05/11/2019

(US) Naomi Oreskes: ‘Discrediting Science Is A Political Strategy’

The Guardian - Zoë Corbyn

The Harvard professor on science and scepticism – and why climate deniers have run out of excuses
Naomi Oreskes: ‘It is deeply problematic if the leadership of the US government is rejecting science.’ Photograph: Phil Penman
Why Trust Science?
Naomi Oreskes
Princeton University Press
In her new book Why Trust Science? Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, argues that if more people heard scientists talk personally about their values, it would help turn back the creeping tide of anti-science sentiment. The former geologist recently gave evidence both to a US House of Representatives subcommittee hearing, “Examining the Oil Industry’s Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change”, and a Senate Democrats special committee hearing looking at “Dark Money and Barriers to Climate Action”.

Your previous book, Merchants of Doubt, chronicled tactics used by professional climate deniers. What inspired this one?
During public lectures I would explain there was a scientific consensus on climate change and the contrarians were either outliers within the scientific community or paid shills of the fossil fuel industry. People would say: “Well that’s fine, but why should we trust the science?” I thought that was a legitimate question.

Do we have a crisis of public trust in science?
There has been exaggeration and even panic about this. Public opinion polls in the US consistently show that most people still trust science. And far more than they trust government or industry. However, there are certain areas – for example climate change, vaccination and evolution – where there is a high level of public suspicion. In these areas, people resist accepting what the evidence shows because of their values. The science can be seen to clash with their political, moral or religious worldviews, or their economic interests.
Discrediting science is also a political strategy – for example, the fossil fuel industry creating the impression that the science on climate change is unsettled stops action.
It’s fashionable to be sceptical of experts but we rely on them: dentists fix our teeth, plumbers unclog our drains
You could say the US president doesn’t trust science. Trump denies the climate crisis and has argued against vaccination in the past, and his vice-president, Mike Pence, demurs on evolution. How detrimental is this?
It is deeply problematic if the leadership of the US government is rejecting science, because it sends a signal to the American people and to business leaders that it is fine to reject science, and even to ride roughshod over scientists. It is also proof positive that this is not a question of people who simply don’t have access to good scientific information. The US president has access to more scientific information than probably anybody on the planet – but he actively rejects it on a number of issues because it conflicts with his own interests.

Why should we trust science? Is it because there is a “scientific method” that scientists follow?
There isn’t a single magic formula that guarantees results. We should trust science because it has a rigorous process for vetting claims. That includes the formal peer review of papers submitted to academic journals but also things like scientists discussing their preliminary results in conferences and workshops. Crucially, these practices are social in character. Consensus is key to when a scientific matter has been settled, and therefore when knowledge is likely to be trustworthy. We should also trust science because it is done by people who are experts in studying the natural world. It’s fashionable to be sceptical of experts but we rely on trained people every day for all kinds of things: dentists fix our teeth and plumbers unclog our drains. Science also has a substantial record of success – think of our medicines and technologies – suggesting scientists are doing something right.

You say we can learn from science gone awry. One example in the book is the eugenics movement, the odious crusade in the early part of the last century arguing for the improvement of the genetics of the human race by restricting the reproduction of “unfit” people, which particularly targeted the mentally ill and the poor…
Climate change deniers love to claim that because scientists were once wrong about eugenics, they may be wrong now about climate change. But I looked closely and there never was any consensus among scientists on eugenics. British geneticists and evolutionary biologists in particular – famous names like JBS Haldane and Thomas Huxley – who also happened to be socialists called out eugenics for its class bias targeting working-class people. It shows how diversity, in this case political diversity, can lead to assumptions being pointed out that otherwise would go unnoticed.

You also look at why it took so long for scientists to study whether the contraceptive pill can have mental health side-effects like depression.
A few years ago a big study came out that associated being on the pill with depression and it generated a lot of media attention. But we’ve known this for a very long time because millions of women have been telling us. Their self-reports were often discounted as unreliable by medical science. Lots of psychiatrists going back to the 1960s were aware and some took it seriously. But gynaecologists generally resisted that evidence for two reasons. One was because the pill really does work, so a lot were eager to prescribe it. But also, these were female patients and there is a long history of male doctors in particular discounting their reports. The lesson is scientists shouldn’t discount evidence simply because it’s not in their preferred form.
Do the benefits of flossing your teeth have scientific backing? Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP
You use a 2016 controversy around the effectiveness of flossing teeth as an example not of flawed science, but flawed journalism. What happened? 
The background is the US government took the view that its dietary guidelines should focus on diet and so removed a recommendation to floss. A journalist from the Associated Press noticed and decided to look at flossing’s scientific basis for preventing gum disease and cavities. He found that if you took the gold standard of evidence – the double-blind randomised controlled trial – it was lacking. But you can’t do that kind of trial: you know if your teeth are being flossed or not. If you make that the standard then, necessarily, there won’t be “hard” evidence to support flossing. There is a kind of fetishism about RCTs. But there are cases including in nutrition and exercise when you can’t do them, or it would be unethical. In those cases, other types of studies, like population or animal studies, can be valuable. Or if you have some other kind of information – for example dentists’ and our own experience that flossing does a lot of good for our teeth and gums – it shouldn’t be discounted.

How can we increase trust in science where it is warranted?
It isn’t by giving people more scientific information. Rather scientists need to talk about the values that motivate them and shape the science they do. In many cases, scientists’ values are less different from the people who are rejecting science than you might think. And where values overlap, trust can be built. We may think of people who reject vaccination as being “on the other side” but we all love our children. A scientist’s “biodiversity” might be a religious believer’s “Creation”, but they are cherishing the same thing. Scientists being willing to talk about themselves and their experiences can also go a long way. In my book, I talk about something deeply personal: my own experiences with the contraceptive pill and depression. It may not be persuasive to everyone, but people are much more likely to accept factual information from those they can relate to or have a human connection with.

Lots of scientists work for oil, energy, pharmaceutical, food and cosmetics companies, and often bury unwelcome results, massage their studies and so on – how do you feel about these people and are they contributing to the cynicism about science in the public?
This is a big question, hard to answer in a soundbite. In the early 20th century, a good deal of important science was done in industrial laboratories, for example at Westinghouse, General Electric, Bell Labs, and Eastman Chemicals. But after the war, many large corporations cut back on their support of basic research, and some – most famously the tobacco industry – became involved in product defence and distracting research. A good deal of product defence research is now channelled through academia, and this is deeply problematic. I know from my email and Twitter feed that this has stoked distrust among some people, and rightly so.
Many scientific journals and universities have been very sloppy about taking steps to ensure the integrity of academic findings, for example by having and enforcing full disclosure. Academics have to be very clear about the soures of their support, and they should never agree to non-disclosure agreements. It is essential in science that we let the chips fall as they may.

You’ve recently been testifying in Congress. What’s the message you most want to send to politicians?
Human-induced climate change is under way. It’s no longer a matter of trust; our scientists have been shown to be right. Climate change deniers have run out of excuses.

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(UK) Climate Change: Thousands Invited To Join Citizens' Assembly

BBC

The public are being asked for their views on how to tackle climate change. Brook Mitchell/Getty
Letters are being sent to 30,000 households across the UK inviting people to join a citizens' assembly on climate change.
Once participants are selected, the assembly will meet next year, with the outcome of their discussions reported back to Parliament.
The initiative, set up by cross party MPs, will look at what members of the public can do to reduce CO2.
The UK government has committed to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
Rachel Reeves, chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee, one of six select committees who commissioned the climate assembly, said a clear roadmap was needed to achieve this goal.
"Finding solutions which are equitable and have public support will be crucial," she said.
"Parliament needs to work with the people and with government to address the challenge of climate change."

Random selection
The invitees to Climate Assembly UK have been selected at random from across the UK. From those who respond, 110 people will be chosen as a representative sample of the population.
They will meet over four weekends from late January in Birmingham, and will discuss topics ranging from transport to household energy use.
A citizens' assembly has been a key demand of the environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion, whose protests caused widespread disruption this year.
The group said they welcomed this as a first step, but warned that the assembly should be focussing on cutting carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 not 2050.
Spokesperson Linda Doyle said: "Waiting 30 years to reach zero net carbon emissions is a death sentence to people around the world and in the UK - it gives us a higher chance of breaching irreversible tipping points as the climate breaks down and it only serves short term 'business as usual'."

Complex issues
Environmental group Friends of the Earth said citizens' assemblies could play an important part in policy-making.
Dave Timms, head of political affairs at FOE, said: "Tackling the climate emergency with the speed required will require radical changes to our economy, infrastructure and even to society so it's important that there is a consensus among citizens.
"Much of what needs to be done already commands widespread public support and it is politicians that just need to bloody-well get on with it now."
Citizens' assemblies have been used in a number of countries around the world.
In Ireland, a panel of 99 people was established in 2016 to look at a range of political questions, including abortion.
They recommended that the country should overturn its ban and suggested a referendum, which went on to support repeal.
In Canada and the Netherlands, the approach has been used to discuss electoral reform.

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(AU) How Bad Is This Drought And Is It Caused By Climate Change?

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

How do we define drought? What causes them? And are they getting worse?
Animal tracks criss-cross the Southern Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve in August. Credit: Wolter Peeters
Australia may well be a land of drought and flooding rain but so far this century it has been on the drier side. Drought has gripped large swathes of south-eastern Australia for the past three years, prompting fierce debate about the best policies to help farmers and regional communities, and sparking fears about just how dry future conditions will be.
How severe is this drought? Is this the new normal? And what is the role of climate change?

What is drought?
Drought is about what's missing – rain. Or, as the Bureau of Meteorology defines it, an "acute water shortage".
Unlike other extreme weather events such as heavy rain or heatwaves, though, droughts are tricky to measure.
Queensland's latest government estimate is that two-thirds of the state is affected by drought. In NSW, it is just about all of the state – 98.4 per cent, according to the government. Victoria hasn't declared drought, but says central and east Gippsland and Millewa in the north-west are its main dry regions. Western Australia has had its third-driest start to any year – and the driest since 1936 – and northern South Australia has not had a drier January-October on record.
The weather bureau uses "rainfall deficiencies" as its measure. It looks at where rainfall is less than 10 per cent of historical averages and deems them to have "serious" deficiency. Those at less than five per cent are rated as "severe".
Another kind of measure is a so-called hydrological drought, which measures periods of very low river flow.
Rainfall is below average or less in large parts of Australia
January 2017 to October 31, 2019
Source: Bureau of Meteorology
How bad is the current drought?
Australia's biggest dry spells include the Federation Drought (1895-1902), World War II Drought (1937-1945) and the Millennium Drought (1997-2009).
Measured on a range of time scales, the current drought is extreme. Some areas report record poor rains.
For Australia's food bowl, the Murray-Darling Basin, rainfall has averaged 887 millimetres over the 34 months to the end of October. That's "clearly the lowest on record", says David Jones, manager of climate services at the weather bureau.
Record heat has compounded the stress. The basin's mean temperatures for those 34 months is running at 1.65 degrees above the bureau's 1961-90 baseline, easily beating previous record highs, says Dr Jones.
Nationally, daytime temperatures for January to October are also at records highs, the bureau says. In the basin alone, mean temperatures were the hottest on record for that period too, for the third year in a row, says Dr Jones.
Perhaps the most unusual feature of the current drought, though, is the absence of cool season rainfall for three years running for much of the Murray-Darling Basin.
"That’s never happened in the instrumental record," says Michael Roderick, a climate researcher at the Australian National University. "They’ve never really had two failed winters in a row."
For the basin, just under 50 millimetres fell last winter, or less than half the 1961-90 average of 111 millimetres, weather bureau data reveals.


Is climate change playing a role?
If droughts can be hard to pin down, explaining their connection to climate change adds to the complexity.
The facts are that scientists cannot say definitively that a specific drought is caused by climate change, but they can say definitively that climate change makes the effects of droughts stronger and more damaging.
Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, recently ignited a brief firestorm over his comment to a business forum that "there is no link between climate change and drought".
Some media jumped on his views, prompting his centre to issue a belated correction saying he erred by leaving out one word, as in "there is no direct link between climate change and drought".
Indirect links should be cause enough for concern in a country with Australia's variable rainfall.
The indirect links, though, should be cause enough for concern in a country with Australia's variable rainfall.
The weather bureau and CSIRO are very confident that rainfall during the so-called cool season from April to October is trending lower for both the south-west and south-east of Australia, as noted in last year's State of the Climate report.
Farmers rely on that rain to grow the winter crops that make up the bulk of the nation's output. Where winter rain is on the rise – in parts of the north and interior – the extra moisture is typically on top of a low base and in sparsely populated regions.
Climate change is blamed for accelerating the winds that circle around Antarctica, drawing storm tracks further south so some miss the mainland.
By contrast, for some areas in southern Australia, rainfall is increasing during the warmer months. That shift, though, comes as little consolation for farmers now reliant on winter harvests.
In 20 years, cool season rainfall has been the lowest on record
in some places and above average in others.
April to October rainfall 1999-2018
Source: Bureau of Meteorology
Evaporation, which depends more on sunlight and relative humidity than temperature, is typically higher in summer so run-off into dams will be less than if it rained in winter.
More summer rain "should green up the landscape because plants have more water when they need it most but it will dry up our rivers", Professor Roderick says.
While it's not clear how annual rainfall totals will change in a warming world, future droughts will be hotter when they do arrive, says Ben Henley, a climate researcher at the University of Melbourne.
"We're really quite concerned in southern Australia," he says. "Even if we get the same degree of annual rainfall, if that’s falling in the hot time of the year, that’s more likely to be evaporated off."

Is this the new normal?
Cutting-edge research includes work to investigate whether droughts such as the current one are likely to become more prolonged and more frequent.
One area of study is looking at flash droughts, the unusually rapid intensification of some dry spells.
"This event is shorter at the moment [compared with some droughts in the past] but very sharp," Dr Jones says.
A paper out this year by researchers, including the weather bureau's Hanh Nguyen, has found most of eastern Australia "suddenly changed from wet conditions in December 2017 to dry conditions in January 2018". It cites sheep farmer Kym Thomas, from Cunnamulla in the northern Murray Darling Basin in Queensland, who was forced to sell all her livestock in early 2018. Local sheep numbers in her region dived to their lowest in 100 years.
One smoking gun is that rainforests are now burning.
"By June 2018, they reported that all types of trees were dying, leaving a desert-like landscape of sand dunes replacing the normally vegetated scene," the paper says.
As plants dry or die,the risk of major bushfires increases. And, as plants also help moderate the local climate through a process called evapotranspiration, when they die another hand brake on the heat is removed.
The dried-out Southern Macquarie Marshes nature reserve in August. Credit: Wolter Peeters
Some researchers believe the ambient conditions that led to the Millennium Drought have not yet broken down, says Greg Holland, an emeritus senior scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and formerly with the bureau.
"It's quite possible ... we never came out of it," he says, adding a couple of wet years in 2010 and 2011 may have been "a bit of an hiatus in the middle".
Indeed, while drought is measured against historical averages, it may be time to redefine what we considered as normal. "One smoking gun is that rainforests are now burning," he says.

How much longer will this drought last?
Weather in Australia is being influenced by a pattern known as a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which reduces the chances for convection and the formation of north-west cloud bands that typically bring good rains to inland Australia, especially the Murray-Darling Basin.
This IOD pattern typically starts to break down by November's end as the northern monsoon arrives. While this year's seasonal cycle may be later than usual, at least one curb on rainfall should soon be wound back.
The weather bureau's three-monthly rainfall outlook indeed starts to shift the odds in favour of closer-to-average rains over much of the country by the tail end of summer. Before then, though, most of Australia is highly likely to have a drier and hotter than average November-February.
And it will probably take a lot more than near-normal rain to have this drought declared broken. As Professor Roderick says, the Millennium Drought had really only two very dry years – 2002 and 2006 – but is considered to have lasted about a decade.
While places such as Sydney have seen a steep fall in dam levels, 50 per cent faster over the past two years than during the Millennium Drought, its ability to tap a desalination plant for 15 per cent of its needs means it is "effectively immortal for water", says Professor Roderick.
Not so for towns such as Guyra in northern NSW, which has just eight months' supply, even with full dams. Many other towns had just one to two years worth of water, a problem that this drought has exposed, he says.

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04/11/2019

(US) Suing Big Oil Is How States Tackle Climate Change

Bloomberg - 

It’s not the best approach, but it’s better than none.
We’ve reached the “blame” stage in the climate grief cycle. Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
A growing number of cities and states want to turn climate change lawsuits against oil companies into the next tobacco or opioid litigation. In principle, that seems like a truly terrible idea. Such lawsuits will likely do even less to remedy the effects of climate change than similar suits did for lung cancer or opioid addiction. Yet on closer analysis, the climate change lawsuits may be the worst solution to mitigating climate change — except for all the others.
The analogy to Winston Churchill’s notorious defense of democracy isn’t an accident. In the American form of democracy, oil companies enjoy an almost unparalleled capacity to influence Congress and federal government regulators.
Local governments aren’t quite so captured. Recently, New York state’s lawsuit against Exxon began its trial; Massachusetts filed its own suit; and the Supreme Court declined an admittedly unusual request to stay suits being brought in state courts in Maryland, Rhode Island and Colorado.
Paradoxically, it’s precisely the splintered, self-interested nature of state and local lawsuits for damages that makes such litigation a potentially useful tool against big oil.
The proliferation of suits increases the likelihood that the oil companies will lose some suits, somewhere. That should be enough for analysts who cover oil companies to adjust their assessments of the probability of a lawsuit cascade like the one that culminated in the tobacco litigation settlement, and the one over opioids that is currently making its way towards a similar resolution.
And once enough states and localities start getting money out of the oil companies, the rest will jump on the bandwagon. Even if their political leaders would prefer to stay on the good side of big oil, the temptation of easy money will come to outweigh any instinct of restraint. Oil companies might respond by trying to get Congress to pass legislation protecting them from lawsuits. But by then, the states and municipalities will be lobbying in the other direction.
As I’ve noted before in the context of the opioid litigation, this is no way to run a railroad. Addressing major social crises by post-hoc lawsuits is not an efficient or logical — or indeed, particularly just — way to right wrongs on a large scale. The Anglo-American tort system was designed to resolve small-scale conflicts, not large ones, yet we’ve tried to reverse-engineer the system to deal with more fundamental social crises. The results have been mixed at best.
Nevertheless, the truth is that it’s particularly difficult to hold the energy companies responsible for the consequences of their conduct. Going back to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which at its peak controlled more than 90% of all oil refining in the U.S., perhaps no other industry in American history has been as resistant to regulation designed to dilute its power and lawmaking aimed at meaningful taxation. The enduring lobbying power of the big oil companies has long affected U.S. policy, foreign and domestic. And, of course, oil remains necessary to lubricate the U.S. economy.
But all that might is of limited utility against radically decentralized adversaries. For a glimpse into how this could play out, look at what’s currently underway in opioid litigation: not only states but also local governments — frustrated by state-level distribution of the tobacco settlement money and eager to get in on the action — have brought scores of suits of their own. The local suits have also brought in the for-profit, contingency-fee driven plaintiff’s bar.
This decentralization is a vice when it comes to rational, organized policymaking. But it’s a virtue when it comes to subverting the lobbying power of the energy industry in Washington.
Sprawling litigation like this usually turns into a cascade of self-interested municipalities trying to get a piece of the pie. At some point, failing to bring a lawsuit starts to seem like governmental malpractice. There’s money on the table, and local government that doesn’t try to get some of it is doing harm to its own citizens.
The upshot is that, while decentralized litigation isn’t an ideal way to address fundamental social problems, it could at least drive the oil industry to internalize some of the costs of the tremendous externalities that the burning of fossil fuels has imposed on the public. That isn’t cause for celebration. But it’s probably better than nothing.

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(AU) Climate Change: Words Don't Matter As Much As Action

Insurance News



In the quarter-century that the threat of global warming has been hanging over general insurance in Australia, the debate has become fragmented and absurdly complex.
Climatologists say Australia will be one of the earliest countries to suffer from the long-term impacts of man-made climate change, but action to deal with the issue has been stymied since 2013 by internecine warfare between climate sceptics and realists in the ruling federal Coalition.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison seems to have decided the best way to maintain peace in the ranks is to pretend that by 2030 greenhouse gas emissions will have been reduced by 26-28% below 2005 levels – despite a government report last year predicting the reduction will be just 7%.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), which must deal with the consequences of climate change and transmit its views to a generally unreceptive government and a public starved of information that brings the issue to their doorsteps.
So it’s worth looking at an unfortunate tangle ICA found itself in last week over one of the many sub-issues that lie under the heading of “climate change”.
It started two weeks ago when ICA President Richard Enthoven delivered a strong “state of the industry” address to the National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) convention, in the course of which he noted that climate change is “sensitive politically”, despite robust industry data that aligns with climate science.
Then he said: “Changing weather systems may well make certain regions more exposed to storm, flood or bushfire, thereby potentially making parts of Australia uninsurable.”
Just as “climate change” has become Canberra’s version of Harry Potter’s Voldemort – it “Must Not Be Named” – so “uninsurable” seems to enjoy the same status in ICA’s Pitt Street headquarters.
Despite the cautious use of the adverb “potentially”, Mr Enthoven crossed some kind of Rubicon in his speech.
ICA wants to move past the whole debate about the existence of climate change to focus on the benefits of mitigation, and prefers to always point to the Productivity Commission’s recommendation that the Commonwealth invest at least $200 million a year (matched by state and territory governments) on infrastructure.
It enjoyed a small victory earlier this month when the Government announced that about $50 million from the Emergency Response Fund will be earmarked annually for mitigation works. The Labor Party made that $50 million a condition of its support for the fund.
Days later ICA’s happy glow turned to irritation when the ABC published research from the Climate Risk consultancy which states that extreme weather events caused by climate change will make hundreds of thousands of Australian properties uninsurable.
It says nearly 720,000 addresses – or one in every 20 Australian properties – will be uninsurable by 2100 if global warming continues at its current rate.
This was 130,000 fewer properties than the original assessment made by Climate Risk in March. At the time that earlier report set the consultancy and ICA into a minor skirmish over the difference between “uninsurable” and “unaffordable”.
ICA’s argument is that homeowners in high-risk areas may have to pay more, but it doesn’t believe any part of Australia will become uninsurable.
Climate Risk Director of Science Karl Mallon told insuranceNEWS.com.au his organisation is “taking a responsible position to inform communities about the risk in their suburbs that they may have no idea about”.
“The insurance industry isn’t doing that, so we see it as a responsible thing to do – to try and engage communities and also encourage them to implement resilience measures ahead of an event.”
But ICA spokesman Campbell Fuller criticised Climate Risk’s report, saying extreme weather projections based on climate change models should be “agreed upon and understood by all relevant stakeholders before they are used in a way that may unnecessarily scare householders and businesses, disrupt communities and lead to poor decisions and outcomes”.
Climate Risk charges a fee for the use of its data, but ICA says information about future risks must be based on transparent methods and data, and the insurance industry “is investing in the development of transparent risk tools for climate change, based on centuries of underwriting expertise and extreme weather knowledge”.
In other words, ICA sees its data as being far better than Climate Risk’s data. Fair enough, it should be. But is all this hair-splitting really necessary?
The ABC wasn’t slow to point out that ICA’s vehement attack on what it called “irresponsible” reporting puts the council at odds with its President’s statement that climate change “may make certain regions more exposed to storm, flood or bushfire, thereby potentially making parts of Australia uninsurable”.
It may be that ICA is concerned the focus on insurance and climate change could switch political and community focus away from the need for investment in mitigation to the relative affordability of property insurance.
As Mr Fuller put it last week: “No area of Australia should be uninsurable, provided governments invest appropriately in permanent mitigation and resilience measures to protect communities from known and projected risks, including the impact of climate change.”
That’s also a point Mr Enthoven emphasised in his NIBA speech, and it’s one that Climate Risk says it’s keen to support.
“Where we furiously agree [with ICA] is that we can do something about this,” Mr Mallon told insuranceNEWS.com.au last week.
Doesn’t the fact that without mitigation some properties may become uninsurable – or unaffordable, if you prefer – make a compelling case for government action?
Call it information the public should know or call it scaremongering, Climate Risk’s fulsomely illustrated information, circulated widely around Australia via the ABC, contributed significantly to raising public awareness of the issue.
It doesn’t really matter how you define “uninsurable”, or how many properties you put in that category. The fact is some homeowners in Australia are already faced with unaffordable premiums and the issue is going to get worse unless serious work on mitigation is done.
If Climate Risk’s data isn’t as good as ICA’s, its cut-through on the issue was nevertheless impressive and has helped raise awareness in a very personal way. A substantial change in official policy towards mitigation will come sooner if there’s pressure from the community – and to achieve that a bit of data-backed scaremongering shouldn’t be seen as all that bad.

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(AU) Climate Crisis: Business Leaders Say Cost To Taxpayers Will Spiral Unless New Policies Introduced

The Guardian -  |

Organisations such as Australian Industry Group and National Farmers’ Federation letter says greater private-sector action needed
 Groups including the Australian Industry Group and National Farmers’ Federation say the emissions reduction fund has worked in ‘the land sector’ but is poorly suited to driving cuts in industry. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Industry, farming and investor groups say the federal government signed up to a goal of global net zero emissions under the Paris agreement and have warned unless new policies are introduced taxpayer spending on climate programs will need to be dramatically increased.
A joint letter by 10 business organisations, including the Australian Industry Group and the National Farmers’ Federation, says the government will either need to back new climate policies that drive private-sector action or boost taxpayer funding now and into the future.
The letter was sent to a panel of business leaders and policy experts appointed by Angus Taylor, the emissions reduction minister, to find new ways to “enhance” the emissions reduction fund, the government’s main climate policy. The panel’s appointment, which was not made public, is seen as an admission the fund is not reducing national pollution.
Only select groups were asked to give feedback to a discussion paper circulated by the panel. The Clean Energy Council confirmed it wasn’t approached “directly” to participate in the rapid-fire review, which began in mid-October and is expected to offer initial feedback early next month, but said it welcomed the government’s putative shift on one of its signature policies.
The business group letter says the 10 organisations have different views on policy but agreed on broad principles that should underpin what the government does.
It says Australia’s medium-term climate target set for 2030 is just a staging post on the way to meeting the Paris deal goals of keeping global heating well below 2C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C.
This would ultimately mean global net zero emissions. In Australia, it would require policy mechanisms that could efficiently deliver “immediate, cost-effective abatement opportunities” in every part of the economy and also encourage innovation.
The letter says the emissions reduction fund has worked in “the land sector” – mostly projects supporting native vegetation – but was poorly suited to driving cuts in industry and buildings and unlikely to bring change in energy and transport.
The groups would support well-designed policies that put less of the cost of cutting emissions on taxpayers, as the emissions reduction fund does, and instead encouraged the private sector to act.
“In the absence of such policies, the government will need to commit more resources – both now and over time – to finance abatement,” the letter says.
The panel, which is headed by Grant King, the outgoing president of the Business Council of Australia and a former chief executive of Origin Energy, was appointed after the government has been privately sounding out some groups about an overhaul of the fund for months. But stakeholders were taken aback when the panel approached them to provide detailed comments on options in less than two weeks.
Interviewed on the ABC, King said it was sensible for the government to look at how the fund was working and take on feedback. “What the government has done is say ‘let’s run a quick process … that’s going to listen to that feedback and see whether we can enhance the way the fund works’,” he said.
King stressed the government’s target, a 26-28% cut below 2005 levels, was not a cap. “What we want to do is exceed those targets and we can do that that, we believe, through listening to people’s experience … and improving the way it is working,” he said.
Taylor agreed the government would “like to beat our targets” and said the review was about “using the best expertise we can”.
“We are doing everything we can to use that money [committed to the fund] to maximise the abatement we get from it,” he said.
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, gave the Coalition a blast for failing to have a coherent policy. “The government doesn’t have an energy policy,” he said. “It doesn’t have a plan. What they need to do is to have a comprehensive plan for energy.”
Kane Thornton, the chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said he welcomed “any steps towards stronger national climate and energy policy to provide the necessary certainty for investors”. He noted the emissions reduction fund had to date focused on areas other than energy, such as agriculture and industrial processes.
Thornton said his organisation, which represents major renewable energy players, had “not been directly approached to participate in the review of the (fund) to date”. But he would welcome any opportunity to put forward ideas that would ensure the fund played a more substantial role in providing investor confidence across all sectors of the economy.
As well as contributing to the joint letter, the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) has contributed its own submission to the process, urging the Morrison government to pursue least cost abatement in the reboot.
Its submission says market mechanisms, including “price signals and tradable instruments”, can be efficient and effective if well designed, but there are also roles for careful regulation and public funding. “The existing landscape of policy and proposals is far from consistent with these principles,” it says.
The discussion paper floats changing the scheme known as the safeguard mechanism, which was supposed to limit emissions from big industry but in practice has allowed pollution to increase, so companies that emit less than their limit are awarded carbon credits they could sell to the government or business.
The Ai Group says adjusting the safeguards regime is an important option for the government, but will “require especially careful and consultative development”. It says in theory it should be simple to reward facilities for emissions cuts when they emit less than tight limits, or baselines, but in reality “there are many difficult issues involved”.
Other signatories to the business group letter backed by the Ai Group are the Investor Group on Climate Change, the Property Council, the Energy Users Association, the Energy Efficiency Council, the Green Building Council, the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity, the Carbon Market Institute and the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council.
The emissions reduction fund works as a reverse auction, rewarding landowners and businesses that make cheap, viable bids for taxpayers’ support to cut pollution. The most recent auction bought emissions cuts equivalent to only 0.01% of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas pollution after officials found just three projects worth backing.
The emissions policy review came to light as the government announced it would give the government green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an extra $1bn to invest in projects aimed at ensuring a reliable electricity supply. The new fund is earmarked for power generation, storage and transmission projects such as pumped hydro, batteries and gas.
National emissions have risen each year since 2015 and analyses have found the government would not reach its 2030 target, a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, unless policies changed. Scientists say Australia should be aiming for deeper cuts if it is play its part under the Paris agreement.

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03/11/2019

Why The Coal Sector Is So Excited About Australia's Move To 'Clean' Hydrogen

ABC News - Jack Snape


Australian government video on national hydrogen strategy (ABC News)

Key points
  • Australia's national hydrogen strategy is due for completion by the end of the year
  • Hydrogen can be made using fossil fuels or renewables but it will be cheaper to use coal and gas for at least a decade
  • Japan's demand has been inflated in official government materials, overstating the short-term export potential
Japan might be endowed with many beautiful things but reliable and cheap sources of energy are not among them.
Home to 125 million people and one of the world's worst nuclear-power meltdowns, the allure of hydrogen energy has driven Japan's ambition to become a leading adopter of the energy source.
Next year's Tokyo Olympics will serve as a demonstration of the country's progress towards a so-called hydrogen society, based on carbon-free, next-generation technology.
It is keen for cars that produce exhaust — water — that technically could be drunk. The Olympics itself will be home to buses like this:
Toyota's Sora bus, to be used at the Tokyo Olympics, is powered by hydrogen fuel cells. (Supplied)
And key to its strategy for this clean-energy future is something that may surprise — Australia's brown coal.
Japan's strategic hydrogen roadmap, released earlier this year, states plainly that 2020 targets are set "assuming the success of Japan-Australia brown coal-to-hydrogen project".
That project, a trial using coal from Latrobe Valley in Victoria, will demonstrate how Australia's hydrogen export industry — and Japan's imports — might work.
But its prominence also hints at a tension threatening to tear the Australian hydrogen movement apart.

The recipe for hydrogen
Hydrogen is attractive as a fuel source because it carries more energy than natural gas and is carbon-free, so the burning of it does not contribute to climate change.
It can be produced by the process of electrolysis of water using large amounts of energy — think solar and wind-sourced — or chemical processes associated with combusting fossil fuels like coal and gas.
That sets up an ideological split between fossil fuels and renewables.
While the hydrogen itself emits no carbon when used, the cheapest way to produce it right now does.
Those preparing Australia's hydrogen strategy recognise the need to reduce emissions to combat climate change, and are only considering options using fossil fuels if they come with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The most prominent examples of CCS involve pumping carbon emissions into underground cavities, but critics argue the technology is unproven and ineffective.
Mark McCallum at Coal21, a group representing black coal producers pursuing CCS, wrote in a submission to this year's hydrogen strategy consultation that the technology was proven, citing the example of the Norway's Sleipner 20-year-old project.
"Importantly, CO2 [carbon dioxide] is a stable substance and, provided the well-established industrial safety protocols are followed, the injection process can be conducted without any threats to the health and safety of workers or the public."
Suitable locations for hydrogen production, factoring in proximity to geology suitable for storing emissions, have already been identified by Geoscience Australia:
Infographic: Suitable locations for hydrogen production using fossil fuels. (Supplied: Geoscience Australia)
There may be issues with leakage from the emissions, or cost blowouts with rolling out the technology at a large scale.
But assuming there's not, it will be much cheaper to produce hydrogen using fossil fuels over the next few years.
However, the renewables-driven alternative is already better for the climate, and at some point after 2030 its price is also likely to be cheaper.

The 'inflated' prize of Japan
The briefing paper for COAG energy ministers notes "access to the Japanese energy market is the prize for the nations now bidding to be global hydrogen suppliers".
But it is not clear exactly how big that prize is.
Much of the hype around hydrogen in Australia focuses on the export opportunities.
The thinking goes that Australia could use its natural endowment in coal, gas, sun and wind and supply the world with hydrogen, starting with Japan.
This future, according to some, is just around the corner.
The first issues paper for the National Hydrogen Strategy trumpets: "High-level economic modelling by ACIL Allen estimates that hydrogen exports could provide around $4 billion direct and indirect economic benefits to Australia by 2040 under medium demand growth settings."
Under those "growth settings", consultants ACIL Allen estimate that Japan will need 1.76 million tonnes of hydrogen per year in 2030. It suggests Australia could provide 368,000 of those tonnes.
Infographic: ACIL Allen's figures for demand, shown here in thousands of tonnes per year, have been brought into question. (Supplied: ACIL Allen)
If ACIL's estimates are correct, more than 2,000 Australian workers will benefit from the burgeoning industry in the next decade.
However, Japan's own strategy projects its own demand in 2030 at just 300,000 tonnes. That's less than one fifth ACIL's estimate of Japan's consumption.
Anthony Kosturjak, a senior research economist at Adelaide University, said the ACIL estimate "does seem optimistic".
"The low-export scenario of 182,000 tonnes is more reasonable as this would represent about 60 per cent of the national target," he said.
Mr Kosturjak, who researched 19 national hydrogen plans this year for a research paper funded by the Department of Industry, warned that Japan's targets were aspirational but also competition was intense, noting Japan had set up projects in other countries, including Brunei and Norway.
"It is important to remember that the Japanese strategy identifies an aspirational target and there is significant uncertainty regarding how the technical and economic feasibility of hydrogen and competing technologies will evolve," he said.
"As such, the country could significantly overshoot or undershoot its target."
According to ACIL's estimates, Japan will provide the majority of world demand in 2030.

How a boom changes the strategy
John Soderbaum, director of science and technology at ACIL Allen, said the scenarios in the report "are not forecasts of hydrogen demand by any particular country, rather they are projections of the potential overseas demand for hydrogen under three different scenarios".
"We then explored what it would mean for Australia in terms of export revenues and employment if that projected overseas demand for hydrogen imports was met in part by Australian exports."
However Richie Merzian, the director of the climate and energy program at left-wing think tank The Australia Institute, described the numbers as "inflated" and argued they were being used to justify fast-tracking the hydrogen export market.
"Public money is being channelled into developing coal and natural gas-based hydrogen plants," he said.
"With time and public funding, green hydrogen, derived from water through electrolysis and powered by renewable energy, could provide a far more sustainable industry."
Chief scientist Alan Finkel.
While such an industry may be more sustainable, its success means a lost opportunity for Australia's coal sector — and its workers — to pivot towards hydrogen.
In August, Australia's chief scientist Alan Finkel argued a combination was desirable.
"Producing hydrogen from these [fossil fuel] sources, if done in conjunction with carbon capture and sequestration, is an attractive option because it increases the diversity of supply (so all our 'eggs' are not in any one energy 'basket')," he said.

Crunch discussions loom
Much has been made of Australia being perfectly placed to take advantage of hydrogen, with wind, sun, vast reserves of coal and gas, and access to Asian markets.
And there appears to be support from all sides of politics.
In January, then Opposition leader Bill Shorten unveiled a hydrogen strategy for Labor that was backed by the Minerals Council.
But success is not automatic.
Research by the International Energy Agency shatters the mythology that Australia is the standout leader for hydrogen production.
Infographic: Hydrogen production costs in different parts of the world. (Supplied: IEA)
The US, China, north Africa and the Middle East appear to offer substantially cheaper production.
Dr Soderbaum said ultimately the market would decide whether Australia's hydrogen sector got off the ground.
"At the end of the day, the actual demand for Australian hydrogen will be determined by factors such as the economic competitiveness of our supplies versus those of competing suppliers of hydrogen around the world and the extent to which it can be classified as low or zero-emissions hydrogen," he said.
The national hydrogen strategy is currently being drafted by a taskforce led by Dr Finkel.
State and federal energy ministers are expected to discuss the strategy in November.

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