China: No, Climate Change Is Not A Hoax We Invented

SBS - Ben Winsor

Contrary to 2012 claims from US President-elect Donald Trump, China did not invent climate change as a hoax to sabotage manufacturing, the Vice Foreign Minister has said.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, July 13, 2016 in Beijing, China. (VCG via Getty Images)

Climate change was not a hoax invented by the Chinese, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters at the United Nations climate change conference in Morocco this week.
Foreign Ministers are meeting in Marrakech this week to discuss the framework of last year’s Paris agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, but it is a meeting overshadowed by uncertainty about America’s support for the deal under a Trump administration.
In 2012 the then real estate mogul and reality TV star tweeted:

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At  the Marrakech conference, China rebuked that assessment.
“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Vice-Foreign Minister Liu said on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.
On the campaign trail, Mr Trump said he would tear up the Paris deal, stop funding international climate change programs, and bring new life to America’s coal and industries.
US Secretary of State John Kerry addressed concerns over Mr Trump head-on at the conference.
“While I can't stand here and speculate about what policies our president-elect will pursue, I will tell you this – In the time that I have spent in public life, one of the things I've learned is that some issues look a little bit different when you're actually in office compared to when you're on the campaign trail,” Secretary Kerry said.

Links

• Poor ranking for Australia in climate action index released at Morocco talks
• World leaders tackle climate change as Trump's shadow looms over Marrakech
• UN climate change meetings proceed as temperatures rise
• Will taxing our beef help prevent climate change?

Australia Lobbies For Adani Coal Mine At Climate Talks

Renew Economy - Giles Parkinson

Australia energy minister Josh Frydenberg has been “caught out” lobbying the US in favour of the controversial Carmichael coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin, earning it the first “fossil of the day” award at the Marrakech climate talks.
Frydenberg was heard talking to US energy secretary Ernest Moniz at the COP22 conference in Morocco, complaining about the support of US charities for communities and environmental activists opposing the construction of what would be the largest coal mine in Australia and one of the largest in the world.
The intervention came less than a week after Australia ratified the Paris climate treaty, which aims to cap global warming at “well below 2°C” and as low as 1.5°C, and hours after the International Energy Agency said this would require completely decarbonising the world’s electrify sector by 2040.
“Australia ratified the Paris Agreement last Friday, so lobbying for coal expansion at the United Nations climate negotiations is an ugly, ugly thing to be doing. Shape up, Australia,” said the Climate Action Network, a collection of environmental groups, in awarding the Fossil of the Day award.
Moniz is in the last few weeks of his tenure as energy secretary, given the election of Donald Trump as the new US president, with his administration to begin its tenure on January 20.
Trump has previously threaten to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty and scrap all of President Barack Obama’s clean energy initiatives. He has appointed a climate denier, Myron Ebell, to oversee the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency.
A spokesman for Frydenberg told confirmed to The Guardian that the minister had raised the issue with Moniz.
“Frydenberg noted the issue raised concerns in Australia and reiterated that Australia had a very effective environmental approvals process and that a large amount of conditions we’re attached to the Adani mine approval,” he said.
Meanwhile, the ACT climate change and sustainability minister, the Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury, who is also visiting Marrakech talking about his territory’s 100 per cent renewable energy target for 2020, has called on the Federal Government to heed the global calls for a moratorium on coal.
“While I have been proud to speak about the ACT’s ambitious leadership on renewable energy, one thing is undeniably clear – the lack of action by the Federal Government is letting down Australians, and the world,” he said in a statement.
“Australia’s obsession with coal is economically and environmentally irresponsible. We must end our reliance on dirty fossil fuels and stop investment in new coal mines.
“Like we have done in the ACT, it’s time for Australia to embrace the jobs and opportunities that the renewable energy economy offers Australia, and to plan a transition away from coal to renewables.
“We must be looking to the next wave of technologies to reduce our reliance on coal and gas including renewable energy generation, battery storage, electric vehicles and affordable public transport systems powered by renewable energy.

Links

• IEA says Australia’s coal plans don’t match climate realities
• Australia named and shamed for “unambitious, uninspired” climate policies
• Marrakech COP22: IEA issues a Paris reality check
• ABC still linking renewable energy to South Australia blackout
• China tells Trump – no climate conspiracy here

Malcolm Turnbull Must Address The Health Risks Of Climate Change

The Guardian - Michael Marmot

The public health impacts of climate change are playing out in Australia while politicians ignore the evidence. Two reports out this week should change that

‘Heatwaves have caused more deaths over the last century in Australia than any other natural event.’ Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Last week, the Paris climate agreement officially entered into force, with the landmark global climate deal ushering in a new era of international climate diplomacy and sustainable development. This week, delegates from over 190 nations are convening in Morocco, seeking to build on the spirit of cooperation born in Paris, and working to convert the broad aspirational commitments into action.
While building on the architecture of the Paris agreement, national governments should keep the public health implications in mind.
Climate change is now recognised in the medical field as a clear and present danger to public health. The World Health Organisation’s director general has called it “one of the greatest health risks of the 21st century,” and the 2015 Lancet Commission concluded that climate change poses “an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human health.”
In Australia, where I studied medicine, these risks are already all too clear. This week, the Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, is launching a new research collaboration dedicated to tracking these risks in Australia and around the world. The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, will check in annually on countries’ progress on climate change and calculate the direct health impacts of the transition to a low carbon future.
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), meanwhile, is also releasing three position statements on health and climate change. These statements are informed by some dire observations.
Over the past half-century, average temperatures across the continent have steadily increased, bringing more frequent heatwaves that are longer and hotter than any in recorded history. Exposure to high temperatures over a prolonged period brings heightened rates of ailments such as dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heatstroke, and worsens existing health conditions like heart and potentially even kidney disease. These heatwaves have caused more deaths over the last century in Australia than any other natural event. Tragically, children and the elderly are most vulnerable.
The public health impacts, however, go well beyond heat-related threats. Changes to precipitation patterns are causing both severe droughts and intense floods, which together have taken the lives of thousands. Over time, new rainfall norms and warmer temperatures are expected to alter the burden and distribution of infectious disease throughout Australia, as mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and the Ross River virus take hold.
Beyond these harms that warmer temperatures deliver, the combustion of climate warming fossil fuels creates other direct threats to public health. Air pollution from the burning of coal for electricity generation and from road transport presents a particularly worrying challenge, resulting in twice as many deaths as motor vehicle accidents (over 3,000 per year).
In urban areas, smog from tailpipes contains ground-level ozone, dangerous particulates, and other pollutants. Ozone irritates the lining of the lungs and exacerbates asthma, and is actually made more potent on hot, sunny days, which are anticipated to be more frequent as a result of climate change. By 2050, ozone-induced hospitalisations in Sydney are expected to double.
Despite all of these troubling statistics and predictions, Australia’s government shows little interest in setting strong climate goals and facilitating the transition away from coal. In fact, the Australian delegation arrived at the COP22 climate talks without having ratified the Paris agreement (although it has since been ratified), and with some of the weakest greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets among all the participating nations.
Australia’s stated goal is to reduce net GHG emissions 26% below 2005 levels by 2030, a calculation that includes land use change and reforestation on top of modest emissions reductions from the burning of fossil fuels. The Climate Institute, an Australian think tank, has reported that under these current targets, Australia’s per capita emissions in 2030 would be twice as high as the average for other developed countries.
Rather than explore ways to bring domestic policies in line with the international community, Australia’s politicians seem more concerned with protecting the coal industry and promising that the fossil fuel will be part of Australia’s energy mix for “many, many, many decades to come.”
By doing so, they are not only steering Australia to a hotter, more dangerous, and less healthy future, but also cheating Australians out of the positive co-benefits of transitioning away from coal and other fossil fuels.
If the Turnbull government needs hard evidence of the health benefits of climate action, they can consult the Lancet Countdown on Climate and Health, which will put real world economic costs on the policy choices. Between the Lancet Countdown and the RACP’s statements, it’s clear that physicians and public health professionals understand the climate-health nexus better than Australia’s politicians. Mr. Turnbull should act for the health and wellbeing of all Australians.

Links

• Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions nearly stable for third year in row
• Once the storm settles, the real picture emerges of government's energy goals
• Tony Abbott says 'moral panic' about climate change is 'over the top'
• Coal will be important 'for many, many decades to come', says Turnbull

Probing Worst-Case Environmental Outcomes Under Trump and the G.O.P.

New York Times - Andrew C. Revkin

Why are some Christian climate sceptics going green? Interview with Andrew Refkin

As the election results emerged last Wednesday (a “black elephant” more than a “black swan”), I focused on the prospect, however slim, of reasonableness on environmental and energy issues in a Trump White House.

Hidden behind the flow of fact-free tweets and edge-wooing stump statements, Trump’s campaign had posted reasonable ideas when the Science Debate organization asked questions on the role of science funding in fostering innovation (it’s great, unless it’s climate science, evidently) and the merits of a post-fossil energy system.

The “perhaps” qualifier made it clear that the campaign’s response on renewable energy didn’t come from the master of declarative superlatives himself:

“Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels.”

But it did imply that someone in Trump’s policy camp was thinking beyond pandering (onetime solar hawk James Woolsey, perhaps?). David Victor of the University of California, San Diego, has written on the prospect of limited damage.

But it’s important to be realistic and consider the darker possibilities (perhaps probabilities, if Trump’s early appointments are a barometer).

First read the “listicle from hell” of 11 steps Trump and a Republican Congress can pursue, assembled yesterday by David Roberts and Brad Plumer at Vox, with the points helpfully distilled in a tweeted image by Cris Robertson here:

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Here’s the introduction:

Unified Republican control of the federal government over the next two years augurs a sea change in US environmental policy like nothing since the late 1960s and ’70s, when America’s landmark environmental laws were first passed.

If Donald Trump and the GOP actually follow through on what they’ve promised, this time around will be a lurch in the opposite direction. Federal climate policy will all but disappear; participation in international environmental or climate treaties will end; pollution regulations will be reversed, frozen in place, or not enforced; clean energy research, development, and deployment assistance will decline; protections for sensitive areas and ecosystems will be lifted; federal leasing of fossil fuels will expand and accelerate; new Supreme Court appointees will crack down on EPA discretion.

Some of these moves will be easy for Trump and Republicans in Congress to pull off. Others will be harder: Senate Democrats and environmental groups in court will fight them tooth and nail, as they did during the Reagan and Bush years. But there’s no escaping the fact that the GOP is in a strong position to demolish and reshape the regime of environmental protection that has been built up over the past 50 years.

Jerry Taylor, a libertarian who favors a carbon tax. Credit Niskanen Center

Read the rest at Vox.com, but please return to consider some more thoughts on a Trump presidency offered by Jerry Taylor. Taylor is one of the most interesting voices for me in Washington on climate policy given his path to supporting a carbon tax and other steps after spending years at the free-market-focused Cato Institute challenging the need for substantial steps to blunt human-driven global warming. Taylor, now heading his own organization, the Niskanen Center, still seeks a limited-government approach but has enthusiastically made the conservative case for a carbon tax.

He sent the following note around this morning. Please click the links and read:

While much of Washington is still in shock over the Trumpocolypse, the Niskanen Center has wasted no time reorienting itself to new political realities. Yesterday on our blog, my colleagues David Bailey and David Bookbinder offered a close look at how far Republicans could go in the course of unwinding federal climate action. While the Paris agreement and the Clean Power Plan are almost certainty dead and gone, significant legal and political obstacles confront Republicans wishing to go further. The climate fight that’s likely coming will be pitched and bloody.

Today, I offered my own thoughts on the impact the elections have had on those of us who support carbon taxation in the GOP. While it’s not impossible to imagine scenarios where carbon taxation still goes forward in the 115th Congress, it’s obviously less likely now under a Trump administration. There are lessons to be learned from last week, however, that should inform our efforts in the future, and I discuss them on our blog today.

Many of you have contacted me since the election to ask about Myron Ebell, the head of the Trump transition team at EPA. I shared my thoughts about Myron (who I’ve known professionally for about 20 years) with reporter Danny Vinik in Politico yesterday. Danny writes an excellent profile for those interested in where environmental policy may be heading in the next four years.

But do not despair! Washington energy attorney Brian Potts makes the case yesterday in Forbes that I would make a great choice to run the EPA in the upcoming Trump administration. Don’t hold your breath.

Related | The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which runs one of the critical hubs for climate analysis, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has just published “guidance for the next U.S. presidential administration and Congress on the importance of better understanding and predicting weather, water, climate, and other aspects of the Earth system.”

I hope it’s read by the Trump team, not because this’ll convince Trump that the warming impact of greenhouse gases is a serious threat. With or without global warming, there’s a solid argument that improved understanding of planetary dynamics, particularly the climate system, is essential to sustaining human progress given how risks rise as populations expand, build, farm and concentrate in zones that are  implicitly vulnerable to hard knocks like floods, droughts, heat and severe storms.

Here’s part of the news release:

“[The] UCAR white paper emphasizes that focused investment of federal resources in the atmospheric, Earth, and related sciences will make significant contributions addressing important societal needs. These include protection of lives and property, expansion of new economic opportunities, enhancement of national security, and strengthening U.S. leadership in research and development.

“More than ever, federal support of research and education into the Earth system is critical to the nation,” said UCAR President Antonio J. Busalacchi. “We are on the verge of a new era of prediction, based on understanding how the entire Earth system works. This will have a direct, positive impact on lives and livelihoods.”

…The white paper proposes federal support for advanced computer models, new observing systems, and more powerful computing resources, as well as a strong science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education system. Its proposals include a National Academies’ decadal survey, involving representatives of the public and private sectors, which would develop priorities for weather research and forecasting.

Links

• Climate Change and U.S. Leadership Under President Trump
• My ProPublica Move: From Blogging and Teaching Back to Deep Digging on Climate
• Prospects for the Climate, and Environmentalism, Under President Trump
• An Anthropocene Journey
• 2016 Likely to Top 2015 as Hottest Year on Record, Scientists Say

Forty Years Of Measuring The World’s Cleanest Air Reveals Human Fingerprints On The Atmosphere

The Conversation - Sam Cleland | Melita Keywood | Paul Fraser | Paul Krummel

Cape Grim, on the northwest tip of Tasmania, is exposed to some of the cleanest air in the world. CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

In  2016, an isolated scientific outpost in northwest Tasmania made a historic finding. The Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station measured carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere exceeding 400 parts per million.
This wasn’t the first time the world has breached the symbolic climate change threshold – that honour was reached by the northern hemisphere in 2013 – but it was a first for the south.
Behind these recent findings is a history of Australia’s role in global scientific advancement. The Cape Grim station has now been running for 40 years and the resulting data set chronicles the major changes in our global atmosphere.

A national response
In 1798, Matthew Flinders’ encounter with Cape Grim confirmed to Europeans that Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land) was separated from the mainland of Australia.
Fast forward to the early 1970s and a small group of innovative scientists were hatching a plan to take advantage of Cape Grim’s isolation and unique geographical position. The site soon became one of the world’s most significant atmospheric measurement sites, meticulously measuring and recording some of the cleanest air that can be accessed on the planet.
There were two threads to the beginnings of Cape Grim. One was the young scientists at CSIRO, keen to pioneer an emerging field of science. The second was a call from the United Nations for global governments to work together to set up a network of monitoring stations. The Australian response was championed by Bill Priestley and Bill Gibbs, the respective senior climate figureheads at CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.
The scientific community decided that Cape Grim was the most appropriate site for a permanent monitoring station, thereby establishing in 1976 the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station.
The first set of instruments lived in an ex-NASA caravan. Today the station is managed by the Bureau of Meteorology and housed in a permanent building that features state-of-the-art infrastructure, including a tower fitted with important monitoring equipment. Many of the early pioneering scientists are still actively involved in this research.

The first set of air monitoring instruments lived in an ex-NASA caravan. CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology

The world’s cleanest air
The station, part of the World Meteorological Organisation’s Global Atmosphere Watch network, was sited at Cape Grim to take advantage of the “roaring forties” - the prevailing westerly winds that bring clean air from over the Southern Ocean to the station.
Air that arrives at the station from the southwest is classified as “baseline” air. Having had no recent contact with land, it represents the background atmosphere and is perhaps some of the cleanest in the world.
While we focus on this clean air, most of the instruments monitor continuously, regardless of wind direction, and can detect pollution from Melbourne and other parts of Tasmania in certain conditions.
The station measures all major and minor greenhouse gases; ozone-depleting chemicals; aerosols (including black carbon or soot); reactive gases including lower-atmosphere ozone, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds; radon (an indicator of changes to the land); solar radiation; the chemical composition of rainwater; mercury; persistent organic pollutants; and finally the weather.
The Cape Grim Air Archive, initiated by CSIRO in 1978 and soon adopted into the operations of the station, is now the world’s most important and unique collection of background atmospheric air samples, underpinning many research papers on global and Australian emissions of greenhouse and ozone depleting gases.

The Cape Grim station maintains an archive of air from the 1970s to today. CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

The human fingerprint
Cape Grim data are freely available and have been widely used in all five international climate change assessments (1990-2013), all ten international ozone depletion assessments (1985-2014), in four State of the Climate Reports 2010-2016 and in lower-atmosphere ozone assessments.
Measurements at Cape Grim have demonstrated the impact of human activity on the atmosphere. For example, CO₂ has increased from about 330 parts per million (ppm) in 1976 to more than 400 ppm today, an average increase of 1.9 ppm per year since 1976. Since 2010 the rate has been 2.3 ppm per year. The isotopic ratios of CO₂ measured at Cape Grim have changed in a way that is consistent with fossil fuels being the source of higher concentrations.

Cape Grim has documented the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

Cape Grim has also demonstrated the effectiveness of action to reduce human impacts. The decline in concentrations of ozone-depleting substances measured at Cape Grim demonstrates the progress of the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to phase out the use of these chemicals, and leading to the gradual recovery of the ozone hole.
Measurements at Cape Grim have contributed significantly to global understanding of marine aerosols, including some of the first evidence that microscopic marine plants (phytoplankton) are a source of gases that play a role in cloud formation. With 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by oceans, aerosols in the marine environment play an important role in the climate system.
Cape Grim data are also used by the Australian government to meet international obligations. For example, the station’s greenhouse gas data have independently verified parts of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which reports Australia’s annual emissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Persistent organic pollutants have been reported to the Stockholm Convention on these chemicals and Cape Grim mercury data will be reported to the Minimata Convention.
Data collected from the Cape Grim Station have been used in more than 700 research papers on climate change and atmospheric pollution. By working with universities Cape Grim is a training ground for the next generation of climate scientists.

CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology

Links

• How is atmospheric CO2 measured in the Southern Hemisphere?
• New CSIRO website shows steady rise of greenhouse gases
• February carbon dioxide levels average 400ppm for first time
• What are ozone depleting substances

Australia Ranked Among Worst Developed Countries For Climate Change Action

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Two reports place the country near the bottom of the league for emissions level, use of renewables and action to combat global warming

A banner from a march in favour of tackling climate change in Melbourne. In the climate change performance index, released at the UN climate talks in Marrakech, Australia was ranked fifth-worst for emissions and policies among developed countries. Photograph: Ratnayake/REX Shutterstock

Australia has been singled out again as a climate laggard, being ranked fifth-worst for emissions and policies among developed countries and among the six worst countries in the G20 when it comes to climate action.
In the climate change performance index, released overnight at the UN climate talks in Marrakech, Australia comes ahead of only Kazakhstan, South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
The 58 countries assessed by Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch are responsible for 90% of global energy-related carbon pollution. They are then ranked according to their emissions level, the trend in emissions, the deployment of renewable energy, the energy intensity of the economy and climate policies.
Australia is near the bottom of the countries, labelled as having “very poor performance”.
Australia’s hostile relationship between federal and state climate policies was noted in the report, which said: “While the former were rather unambitious and uninspired, the latter managed to some extent to take independent action.”
The finding came following comments from the prime minister and federal ministers, criticising state-based renewable energy and emissions targets.
Since previous rankings, Australia improved slightly with its emissions trend but dropped in energy efficiency.
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, said: “The government spruiks its climate credentials but Australia remains a laggard on cutting climate pollution.
“The world is watching as our pollution rises and governments support new mega-polluting coalmines.”
O’Shanassy said Australia must not proceed with Adani’s Carmichael coalmine.
Meanwhile, the federal minister for energy and the environment, Josh Frydenberg, used his time in Marrakech to lobby the US in favour of Adani’s Carmichael coalmine, complaining about US activists funding a campaign to stop the huge project from proceeding.
In a separate study from the London School of Economics, researchers examined the consistency of actions of G20 countries, compared with the goals of the Paris agreement.
It found Australia – as well as Argentina, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the US – were “falling behind with their national climate mitigation action”.
“These countries lack overall framework legislation or regulation on climate change, need to move from sectoral to economy-wide targets and extend the timeframe of their targets to 2030,” the report said.

Links

• Australia dubbed 'fossil of the day' after lobbying for coal mine at climate talks
• Australia says it will reduce methane emissions despite coal seam gas and LNG expansion
• Marrakech climate talks: US accepts petition calling for fossil fuel lobbyists to be excluded
• Global climate change action 'unstoppable' despite Trump
• Marrakech climate talks an emotional ride as reports show need to end coal power
• ‘There’s no plan B’: climate change scientists fear consequence of Trump victory
• Marrakech climate talks: giving the fossil fuel lobby a seat at the table
• What's in store at the Marrakech climate talks – and will Australia still back coal?

Sydney Homeowners Face Properties Being Reduced In Value Because Of Climate Change, Climate Risk Group Says

Fairfax - Lucy Cormack

Sydney's coastal homeowners face their property values being reduced, as the future risk of increasingly extreme weather events grows, a climate risk consultant says.
Dr Karl Mallon, director of science and systems for Sydney-based consultants Climate Risk, said Australia's quintessential problem is that "you can build a house which is insurable tomorrow, but is wholly unsuitable 30 years down the track".

What are east coast lows?
They bring wild storms that lash the east coast of Australia, but despite their destructive force we need them more than you may realise. Produced in association with UNSWTV.

The message follows the release by the independent Climate Council of its latest report, Super-charged storms in Australia, which argues that the nation is highly vulnerable to "storm surges associated with tropical cyclones and extra-tropical cyclones, including [more intense] east coast lows."
"The evidence for the link between climate change and extreme weather is already very strong for heatwaves and bushfire weather, and it is getting stronger for intense cyclones and heavy rainfall events," the report said.

After months of little rain, storm cells lashed the east coast of Australia, with rising waters inundating Sydney's northern Beaches. Photo: james Alcock

"Seven storms since 2010 in Australia have resulted in insured losses of more than $500 million each, and five of them resulted in over $1 billion in insured losses."
Dr Mallon said that many Australians do not realise that a change in a property's value does not occur when an extreme weather event takes place, but "when the market realises the event will occur and revalues the house...it's the homeowner which is the sitting duck in all this."
He pointed to a "disconnect," between banks, government planning and the insurance industry, which is leaving Australian homeowners vulnerable to "climate change foreclosure".
"There are potentially millions and millions of dollars of revaluation that has to happen in the property sector and it's not going to be pretty. We could end up with suburbs where there is a wholesale collapse in value," he said, highlighting "erosion, actions of the sea, landslip and ground contraction," as some of the main impacts which are still largely uninsurable.

Catastrophic failure of transmission towers in the wake of the South Australian storm. 

"It's the banks who probably need to lead the charge…to sit down with insurers and planners and say, 'Will you start providing insurance on this?'."
Storm damage, hail and flooding caused 70 per cent of all insurance losses in NSW between 1970 and 2013, a report by insurance giant IAG and consultancy firm SGS Economics and Planning showed last week. That report identified Hawkesbury as the most disaster-prone region of greater Sydney, ranking among the city's highest risk council areas for flood, storm and bushfire. It was among 10 council areas identified as having a "high" or "very high" risk of major flooding, including Camden, Fairfield, Rockdale and Woollahra.

At the start of next year, Climate Risk will launch an online valuation tool, in which users can type in an address and run an analysis on how climate change could impact on the property's value in future.
The system recalculates the value of a property at the end of a mortgage,  by analysing climate and coastal data; such as tide, tectonic and wave gauges.
"We are not building with climate change in mind....we need someone to start talking about the risks going forward. So we've been building these products to be able to do that."
This week the Insurance Council of Australia launched a national campaign, urging Australian home and business owners to prepare for a potentially severe disaster season.

A sewerage pipe is exposed in storms at South Narrabeen. Photo: Peter Braig

"An above-average cyclone season has been forecast by the weather bureau, while the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre predicts heightened risk across much of southern Australia, especially in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia," said ICA chief executive officer Rob Whelan.
Campbell Fuller, the Insurance Council's general manager of communications, said around "95 per cent of household insurance policies purchased now include cover for flooding but consumers can also buy policies where flood cover is optional, or which exclude flood damage.
For coastal dwellers, he said there was a small number of available policies that covered damage caused by actions of the sea.
"Australian governments could do more to prepare the community and reduce the impacts through mitigation, a process sometimes held back by a lack of understanding of the risks [and] budgetary pressures," he said, adding that governments at every level needed to lift their level of mitigation spending.
"This process is accelerating, as government's understanding of the impact of natural disasters grows, although insurers continue to deal with the consequences of historical decisions."
In March, the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience & Safer Communities revealed that the total cost of natural disasters in Australia in 2015 exceeded $9 billion, or 0.6 per cent of GDP, a figure expected to double by 2030 and reach an average of $33 billion by 2050.

Links

• Did Climate Change Play A Part In The Sydney Storm?
• Climate change impacts in New South Wales
• Adapting for Climate Change - A Long Term Strategy for the City of Sydney
• Energy management & climate change