08/09/2019

‘Dead Things Everywhere’: Is Australia Facing The Summer From Hell?

The Guardian - 

The outlook is grim, with low water storage levels and extreme temperatures forecast
Just a week into September, authorities issued total fire bans in Queensland and parts of New South Wales, with extreme, and potentially catastrophic, conditions expected in some areas. Photograph: Darren Pateman/AAP
Out in the Macquarie Marshes, about 1ookm north of Warren in the central west of New South Wales, large inland wetlands have become a place for the dead and dying.
“We went out last night and there was a little patch of water with dead and dying European carp,” Richard Kingsford, the director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of NSW, says. “There’s dead and dying things everywhere. Kangaroos dying and even foxes are dying.
“We were trying to trap for turtles but there doesn’t seem to be enough water for turtles. I’m not sure where they’ve gone to.”
There are large parts of the Macquarie River that have dried up completely as the state remains in the grip of one of the most severe droughts on record.
Valley water storages in the Macquarie are sitting at 11%. In the Namoi, in north-west NSW where water shortages have been acute, they’re at 1.5%. The Border Rivers, in the region between the NSW and Queensland border, are at 6%. In Sydney, dam storages have dropped below 50% for the first time in more than a decade.
A nearly dried up dam in the drought-stricken NSW and Queensland border town of Mungindi. Photograph: Danny Casey/AAP
It’s one part of the climate crisis playing out across much of the country. A different year, similar story. Most places are drier than usual, warmer than usual.

Repeat episode?
The summer of 2018 brought record-breaking heat for Australia. It’s too early to say whether this summer will bring such extremes.
But early outlooks for spring and December are again pointing to above average temperatures. And with the exception of parts of Western Australia and the west of Tasmania, the outlook is for below average rainfall.
“For most of Australia it’s this consistent dry story for the remainder of the year,” Jonathan Pollock, a climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, says. “It’s very likely it’s going to be hotter than usual and it’s very likely it’s going to be drier than usual.”
For the first eight months of the year, the country’s mean temperature was the second warmest on record. Mean maximums were the warmest on record over the same period and mean minimums the equal-sixth warmest.
Rainfall through winter was below to very much below average for most of the country, including New South Wales, southern and western Queensland, parts of northern and eastern Victoria, the east coast of Tasmania, the majority of South Australia and the Northern Territory, and most of the eastern half of Western Australia, and some coastal areas in the west of that state.
Rainfall through winter was below to very much below average for most of the country, including New South Wales. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images
In drought-hit parts of eastern and southern Australia, rainfall levels for the season were in the lowest 10% of historical records.
Pollock says it would take something like a La Niña, which is associated with heavier rainfall, “to bring the turnaround that we need”.The El Niño-Southern Oscillation is currently neutral and is expected to remain so until the end of 2019 and into early 2020.
The prolonged dry and warm conditions have meant authorities have already issued warnings for the spring and into summer.
Fire services have told communities to be ready for a challenging bushfire season and to prepare their homes, properties and evacuation plans early.
In drought-hit parts of eastern and southern Australia, rainfall levels for the season were in the lowest 10% of historical records.
The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre published its seasonal outlook last week, which warned parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and parts of Western Australia and South Australia, face an above normal potential fire threat.
On Friday, just a week into September, authorities issued total fire bans in Queensland and parts of New South Wales, with extreme, and potentially catastrophic, conditions expected in some areas.
Richard Thornton, the chief executive of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, said winter had brought some significant fires to the north of the country and recent weeks had seen a spate of fires in south-east Queensland and NSW.
He said the ongoing drought was driving much of the risk this season and there was concern for forested areas that were already dry heading into the warmer months.
Thornton said that included a swathe beginning south of Rockhampton in Queensland and running all the way down the east coast into NSW and east Gippsland in Victoria.
“That takes in the major populated areas in south-east Queensland and around Sydney and the ACT – so some pretty significant population centres,” he said.
He said the conditions in eastern Tasmania, South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island, south-western WA and parts of the Nullarbor, where rainfall has regenerated grasslands, also looked challenging.
A cow collapses from hunger on a farm outside Coonabarabran. Photograph: Photo: Brook Mitchell
In a couple of months, authorities will revisit the outlook to see if anything has changed heading into January and February 2020.
Along river systems in New South Wales, the outlook is similarly grim.
In the summer of 2018, low river flows caused by a combination of drought and over-extraction of water, coupled with extreme temperatures, caused an environmental catastrophe that killed thousands of fish.
Fisheries managers say they anticipate more fish are likely to perish this season if the drought continues.
A spokeswoman for the NSW Department of Primary Industries said it was “an evolving situation” and aquatic habitats were being closely monitored.
“Significant concerns are held for the Lower Darling, Namoi, Macquarie and Lachlan catchments in the early part of the summer as well as the Barwon-Darling, Border Rivers and Gwydir should current conditions persist,” she said.
Up in Queensland, Angus Emmott, an ecologist and farmer, runs a cattle station about 130km south-east of Longreach.
Angus Emmott says Farmers for Climate Action will be travelling to Canberra to call for a national strategy on climate and agriculture. Photograph: Change.org
The property primarily receives its rain in summer but, until last year, it had what he calls “eight failed summer rains in a row”.
That broke last summer, as a result of “two big floods”.
“We’re having a really good season unlike much of the country to the east of us,” Emmott says. “Up above us, near Julia Creek, they’ve had so much rain it killed three-quarters of a million head of cattle and washed all the fences and pastures away when Townsville got flooded as well”.
Emmott says for his farm it was a case of “luck”. The rains that had helped his property last year had caused catastrophe further north. And outside of the floodplains, places were still in drought.
“One thing that’s really affected agriculture in this part of the country is climate change,” he says. “That brings hotter than normal temperatures, drier than usual weather and higher minimums.
“Then what is happening is when we get a rainfall event there’s more of a chance of them being massive, like the one at Julia Creek, which created havoc.”
Emmott is on the board of the advocacy group Farmers for Climate Action. In a bit more than a week, he says farmers will be travelling to Canberra to call for a national strategy on climate and agriculture.
“I think things can change and they actually are but they would change so much quicker if we had a government that took some leadership,” he says. “If we didn’t have to drag them kicking and screaming, we’d get places a lot quicker. This applies to both sides of politics. They talk the talk and then do nothing.”

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Rare Weather Event Over Antarctica Driving Australia's Hot, Dry Outlook

ABC Weather - Ben Deacon


Sudden stratospheric warming sees temperatures high above Antarctica increase by more than 40 degrees Celsius.
Supplied: National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)

Key points
  • Sudden stratospheric warming is much more common in the northern hemisphere
  • Meteorologists are warning it will result in higher temperatures and a decrease in rainfall
  • It is not believed to be caused by global warming but is a 'natural phenomenon'
A rare event that took place 30 kilometres above the South Pole last week is expected to impact upon Australia's rainfall outlook.
The upper atmosphere above Antarctica warmed by as much as 40 degrees Celsius in the course of a few days — and it is continuing to warm.
This rare phenomenon, known as sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), could deepen one of the worst droughts in Australian history.
The Bureau of Meteorology's Harry Hendon warned of dry weather ahead.
"We will typically see conditions across most of Australia, but primarily concentrated in the eastern part of Australia, become warmer and drier through spring and into early summer," Dr Hendon said.
SSW is rare in the southern hemisphere with only one major event ever identified, in 2002 — one of Australia's driest years on record.
Dr Hendon said similar, less intense stratospheric warmings had been linked to other dry years in Australia.
"In the past 30 years we probably have had five or six occurrences that didn't quite qualify as a sudden stratospheric warming," he said.
"We looked at what happened over that period and we're pretty confident that we will see an increase in temperatures and a decrease in rainfall in central-eastern Australia in the following months."
Not climate change but 'natural phenomenon'
SSW is not thought to be caused by global warming.
"We view SSW as a natural, internally-generated phenomena," Dr Hendon said.
"It just happens to be very rare in the southern hemisphere."
It is much more common in the northern hemisphere where SSWs are associated with cold weather.
Last February, the 'beast from the east' storm that covered much of Europe in snow was triggered by an SSW over the North Pole.

Antarctic temperatures affect Australia
Sudden stratospheric warming over Antarctica causes westerly winds south of Australia to track further north, a pattern meteorologists refer to as a 'negative SAM'.
In spring and summer, this negative SAM pattern brings warmer, drier air into southern Queensland and New South Wales.
"Unfortunately, these are areas already in drought," said a lead author of the BOM's spring climate outlook, Andrew Watkins.
Dr Watkins said cooler than normal water in the Indian Ocean, a phenomenon meteorologists call a 'positive IOD', has led to a lack of moisture drifting over the continent.
"This has certainly been a big factor in why winter has been so dry in virtually all of Australia," he said.
"On top of that, we have the likelihood of prolonged periods of negative SAM, which also brings drier conditions to New South Wales and southern Queensland. So it's a bit of a double whammy in those locations."
Dr Watkins said the impact of the SSW may be felt in Australia through to the end of the year.
"These sudden stratospheric warming events and the patterns that we see from them can go from September [to] October, sometimes persisting through to January," he said.
Dr Hendon said he was gratified the Bureau of Meteorology's computer models were able to predict the event.
"In 2002 we didn't even know about it until after it happened, and we didn't know if we would ever be able to predict it," he said.
"It's exciting for us now that we have predictive capability that we didn't have in 2002."

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07/09/2019

Nearly Half Of Australia's Native Plants Are Under Threat From Climate Change

SBS - Sandra Fulloon

Scientists are battling to save Australia's native species, with a nationwide study finding almost half are threatened by rising temperatures and erratic rainfall.



Earlier this year, a nationwide study of 2.5 million Australian herbaria specimens found 47 per cent of the country’s vegetation is potentially at risk from rising temperatures by 2070.
As Australia marks Threatened Species Day on Saturday, chief botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Dr Brett Summerell, says he is worried about the future of Australia’s biodiversity.
“Australia is a biodiversity hotspot since 85 per cent of our flora is endemic, so it occurs naturally nowhere else around the world. So if we lose a species here, it’s gone forever,” Dr Summerell said.
“Rising temperatures and altered rainfall patterns are impacting our flora, and that is leading to increased outbreaks of disease and pest invasions.”
Dead gum trees and casuarinas at Middle Head, affected by Phytophthera mould which thrives in warmer weather. SBS

Some plant die-back on Sydney's Middle Head is caused by phytophthora, which thrives in warmer conditions. 
Phytophthora is a soil-borne water mould that causes enormous economic losses to crops and natural ecosystems worldwide.
“There is a pattern of plant die-back across the country, and it’s caused by things like phytophthora and other pests and pathogens,” he said.
“And it’s becoming very serious everywhere we look.”
Dr Brett Summerell with spring flowering wattle on Sydney's Middle Head. SBS

Dr Summerell holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and has been published extensively on plant pathogens. He said it's vital the country's species are protected.
“The smell of a gum leaf or a banksia or waratah flowering, these are strong aspects of our culture, so it’s up to us to preserve and save our species,” he said.

Rapid transition
In the nationwide study 'Safety margins and adaptive capacity of vegetation to climate change', published in Nature June, Dr Rachael Gallagher from Sydney's Macquarie University found many species are already struggling in warmer temperatures.
“Our study identified 151 species that are already at their upper limit for warming, and further rises present a considerable challenge for those species,” she said.
Dr Rachael Gallagher says up to half of Australia's native plant species at at risk from rising temperatures. SBS

“This is the first time we’ve had a contintental-scale analysis like this of Australia’s vegetation, and its risks under climate change.”
Climate modeling predicts a rise of between two and four degrees in Australia’s mean annual temperature over the next 50 years, she said.
“The rate of climate change is so much faster than we have experienced in the past, it’s a very rapid transition to a very warm environment.”
“As a result of changing climate we run the risk of losing species that we don’t even know exist at this time,” she added.

Species flowering earlier
Scientists studying flowering patterns found many species are also flowering earlier when compared with historic specimens.
Firefighters are also preparing for severe fires in spring, after one of the warmest and driest winters on record. Catastrophic fire conditions are already forecast for parts of Queensland.
Banksia in flower. It's one of Australia's native species adapted to fire. SBS





“When bushfires occur out of ordinary range, only some plants survive,” Dr Summerell said.
If fires are early or late, plants are thrown out of cycle for flowering and setting seed, he said.
Plants growing tropical areas and alpine regions are particularly susceptible to climate change.
“Feldmark grass Rytidosperma pumilum is extremely vulnerable, as it only grows in a three square kilometre area in the high alpine section of Kosciuszko National Park,” Dr Summerell said.
Feldmark grass is Australia's smallest grass and grows only in a small area in the NSW alpine area. SBS
“We expect is that once temperatures rise, woodland will overtake this area and feldmark grass will become critically endangered and move towards extinction.”“Retaining a rich diversity of plants is not only important for the environment. We also rely on plants for food, water, medicine and the air we breathe.”

Breeding resilient species
At the National Herbarium of NSW, scientists are photographing more than 1.4 million specimens, to create an online data bank.
“It’s an amazingly powerful resource,” Dr Summerell said.
Information about plant specimens collected over 250 years will be analysed, to reveal flowering patterns and also examine cellular structures.
Dr Brett Summerell and Dr Rachael Gallagher watch plants being digitised, at the National Herbarium of NSW. SBS





Scientists are also sampling DNA to breed more resilient species, used to restore mine sites or degraded farmland. Threatened species may also be migrated to cooler sites.
Some of the oldest surviving samples were collected from Botany Bay by early explorer and naturalist Joseph Banks on James Cook’s first voyage to Australia on HMS Endeavour in 1770.
The collection of plants are lucky to have survived. Banks retrieved his collection from the sea after the Endeavour ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, Dr Summerell explained. Samples were dried out on the sails of the ship, and taken to Britain. The specimens were later returned to Australia.
A specimen collected by botanist Joseph Banks, from Botany Bay in 1770. Supplied





The digitising work is expected to continue until 2021.
Dr Summerell said it will form a valuable and accessible resource for scientists studying the impacts of rising temperatures on plants worldwide.
Scientists say preserving species diversity is crucial for healthy bush and cultivated land. Farms need paddock trees and areas of native vegetation as habitat for native birds and mammals.
"And there are other benefits of keeping trees: they lower the water table and provide shade for stock. So keeping a mix of flora can have important flow-on benefits for species protection and crop or grazing land,” she said.
Scientists at the National Herbarium of NSW are battling to save threatened plant species. SBS





People can report die-back to The Dead Tree Detective, a project at Western Sydney University.
Nurseries advise people to plant hardy, drought-tolerant species, with water restrictions active in some states.
"More people are asking for native plants so we're selling a lot of grass trees, grevilleas, and beautiful flowering gums," Jack Thorburn from Sydney nursery Honeysuckle Garden said.
"We also advise people to treat the soil with a wetting agent and mulch often."
Dr Gallagher called urgent action to protect Australian flora, in particular, to protecting endemic plant species that occur nowhere else in the world, she said.

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This Is No Time For Hunches – We Need Evidence And Expertise In Science

The Guardian - 

Nobody argues that science is perfect, but it has been an essential part of making us what we are 
‘The challenge is to use the evidence to develop policy that will sustain the best parts of the Great Barrier Reef while giving any “green shoots” a chance to survive, even in the face of global warming.’ Photograph:  David Gray/Reuters
Ian Chubb
Ian Chubb is the former Australian chief scientist. He is chair of the Reef Water Quality Independent Science Panel
There will always be people who call for additional review or scrutiny of science when the results of a rigorous process don’t yield the outcomes they want.
Effectively they want incontrovertible evidence, and anything less is unacceptable to them.
Incontrovertible evidence is rare in science, so it is easy to pick some cherry and use it to seed controversy and delay action.
History shows how effective the strategy has been. It also shows why the notion of the precautionary principle is so important. The principle requires that precautionary measures should be taken if the risk or threats of harm to (say) the environment are significant. It can mean taking action in the face of uncertainty. But when the available evidence is developed through a rigorous scientific process (and especially when it draws on multiple lines of evidence), suitable precautionary actions can be introduced with confidence.
Take the 2017 scientific consensus statement on “Land use impacts on Great Barrier Reef water quality and ecosystem condition” to illustrate the point. The consensus statement is a comprehensive analysis of the science underpinning the processes and management actions designed to improve water quality and their outcomes. It follows a statement released in 2013 which in turn followed one from 2008.
To arrive at the most recent scientific consensus statement, some 1,600 relevant peer-reviewed papers and reports, published over the past few decades, were identified. Each had been circulating and available to the scientific community and other interested readers for more than 30 years. They were produced by some hundreds of authors from diverse institutions in Australia and overseas. They had been published in multiple outlets. They were subject to the usual intense scrutiny that follows publication.
The point of the consensus statement was to determine whether there was evidence converging on any particular point. The papers and reports were therefore picked apart and the results analysed by about 50 authors with internationally recognised expertise in Great Barrier Reef and coastal science, particularly water quality science and management.
For three of the chapters in particular, the authors drew on additional experts; and all chapters were seen by external reviewers. The whole process was carried out under the watchful scrutiny of the Reef Water Quality Independent Science Panel.
The final output is a multidisciplinary analysis and covers the condition of coastal and marine ecosystems, sources of pollutants, risk, catchment scale management priorities, governance, monitoring and modelling aspects, and gaps in knowledge to be addressed.
And there was a convergence. There is a consensus:
Key Great Barrier Reef ecosystems continue to be in poor condition. This is largely due to the collective impact of land run-off associated with past and ongoing catchment development, coastal development activities, extreme weather events and climate change impacts such as the 2016 and 2017 coral bleaching events.Current initiatives will not meet the water quality targets. To accelerate the change in on-ground management, improvements to governance, program design, delivery and evaluation systems are urgently needed. This will require greater incorporation of social and economic factors, better targeting and prioritisation, exploration of alternative management options and increased support and resources.
Two recently published reports add further weight to the evidence: The Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan Report Card 2017 and 2018 and the Outlook Report produced by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority both point in the same direction – the reef ecosystem overall is deteriorating. There are encouraging patches showing signs of regeneration; and some of the Great Barrier Reef is in excellent condition.
The challenge is to use the evidence to develop policy that will sustain the best parts of the Great Barrier Reef while giving any “green shoots” a chance to survive, even in the face of global warming.
The balance of evidence is important. The scientific consensus statement (2017) involves the work of some hundreds of independent scientists.
There is a small handful of scientists who have argued that the overwhelming majority are wrong, notwithstanding that the most prominent concedes that he is “not the authority on the issue”.
If there is evidence that leads to an alternative conclusion, it should be put into the public domain and be subjected to the same scrutiny as the work critiqued in the consensus statement. There has been plenty of time for the work to be done. This is no time for hunches; it is time for evidence.
When scientists seek to understand the world they make predictions and then test them. And they publish their results through appropriate channels.
Nobody argues that science is perfect. Mistakes can be made and sometimes are. The evidence provided by science at any point in time, however, is the accumulated knowledge that survives after rigorous challenge, scrutiny and testing.
We can be confident that decisions made on the basis of evidence derived from the processes of science will continue to provide benefits across society. It has done so for decades notwithstanding well documented diversionary tactics.
As a nation, science has been an essential part of making us what we are. There is no reason to stop now.

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Could Rooftop Gardens Save Our Cities From Climate Change?

ABC News - Shelley Lloyd

A 'sustainable shopping centre' planned for Melbourne includes a 2,000sqm urban farm on the rooftop. (Supplied: Frasers Property)
Key points:
  • Rooftop gardens are considered a storey of a building, so it is not financially viable to have one as a garden instead of sellable space
  • Research shows rooftop gardens promote physical activity and psychological wellbeing and have a positive impact on air pollution, noise levels and temperature regulation
  • Town planners want the Brisbane City Council to legislate to enforce rooftop gardens in all new apartments
Rooftop gardens could help cool our cities amid climate change, but archaic planning laws are holding back a green revolution.Australian cities are heating up, with an alarming report this year finding temperature increases from climate change and urban growth will make Brisbane "a difficult place" to live by 2050.
Scientists blame what is called the urban heat island effect, which means cities are hotter than nearby rural areas due to development.
But it is not too late to turn it around, and plants could be the solution.
Green rooftops could help to take the heat out of the city, but Brisbane's property developers and planners said local laws were holding them back.
Cities like Singapore and New York have long embraced sky gardens and while Brisbane is late to the garden party, there are dozens of developments in the pipeline that would use clever ways to provide greenspace, when room on the ground is at a premium.
In September 2018, then-Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk announced the Council would amend the Brisbane City Plan to formalise the Council's support for rooftop gardens and green spaces, but 12 months on, that had not happened.
Currently a rooftop garden is considered a storey of the building, so if a developer has planning permission for a certain number of storeys, it is not financially viable to have one as a garden instead of sellable space.

Developers hamstrung by poor planning laws
Brisbane town planner Mia Hickey said the majority of large-scale inner-city apartment developments in Brisbane wanted to incorporate rooftop spaces, but were hamstrung by the poor planning laws.
"There are definitely some developers who are shying away from adding rooftop gardens for this reason," she said.
"It's not a good look when they [council] said they were going to do this [change planning laws] and it hasn't been done."
Rooftop yoga is held on the Lucent at Newstead. (Supplied: Cavcorp)
Ms Hickey said research showed rooftop gardens promoted physical activity, psychological wellbeing, and had a positive impact on air pollution, noise levels and temperature regulation.
"It's no longer just OK to put a half-shaded BBQ area up there with a little bit of grass," she said.
"We're now starting to see developments that incorporate resort-style amenities that are winning awards."
The rooftop pool and gardens at the Lucent development at Newstead. (Supplied: Cavcorp)
Newstead rooftop garden a 'sky retreat'
Lucent, a 17-storey residential tower at trendy Newstead in inner-city Brisbane, is one of those, winning local, state and national design awards.
The tower, completed in November 2017, included a 1,600 square metre rooftop area with expansive views over Brisbane.
The luxury development by Cavcorp described its rooftop garden as a "sky retreat" complete with "lifestyle-enhancing amenities".
It claims to have Australia's longest infinity pool, along with a detox sauna and spa, yoga lawn, Zen gardens and even a golf green on the rooftop.
With more families abandoning the suburbs in favour of inner-city living, Ms Hickey said even those on more restricted budgets were demanding rooftop garden space.
Proposed Maison development at inner-city New Farm in Brisbane. (Supplied: Frank Developments)
Consumers looking for the 'up-yard'
"It's just as important as the local school catchment," Ms Hickey said.
"It's no longer about the size of the backyard, but about the size and amenities of the rooftop, or as I like to call it — 'the up-yard'."
There are numerous inner-city apartment proposals with ambitious rooftop gardens on the drawing boards.
Cbus Property is building a 47-storey apartment block at 443 Queen Street in Brisbane's CBD.
Claiming to be Australia's first "subtropical-designed" building, construction is underway on the riverside development.
The building will have a "breathable facade" with gardens on every floor as well as on the rooftop, aiming to reduce energy consumption by up to 60 per cent.
At New Farm in Brisbane, the Maison project by Frank Developments will have cascading gardens on every floor of the proposed five-storey development.
The development, yet to receive Brisbane City Council (BCC) approval, claimed it would be one of the most heavily landscaped buildings in the city, with more than 86 per cent of the site to be planted, when the current council requirement was just 10 per cent.
Further afield, a Victorian property developer has plans for a "sustainable shopping centre" at Burwood in suburban Melbourne.
Frasers Property group is building a 2,000 square-metre urban farm on the shopping centre's rooftop, which it said is a first for Australia.
Artist's impression of inside of planned 'sustainable shopping centre' at Burwood in Melbourne. (Supplied: Frasers Property )

Failure to move quickly hampering rooftop landscaping
The Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) agreed the BCC's failure to move quickly is hampering rooftop landscaping in Queensland.
UDIA Qld CEO Kirsty Chessher-Brown said currently there was "really no incentive for our members to be able to do this — it's actually disincentivised".
"The current situation is that our members can provide communal space on rooftops, but the minute that any roof structure is added to that rooftop space, it's then considered to be an additional storey to the building.
"That then impacts on our members' ability to comply with acceptable rules for building heights.
"If our [UDIA] members do put a structure on the roof, which is incredibly important for our climate, we see our members lose a complete storey, which could obviously be habitable space."
She said these spaces provided "really critical opportunities for landscaping".
"People can provide community or productive gardens and the real lure is being able to reduce some of the heat-island affect, traditionally associated with built-up environments," she said.
Ms Chessher-Brown said there was also a need for further incentives for developers.
"The next step is to replicate other programs in place across the world including Singapore, where there's actually a program to encourage developers to consider greater landscaping and use of planting on rooftop spaces," she said.
An artist's impression of a 47-storey Cbus Property apartment development at 443 Queen Street. (Supplied: Binyan Studios)
Legislation needed for developers to do rooftop gardens
In 2009, Singapore introduced its Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises (LUSH) Program, which encouraged developers to provide green roofs in all new developments and gave financial incentives for those that went beyond the minimum requirements.
The Property Council of Australia (PCA) is more forgiving of the council for the delay.
Acting Queensland deputy executive director Nathan Percy said the PCA supported the action contained in the BCC Brisbane Future Blueprint to make it easier for new developments to include rooftop gardens.
"We are working with Brisbane City Council on the implementation of this action, but it is important to remember that planning amendments do take time," he said.
"As Brisbane grows, we need to ensure that we continue to deliver spaces that allow people to enjoy our subtropical climate and rooftop gardens are one way that we can achieve this."
In a statement, BCCs planning chairman, Matthew Bourke, acknowledged there was a need for rooftop gardens but admitted it would take until the end of the year to make changes.
"Brisbane is a great place to live, work and relax, and we are increasingly seeing residents and visitors enjoying the city's vistas and subtropical weather from the rooftops of inner-city dwellings," he said.
"Increasing green spaces means a healthier and more sustainable city and Brisbane City Council has proposed an amendment to make it easier to include rooftop gardens for new developments as part of its review of City Plan.
"Investigations, research and drafting of the amendment package is underway and Council plans to be able to send it to the State Government for review soon, before opening up the proposed amendment for public consultation in late 2019."
The view from the rooftop garden of the Valencia Residences at Kangaroo Point. (Supplied: Aria Property Group)
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Brenda The Civil Disobedience Penguin Asks: What Will You Give Up To Save The Planet?

The Guardian - First Dog On The Moon

There is a lot of work to do and you soft flipperless humans
are going to have to ask yourselves some difficult questions
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06/09/2019

Nice Try Mr Taylor, But Australia’s Gas Exports Don’t Help Solve Climate Change

The Conversation - 

Energy Minister Angus Taylor has sought to downplay quarterly figures showing Australia’s emissions are still rising, attributing the result to the production of gas for export. AAP
The latest report card on Australia’s greenhouse gas production is the same old news: emissions are up again. We’ve heard it before, but the news should never stop being confronting.
It’s 2019. The first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which outlined the serious consequences of unmitigated climate change, was released the better part of 30 years ago. But Australia is still going backwards.
Emissions from one of the sunniest and windiest countries on the planet, blessed with every possible advantage when it comes to emissions reduction potential, are still rising. How do you justify that?
Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor. AAP
Energy and Emission Reduction Minister Angus Taylor tried to justify it by blaming gas. He said if you ignore the greenhouse gases released when producing gas for export, Australia is doing well because emissions in the March quarter fell by 0.3%.It’s a bit like suggesting that if you ignore the cancer, smoking is completely fine. It’s untrue, and ignores the bigger part of the problem.

How does producing gas for export release fossil fuel emissions?
A mammoth share of the coal and gas that Australia produces goes to the international market.
The combustion of these fuels is not counted in Australia’s ledger, though. This is because the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change counts emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in the country where they are burned.
A protest sign at the site of a proposed liquid natural gas plant at James Price Point in Broome. AAP
But climate change is unconcerned with our accounting rules. And Australia is the fifth largest contributor to climate change in terms of fossil fuels extracted.
But the extraction process itself also releases fossil fuels in Australia’s backyard, both through the energy used in the extraction and through leaks. These emissions are included on Australia’s ledger.
Gas is principally made up of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30-80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. When it leaks, it has an outsized impact on the climate - and these emissions are growing fast.

Putting our gas emissions in perspective
It is disingenuous to use the production of gas exports to explain away Australia’s poor performance on emissions reduction.
In the 2018 financial year, around one in seven tonnes of greenhouse gas emitted from Australia was released in the process of making even more greenhouse gas, from both gas and coal extraction.
That means that six in every seven tonnes of greenhouse gas Australia emits can largely be attributed to the the total absence of a national climate policy.
Author supplied. Data source: DoEE, Australia's Emissions Projections 2018
Author supplied. Data source: DoEE, Australia's Emissions Projections 2018

This policy failure has big implications. Article 4.1 of the Paris Agreement says the world must reach net-zero emissions over the entire period from 2050 to 2100. (And the IPCC says emissions must come down even faster than that if planetary warming is to stay below the critical 1.5℃ threshold).
Even if, disregarding export gas production, Australia cut emissions by 0.3% a year, at that rate net-zero emissions won’t be reached for another 333 years.
So while fossil fuel extraction is making things worse, our emissions elsewhere are hardly able to reach the net zero goal in the Paris agreement.

 Gas is not the silver bullet for any other nation
The minister and his department also made much of the idea that our gas is reducing emissions overseas. The quarterly report even contained a “special topic” talking up the benefits of Australia’s gas exports.
The logic is that by exporting gas, which is allegedly cleaner than coal, we are replacing a high emitting source with a relatively low emitting source. That logic does not hold and is not scientifically robust.
First, and most obviously, Australia exports massive amounts of coal as well as gas. We are responsible for one-fifth of the world’s thermal coal exports and more than one-half of the world’s metallurgical coal exports. It is talking out both sides of your mouth to suggest that we are reducing worldwide emissions because we are responsible for almost a quarter of the world’s exported gas, while we simultaneously export a massive amount of coal.
Origin Energy’s Australia Pacific liquefied natural gas facility at Curtis Island in north Queensland. AAP
Second, the department and Mr Taylor relied heavily on a study by the CSIRO’s Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (GISERA) to talk up the relative benefits of our gas exports. That study, a life-cycle assessment of the emissions from Curtis Island’s liquified natural gas processing facilities, expressly avoided testing the assumption that our gas is in fact replacing coal overseas.
We may not know the whole story, but we do know it is not true in one of the largest purchasers of Australian gas, Japan. Since the Fukushima accident in 2011 took much of Japan’s zero-emissions nuclear energy out of the mix, it has been replaced by Australian gas, which is far worse for the climate.
Third, even if our gas is substituting coal, the benefits are very small. The same GISERA study indicated that “climate benefits of natural gas replacing coal are lost where fugitive emissions [leaking gas] … are greater than 3%”.
Readers might remember this apparent example of fugitive emissions in Australia. The video shows former New South Wales Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham setting fire to the Condamine River in 2016.


Former NSW MP Jeremy Buckingham sets the Condamine River on fire.

It burned because of methane bubbling up through it, purportedly from nearby unconventional gas extraction. These emissions, the result of leaks through natural fractures in the Earth, are difficult to predict and model. They are not accurately measured in Australia, and may make gas far worse for the climate than even coal.
Even if the results of all this uncertainty come out in favour of gas, limiting global warming requires that we urgently stop burning both coal and gas. While there are substantial proven reserves around the world, much of this will have to remain unburned if we hope to avoid the worst of climate change.
The evidence of climate change is increasingly clear, yet Australia’s emissions continue to increase. Our political leaders are spinning the data and failing to act, putting our children’s future, our economy and the natural environment at risk.

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