page, but it had a very different take on the situation. 'Scientists 'exaggerated' coral bleaching' the headline read. The claim was that some 'activist scientists' and 'lobby groups' had confused people with references to percentages of coral death in different parts of the reef to make out the bleaching was worse than it really is.
Yet immediately following this coverage, top coral scientists were quick to point out that they had no need – or desire – to exaggerate the sad state of the reef.
'Twenty two per cent of whole GBR, 35 per cent north of Townsville. Different areas. Where's the exaggeration?' asked University of Queensland coral scientist Dr Selina Ward in a tweet.
'An inconvenient truth – shocking numbers speak for themselves. You decide how serious this is.' tweeted Professor Terry Hughes.
Clearly the reef is in serious trouble. Sir David Attenborough echoed many other mainstream voices in articulating the cause of the problem. 'The twin perils brought by climate change – an increase in the temperature of the ocean and in its acidity – threaten (the reef's) very existence,' he said.
The reef has become a major election issue in the minds of voters. Australians are entitled to ask what the political parties are offering to do about this problem.
The Coalition has pledged $171 million over six years, mostly to tackle run-off to the reef and improve water quality, as well as $6 million to combat the invasive crown-of-thorns starfish. Labor has promised $377 million of new investment for reducing water pollution, supporting research, and improving reef management as part of a $500 million fund over five years. The Greens' reef plan is for an extra $500 million over five years, plus a $1.2 billion loan fund to improve the health of the reef.
But, of course, the biggest threat to the reef is not run-off or crown-of-thorns – serious as these problems are – it's climate change.
This year's mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is about as stark a reminder as we could possibly expect that climate change is hitting Australia hard, and we must act fast to get ourselves out of the coal business.
That means phasing out coal-fired power stations, replacing that capacity with clean energy, helping affected communities with the transition, and definitely not approving any new coal mines.
Yet saying goodbye to coal is glaring solution that the major parties still baulk at.
Proposals like Adani's enormous Carmichael mine, slated for the Galilee Basin in central Queensland, are completely unacceptable.
If it goes ahead, the Carmichael mine would be the largest coal mine in Australia. At peak capacity, the coal from this mine is expected to add more than 120 million tonnes of pollution a year to the world's climate problem. That's considerably more climate pollution than the entire country of New Zealand produces annually.
It would entrench coal burning for many decades to come, would worsen climate change and damage the Great Barrier Reef. That's why the Australian Conservation Foundation is challenging Environment Minister Greg Hunt's approval of the Carmichael mine in the federal court.
In our case, we are arguing that the Minister's approval of the massive coal mine is inconsistent with Australia's international obligations to protect the Great Barrier Reef, which is a World Heritage site, protected by UN convention.
I don't believe Australians will let the Great Barrier Reef die. But it will take more than just hopes and goodwill to save it.
We will need to convince our politicians that it is time to say no to proposals like Adani's Carmichael proposal and create a future that is coal free.
We need to ask ourselves: are we as a nation so in thrall to the coal industry that we are willing to let the reef perish?

Geoff Cousins in the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation

Links

• The Great Barrier Reef is losing its adjective and it's our fault
• The Great Barrier Reef report the government can't hide from the media
• Great Barrier Reef crisis: Time to address coral catastrophe
• 'Huge wake up call': Third of central, northern Great Barrier Reef corals dead

Nature's Called Our Bluff And We Can't Keep Ignoring It

Fairfax - Elizabeth Farrelly


Collaroy braces for another king tide. Storm affected residents have been evacuated ahead of another damaging high tide predicted to hit 10pm Tuesday night. Vision Courtesy: Network Ten

Two images haunt me from the storm – a busted pool on a busted beach, a boy leaping into broiling waves. They tell me I don't get Australia. I love it, but do not understand it. Do you, honestly?
We're small creatures on a dangerous continent in increasingly dangerous times. Yet we act like we have totally got this. Like we can build in incendiary bush, unguarded flood plains and active beach-zones and everything'll be just fine, like yesterday and the day before. We think nature's a toy and we're the big kids in the sandpit now, making the rules.

Illustration: Glen Le Lievre

I mean come on. Join a few dots here. Last month atmospheric CO₂ passed the 400ppm point-of-no-return. It was autumn, but we were still in the longest, hottest summer on record. Tasmania's world heritage forests burned for the first time in history and UNESCO reported the Great Barrier Reef is 93 per cent bleached, 50 per cent dead.
Then, right at summer's belated end, one of the strangest and most damaging coastal storms ever. Houses collapse, people die.
Yet our government heads into an election on a platform of cutting climate science by 30 per cent, blocking renewables investment and supporting one of the dirtiest roads in history. Que?
"We take it seriously," said Environment Minister Greg Hunt of the dying reef, even while his department secretly coerced UNESCO to redact the reef – and Australia – from its report. Black texta. Gone. Weeks earlier he'd approved, for a company that has trailed illegal pollution across India and Africa, a coalmine twice the size of Manhattan, yielding 120 million tonnes of dirty brown coal a year – a quarter of Australia's total output and 0.5 per cent of the world's carbon. Turnbull warns of more intense and frequent catastrophes but remains, famously, the PM without a climate plan.
It's as though they think not seeing the truth can save us from it. While the rest of the world demolishes motorways and vies for 100 per cent renewables, Barnaby Joyce chooses denial, Angus Taylor opposes the renewables target and a clique of Abbott-esque denialists has decimated renewables investment and blocked climate action at every opportunity.
This is nuts. Survival is not a left-wing issue. The Queen, the Pope and John Hewson all warn of climate change as economic catastrophe if not properly considered. And they don't mean embroidering better blindfolds.
The beachfront property owners at Collaroy and Narrabeen are a microcosm of this risk. Canaries, if you will. Of course, no storm can be attributed directly to climate change. Storms happen. But climate change made this one worse, in four different ways.
Climate change has already raised both sea levels and sea temperatures. Both factors exacerbated the size, momentum and damage of the storm surges. But climate change also heightens storm severity and, less familiar, changes the direction of approach.
Most storms on the eastern seaboard come from the southeast. This one, says UNSW coastal engineer associate professor Ian Turner, was east-north-east. That sounds trivial, but it's not. Catching the coastline "out of alignment," last week's east coast low found hitherto untested points of weakness, increasing the vulnerability of the beachfront and the houses upon it. "In my profession," says Turner, "we no longer debate climate change. We take it as given."
Turner notes the zone in which the Collaroy houses were built has long been regarded by coastal engineers as "active beach zone". Sure, the decision to build in these zones was made not by current owners but perhaps a century ago. But that makes it no less stupid. Active beach zone is like active volcano. Mostly it's fine, and then suddenly it's not. Shifting sands.
Of course there are things that can be done. In particular, there are seawalls, and there's beach nourishment. Seawalls usually protect what's behind them, but worsen damage further along the coastal drift-line, so should be undertaken strategically, nominating sacrificial beach areas that can tolerate erosion. That's tricky, since humans will mostly protect private property and send the erosion to land that cannot be developed – fragile wetlands or lagoons.
Trickier still is beach nourishment, which involves dredging sand from deeper water and replacing it onto beach and dunes so that, when storms come, that sand - rather than houses and roads - becomes the sacrifice. This has an obvious public benefit in creating more beach, but is temporary and – like seawalls - expensive.
Both cases beg the question, who should pay? And, given that climate change means such destruction will only get worse, can we justify any form of coastal development other than respectful retreat?
The government tries consistently to pretend these dots are not joined; that the biggest issues arising from both the 317 CSIRO job cuts and the ECL are those of personal loss. They're wrong.
The new NSW Coastal Reforms package (a month-old Act, a SEPP, a Coastal Council and an implementation manual) has been a 40-year project of emeritus professor and longtime coastal scientist Bruce Thom. He hopes it will replace ad hoc local coastal intervention with a clear, literal, littoral line in the sand.
But its work, which crucially involves monitoring and anticipating climate change effects on sea level, ocean temperature and storm behaviour (as well as biosphere-atmosphere carbon exchange, water-cycles and heat-wave behaviour), can only be inhibited by cutting the 75 CSIRO scientists whose jobs are precisely that, to say nothing of what happens to some of the world's most enduring data sets.
From the 1950s through to the 1980s, Australia led the world in atmospheric science. Even now, many of its scientists are revered as IPCC lead authors. Concern over this vandalism has been voiced by more than 2500 international scientists, plus the New York Times and the UN's Climate Research Program. And don't forget. Almost the entire east coast is potentially vulnerable to Collaroy-type damage. If the 75 scientists saved just 20 houses in 20 years, they'd have paid their salary.
Bruce Thom, and the Australian Coastal Society he founded, would like NSW's coastal reforms applied Australia-wide. But without the science to back it up, we're like that boy flinging himself into the Bondi cauldron. Brave to the point of hubris, confident to the point of death.

Links

'People just believe the risk doesn't exist'

How forecasters saw the storm coming

The Great Barrier Reef is losing its adjective and it's our fault

The Great Barrier Reef report the government can't hide from the media

Great Barrier Reef crisis: Time to address coral catastrophe

'Huge wake up call': Third of central, northern Great Barrier Reef corals dead

The Great Barrier Reef Is Losing Its Adjective And It's Our Fault

Fairfax - Tim Flannery*


Can we reverse coral bleaching? We head north to Queensland to see if anything can be done to save the Great Barrier Reef.

A few weeks ago I dived the Great Barrier Reef, near Port Douglas. It was one of the saddest days of my life. I am haunted by what I've seen. And infuriated. I had come with hope, for some recovery at least from the largest coral bleaching event on record. But what I found was worse than I could have imagined. The Great Barrier Reef is losing its adjective.
Most of the reef's usually vibrant staghorn and plate corals are covered with an ugly green slime. Even some of the massive stony corals – the hardiest of all – are scarred with the tell-tale white of bleaching. The reef's diverse and stunning fish population are starving.

Tim Flannery visited the Great Barrier Reef a few weeks ago. Photo: Supplied

A green turtle passes by. As the dead reef breaks down, its habitat will be eroded to rubble. And climate change is affecting the species in other ways. Rising seas have massively degraded its most important nesting site – Raine Island in the northern Great Barrier Reef. Those same rising waters caused, around 2011, the first mammal extinction brought about directly by climate change, when the entire habitat of the Bramble Key melomys (a native rodent unique to the Great Barrier Reef) was destroyed by saltwater intrusion.
As I reflected on my dive, I realised that I had been looking into the future. Because of el Nino, this year global temperatures rose by a third of a degree – to 1.2C above the pre-industrial average. By the 2030s, this year's conditions will be average.
This great organism, the size of Germany and arguably the most diverse place on earth, is dying before our eyes. Having watched my father dying two years ago, I know what the signs of slipping away are. This is death, which ever-rising temperatures will allow no recovery from. Unless we act now.

Three-quarters of the Barrier Reef is alive, says the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

But when I turn on the television, you wouldn't know that our greatest national treasure is on the brink of disappearing. It's the same old claptrap about jobs and the economy, never mind the fact that it's always the same, and it never improves no matter who is elected.
Never mind the fact that a healthy environment underpins a thriving economy.
The Australian government successfully censored the reef from inclusion in an international scientific report on the impacts of climate change on World Heritage sites.
As if preventing Australians from knowing about what we've done is the same as actually doing something about it.
All other election issues will come and go but in this election is our last chance. The fate of the Great Barrier Reef is hanging in the balance.
The decisions made in the next four years will determine whether or not the reef lives or dies.
If global emissions aren't trending down by 2020, it will all but ensure the reef will disappear.
That's why this should be the reef election.
The election that puts us on the path to rapidly closing our old and polluting coal-fired power stations and helping the rest of the world do the same. It's a great opportunity for Australia to display real global political leadership, on an issue of supreme national importance.
Yet neither of the major parties have a coal closure plan. Environment Minister Greg Hunt has again approved the Carmichael coal mine, which would cancel out Australia's entire annual emissions reduction if it goes ahead. Both sides of politics fail to acknowledge the speed with which we must transition our energy systems if we are to ensure the long-term survival of the reef.
It is not too late to save the reef. But it will take courage and leadership to make the kinds of decisions necessary to do it.
The alternative will mean we'll be explaining to our grandchildren that we had the chance to save this natural wonder – but we were too selfish to take it.

*Tim Flannery is a former Australian of the Year, scientist and environmentalist and chief councillor at the Climate Council.

Links

• The Great Barrier Reef report the government can't hide from the media
• Great Barrier Reef crisis: Time to address coral catastrophe
• 'Huge wake up call': Third of central, northern Great Barrier Reef corals dead
• Nature's called our bluff and we can't keep ignoring it

This Is The Climate Change Election, Despite What Turnbull Or Shorten Say

New Matilda - Costa Avgoustinos*

Both parties are ignoring the big, coal-coloured elephant in the room. With the world speeding towards a tipping point, action can not wait for the next election cycle to begin, writes Costa Avgoustinos.

Climate change is the number one issue this election, whether Turnbull or Shorten are willing to frame it that way or not. This is not only because averting climate disaster is important. It's because our ability to do so is time-sensitive – after decades of delay the window for effective climate action is closing rapidly and will soon shut forever.
Here is a quick and dirty summary of the climate science: If the world heats up 1.5°C, we're screwed.
Why? Because it is expected at this "tipping point", how hot things get begins to significantly fall from our control. A series of events we have no power over are triggered once 1.5°C is breached – for example, the ability of oceans and forests to absorb our carbon emissions are substantially exhausted and greenhouse gases currently trapped under ice start being released.
We may soon be placed in a position where all we can do is powerlessly watch as temperatures climb to Mad Max levels; where sea rises will gobble at our coasts (where 85 per cent of Australians live), food and water sources are devastated, heat-thriving diseases are incubated, and conflicts and a meaner streak of politics are inevitable.
Because politicians are not taking the task of staying below the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C seriously, many predict we are "locking in" temperature rises of 4°C, which Professor John Schellnhuber, one of the world's most influential climate scientists, bluntly stated at a conference in Australia would threaten nothing less than "human civilisation".
The World Bank, hardly an organisation of tree huggers, stated "all our work, all our thinking, is designed with the threat of a 4°C degree world in mind" with the unnerving warning that there is "no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible".
Temperature rises of 4°C are not expected in some distant future, either. Many predict 4°C will be reached by 2100, but some suggest it could be as early as the 2050s. That is, if not in your lifetime, then the lifetime of your children.
This is why the 2010s are called the "critical decade". We have delayed reducing carbon emissions for 25 years and now we are dangerously close to 1.5°C – in fact, NASA confirmed the 1.5°C mark was breached for the first time in February 2016. There is no time left for delay. The decisions made by our leaders (in Australia and elsewhere) in the next few months and years will have a significant impact on determining if catastrophic levels of climate change are averted or rendered irreversible.
This is not like any other issue where, if Party X gets in, their policies can be undone the next time Party Y gain power. Our window for effective climate action is only open for a brief amount of time. What is done in the next three years is crucial.
So why isn't this the number one issue on everyone's lips this election?

Cartoon: Costa A.

There are genuine psychological and cultural reasons why we look away from climate change to our own misfortune. But a powerful reason why Australians are not taking climate change seriously is because it is not in the interests of our two major parties to take it seriously, and so they position the issue in a lesser category of concern. Climate action means not only saying yes to renewables (which, at least, Labor is willing to do) but no to coal (which neither are willing to do).
Australia needs to keep 90 per cent of its coal in the ground for the planet to have any hope of staying below 2°C (and of course, even more to stay below 1.5°C). That is Australia's share of the carbon budget – the calculation of how many gigatonnes of fossil fuels in reserves worldwide must stay unearthed and unburned for us to remain under the "tipping point". This isn't even science at this point. Just maths.
The good news, however, is this: Australia is economically better off keeping this coal in the ground. The mining boom is over. We can't just bung a hole in the desert and get the easy-access coal anymore. Coal mines now are on farms (to the devastation of traditional Nationals and Labor voters) and near the fragile Great Barrier Reef (to the devastation of all voters who want their kids to see it one day).
The coal industry is in structural decline, prices are unlikely to bounce back. Adani put their own Reef-neighbouring coal mine on hold because the economic case for the enterprise has disintegrated. Whether you care about climate change, a strong economy, farmers, or the Reef, saying no to new coal mines is a no-brainer.
The only losers from coal mine closures that deserve sympathy are the coal industry workers. They face the reality workers in any economically unfeasible industry face and deserve a realistic transition plan – a plan neither major party is willing to provide as they stubbornly pretend the industry is fine and won't unceremoniously haemorrhage workers as its structural decline deepens.
One might be generous and suggest the Coalition and Labor's willingness to temporarily prop up the coal industry derives from concerns for the small minority of Australians employed by it, but let's call a dog a dog. Their interests lie with the coal industry's bosses, not its workers. Their motivation is a complex mix of fear (of the Coal Lobby's power) and gratitude (for the Coal Lobby's generous donations and the cushy jobs they routinely offer to politicians for their post-political life as board-members, and lobbyists to the next generation of politicians).
Climate change is not like a tiger attacking your kids, where the danger is clear and obvious, but it is a danger all the same. Both the Coalition and Labor stoke and exploit our psychological blindspot, the difficulty we all have in seeing the climate crisis for the danger that it is, to get us talking about what they want us to consider an emergency. Don't let them do it. This election, vote for climate action and against new coal mines. It is literally the most critical issue on the table, and its time is now.

*Costa is a PhD candidate on the issue of climate change and its legal ramifications.

Links

• Victorian Labor Government Gunning For Net-Zero Carbon By 2050
• Coast And Country Leads Court Challenge To Coal Industry's 'Drug Dealers Defence'
• Did Climate Change Play A Part In The Sydney Storm?

New Technology Offers Hope For Storing Carbon Dioxide Underground

The Conversation - Dom Wolff-Boenisch

Iceland's geothermal power plants are an ideal place to test pumping carbon dioxide underground. Dom Wolff-Boenisch, Author provided

To halt climate change and prevent dangerous warming, we ultimately have to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. While the world is making slow progress on reducing emissions, there are more radical options, such as removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and storing them underground.
In a paper published today in Science my colleagues and I report on a successful trial converting carbon dioxide (CO₂) to rock and storing it underground in Iceland. Although we trialled only a small amount of CO₂, this method has enormous potential.
Here's how it works.

Turning CO₂ to rock
Our paper is the culmination of a decade of scientific field and laboratory work known as CarbFix in Iceland, working with a group of international scientists, among them Wallace Broecker who coined the expression "global warming" in the 1970s. We also worked with the Icelandic geothermal energy company Reykjavik Energy.
The idea itself to convert CO₂ into carbonate minerals, the basis of limestone, is not new. In fact, Earth itself has been using this conversion technique for aeons to control atmospheric CO₂ levels.
However, scientific opinion had it up to now that converting CO₂ from a gas to a solid (known as mineralisation) would take thousands (or tens of thousands) of years, and would be too slow to be used on an industrial scale.
To settle this question, we prepared a field trial using Reykjavik Energy's injection and monitoring wells. In 2012, after many years of preparation, we injected 248 tonnes of CO₂ in two separate phases into basalt rocks around 550m underground.
Most CO₂ sequestration projects inject and store "supercritical CO₂", which is CO₂ gas that has been compressed under pressure to reduce considerably its density. However, supercritical CO₂ is buoyant, like a gas, and this approach has thus proved controversial due to the possibility of leaks from the storage reservoir upwards into groundwater and eventually back to the atmosphere.
In fact, some European countries such as the Netherlands have stopped their efforts to store supercritical CO₂ on land because of lack of public acceptance, driven by the fear of possible leaks in the unforeseeable future. Austria went even so far as to ban underground storage of carbon dioxide outright.

The injection well with monitoring station in the background. Dom Wolff-Boenisch, Author provided

Our Icelandic trial worked in a different way. We first dissolved CO₂ in water to create sparkling water. This carbonated water has two advantages over supercritical CO₂ gas.
First, it is acidic, and attacks basalt which is prone to dissolve under acidic conditions.
Second, the CO₂ cannot escape because it is dissolved and will not rise to the surface. As long as it remains under pressure it will not rise to the surface (you can see the same effect when you crack open a soda can; only then is the dissolved CO₂ released back into the air).
Dissolving basalt means elements such as calcium, magnesium, and iron are released into pore water. Basaltic rocks are rich in these metals that team up with the dissolved CO₂ and form solid carbonate minerals.
Through observations and tracer studies at the monitoring well, we found that over 95% of the injected CO₂ (around 235 tonnes) was converted to carbonate minerals in less than two years. While the initial amount of injected CO₂ was small, the Icelandic field trial clearly shows that mineralisation of CO₂ is feasible and more importantly, fast.

Storing CO₂ under the oceans
The good news is this technology need not be exclusive to Iceland. Mineralisation of CO₂ requires basaltic or peridotitic rocks because these types of rocks are rich in the metals required to form carbonates and bind the CO2.
As it turns out the entire vast ocean floor is made up of kilometre-thick oceanic basaltic crust, as are large areas on the continental margins. There are also vast land areas covered with basalt (so-called igneous provinces) or peridotite (so-called "ophiolitic complexes").
The overall potential storage capacity for CO₂ is much larger than the global CO₂ emissions of many centuries. The mineralisation process removes the crucial problem of buoyancy and the need for permanent monitoring of the injected CO₂ to stop and remedy potential leakage to the surface, an issue that supercritical CO₂ injection sites will face for centuries or even millennia to come.
On the downside, CO₂ mineralisation with carbonated water requires substantial amounts of water, meaning that this mineralisation technique can only succeed where vast supplies of water are available.
However, there is no shortage of seawater on the ocean floor or continental margins. Rather, the costs involved present a major hurdle to this kind of permanent storage option, for the time being at least.
In the case of our trial, a tonne of mineralised CO₂ via carbonated water cost about US$17, roughly twice that of using supercritical CO₂ for storage.
It means that as long as there are no financial incentives such as a carbon tax or higher price on carbon emissions, there is no real driving force for carbon storage, irrespective of the technique we use.

Links

• Explainer: what is carbon capture and storage?
• Carbon capture and storage – a vital part of our climate change response
• Carbon capture plant turns emissions into baking soda
• How exploring Mars could help us fight climate change on Earth

What If Global Warming Emptied India?

Scientific American - Gayathri Vaidyanathan

Climate change poses significant threats to the populous nation

Summer in Kerala, India. Credit: Vinoth Chandar/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

In an armchair experiment where humans are thought of as no wiser than animals, scientists have found that climate change could empty some nations by 2100.
A warming of 2 degrees Celsius would cause 34 percent of the world’s population to migrate more than 300 miles, to places on the fringes of the tropics where the temperatures are milder. Dramatic population declines might occur in Mexico, Central America, Africa and India. The results were published today in Scientific Reports.
The scientists are cautious about the predictive power of their thought experiment, particularly as it relates to humans. People, unlike animals, can adapt to higher temperatures through technologies such as air conditioning. They also face barriers to long-distance migration, such as land borders, language barriers or even buying an air ticket. The scientists stressed that they are only exploring a hypothetical response to rising temperatures.
“We’re not making specific predictions about migration patterns of individual species, but the geophysical constraint is that, as the tropics get hotter, you’ll have to go far, essentially leaving the tropics, to cool off,” Adam Sobel, a professor of applied physics and math at Columbia University and a co-author of the study, said in a statement.
Some of the regions that the study suggests would be worst affected currently have the lowest migration rates in the world, said Valerie Mueller, a senior research fellow who studies migration at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
“They try to cast this paper as a way of thinking about not just human, but the migration of other species,” she said. “For birds that have very little costs in moving 500 and 1,000 kilometers [300 to 620 miles], it might work. But this framework for monitoring human migration doesn’t recognize the formidable barriers we face in moving.”
To Mueller, the utility of this study lies in the attention it brings to the topic. The humanitarian community would like to get a better sense of population size in the future, she said.
“The international community basically wants to understand that, given the fact that the world is global and people are moving countries, how can they plan in terms of infrastructure and development, how can they plan the allocation of resources to accommodate this potentially growing population,” she said.
In the study, the scientists have used a simple climate model to say how far humans would have to migrate if they want to continue to experience the same temperatures. Since temperatures are similar near the equator, the climate model shows that people in the tropics would have to move large distances to offset a smaller increase in average temperature, said Andrew Solow, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
He also stressed that most people do not migrate to continue experiencing their current temperatures.
“My impression is that, in the U.S., populations have tended to shift toward warmer parts of the country over the past decades,” he said.

Links

• Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?
• Global Warming: Beyond the Tipping Point
• Did Ancient Climate Change Ignite Human Evolution?
• Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide Emissions into Stone

Australia Could Be 100% Renewable – With No “Baseload” – By 2035

Renew Economy - Sophie Vorrath

As plans emerge for the development of a massive new “baseload” solar thermal and storage plant to “replace” coal in South Australia, a new report from WWF Australia has questioned the very concept of “baseload”, arguing that this model of power generation is made redundant by a 100% renewable energy grid.
The report, published on Wednesday, argues that Australia could completely and effectively replace the nation’s mostly coal-based “baseload” power generators by harnessing huge volumes of renewable energy – using existing technologies, including battery storage – distributed across the country.
“The reality is that electricity usage is variable, demand changes throughout the day and night, and Australia doesn’t need baseload power generation,” the report says.

“With key market reforms in place to manage the energy transition, Australians can comfortably let go of the mindset of ‘baseload’ and have confidence in a modern, reliable, renewable energy sector powering our future.”
This “mindset” that renewable energy technologies like solar PV and wind don’t “do baseload” due to the intermittent nature of the resource has long been a barrier to the wholesale shift to renewables.
Of course, the argument – most commonly touted by the fossil fuel industry and coal lobbyists, and sometimes even by proponents of solar thermal technology – is increasingly being undermined by the onset of cheaper and more efficient battery storage.
But regardless of the rise of energy storage, many energy market analysts and players argue that the entire model of baseload energy supply is being made redundant by the shift to cheap and easy distributed renewables and increasingly sophisticated energy management software.
Certainly this is the thinking in places like Denmark, which is a functioning example of modern energy supply without baseload. But it is also the thinking in China, which still has a huge reliance on coal-fired power.
As the report notes, and we have reported here before, that much is evident in the February comments of the chairman of the State Grid (China’s biggest network owner), who said there was “no technical challenge at all” preventing grids from running smoothly without baseload supply. “The only hurdle to overcome is mindset.”
In Germany, 50 Hertz, the company responsible for more than one-third of Germany’s electricity grid,
says there is no issue absorbing high levels of variable renewable energy such as wind and solar, and grids could absorb up to 70 per cent penetration without the need for storage.
And the message is the same: “It’s about the mindset,” said Boris Schucht, the company’s CEO. “Ten to 15 years ago when I was a young engineer, nobody believed that integrating more than 5 per renewable energy in an industrial state such as Germany was possible.”
In the region Schucht operates in, though, 46 per cent of the power supply comes from wind and solar. Next year it will be more than 50 per cent.
In Australia, meanwhile, the mindset remains stubbornly in place, and yet 100 per cent renewable energy has already become a reality over given periods in given states, including South Australia and Tasmania.

The report notes that the ACT will soon rely on 100% renewable energy, with its policy plans to achieve this by 2020 using a mix of wind and solar, and existing large hydro.
But the report also notes that to support this transition further, it is vital that Australia urgently review its energy market frameworks to integrate them with climate change policies.
This very idea – that National Electricity Market laws should include an environmental objective, to keep Australia’s grid more closely aligned with its Paris climate commitments and national efforts to cut power sector emissions – was, however, recently rejected by the federal government.
The recommendation, made by the Australian Greens as part of a federal government inquiry into the performance and management of electricity network, was aimed at addressing community concerns about rising electricity prices and the reasons behind them.
Labor has also promised a review into the National Electricity Market and its “objectives”, and wants environment to be included. Without it, Labor climate spokesman Mark Butler said earlier this week, the market is not fit for purpose and has no signal to decarbonise.
Which brings us back to mindset: “In Australia we are used to the idea of ‘baseload energy’ being the energy that ensures we can flick the lights on at any point in the night, but that’s old thinking,” said Adrian Enright, Climate Change Policy Manager at WWF-Australia.
“The problem is the bulk of our baseload energy comes from high polluting, ageing coal fired generators. Some of Australia’s existing baseload capacity was built before man first landed on the moon.

75% of Australia’s existing coal generator fleet is passed its design life, according to the WWF report.

“To enjoy clean air and reduce carbon pollution Australia will need to shift to a modern, 21st Century model, powered by 100% renewable energy by 2035. This is possible, affordable and very popular.
In the lead up to the federal Election, WWF-Australia is calling on all parties to commit to a transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2035.

Links

• WWF Report: Beyond baseload: 100% Renewable energy in Australia
• Hewson's Solastor promises world's cheapest 24/7 solar power
• Wind energy's biggest month, and how it keeps prices down