Climate change is already harming around 700 species of mammals and
birds. That means that warming is not just a theoretical future threat,
and conservation work must focus on the “here and now”, says a new
study.
It reviewed 136 studies published between 1990 and 2015, as well as
modelling the risks to animals on the IUCN Red List of Threatened
Species. It concluded that almost half of terrestrial mammal species and
nearly a quarter of all bird species could already be negatively
affected, without us even realising.
“We have the knowledge to take action,” says Lee Hannah, a
conservation ecologist and senior researcher at Conservation
International, a non-profit based in Arlington, Virginia. “Truly massive
climate-triggered insect outbreaks have killed millions of trees in
North America. Heat flashes in the oceans have killed corals and changed
coral reefs in every ocean.”
A third of all species may be at risk of extinction, says Hannah, and the study shows the changes are happening already.
Lead author Michela Pacifici at the Sapienza University of Rome,
Italy, says their results also show the most affected species are in
highly developed areas or areas expecting a human population boom in
coming decades. So conservation needs to focus more on monitoring in
these locations and on “control of human demand for natural resources”,
she says. Risk assessment
The team assessed the risk to animals
by looking at traits including body mass, population numbers,
geographic range, reproductive rate and survival rate. If at least one
of these shows a decline affecting half the animal population or more,
they reasoned, it shows climate change is already taking its toll.
Applying their model, they estimated that 47 per cent of 873 species
of threatened terrestrial mammals and 23.4 per cent of 1272 threatened
bird species are showing signs of harm. Elephants, primates and
marsupials are the most affected.
The reasons why species are affected vary. Some mammals are
struggling to adapt as temperatures are changing too fast or because
their diets are specialised. For some birds, living at high altitude means fewer opportunities to move to cooler areas, while seabirds and others that live close to water face fragmented habitats or algal blooms.
Some 92 per cent of existing data on species vulnerabilities that the
study reviewed came from Europe and North America. Hannah says we can
expect the tropics to be even more climate-sensitive, with massive
changes already under way.
Alan Kohler and The Great Coal Hoax. (Image via @australian)
Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party have only their own
kack-handed efforts to blame for blackouts by failing to come up with a
responsible solution to energy security. Can't be all that hard, says John Menadue. LET'S BE clear, the Coalition and particularly the Liberal Party and
Malcolm Turnbull are responsible for the current mess and impasse on
electricity prices and reliability and supply. This is the result of
years of policy and political failure. We are now seeing the dreadful
consequences.
Pleading by the Business Council and others for bipartisanship on
energy policy is a political cover for their past and very politically
partisan support of the Coalition on energy policy such as an Emissions
Trading Scheme and a carbon price.
In 2006, John Howard asked Peter Shergold, the Head of PM & C, to
examine the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions. Peter
Shergold advised that an ETS was necessary. There was no progress.
Then the first Rudd government, following discussion papers, introduced its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
in 2009. Unfortunately the legislation was rejected in the Senate
because of the combined opposition of the Coalition and the Greens. By
then the Coalition was at the peak of its climate change denial and the
Greens said that the CPRS was not good enough. Disappointingly, Kevin
Rudd decided not to take the issue to a double dissolution. After the
disappointment of Copenhagen he lost his "mojo".
IMAGE
There is no doubt in my mind, however, that if the CPRS had been
agreed, the issue of global warming and carbon pollution would have been
almost done and settled. Or at least we had the beginnings of good
policy.
But worse was to follow. Malcolm Turnbull supported CPRS because we
thought he believed in its importance as a market mechanism to put a
price on carbon and let the market influence investment decisions.
Unfortunately, many Coalition members, including Tony Abbott, disagreed
with him and Malcolm Turnbull was defeated by one vote in the Liberal
Party in 2009.
After the 2010 election, the Gillard Government proposed a carbon tax
which I still believe is sensible policy. But the carbon tax let loose a
scare campaign by Tony Abbott and his business and media supporters
that we have not seen the like of before. Tony Abbott won the 2013
election quite handsomely with a dishonest campaign of opposition to the
carbon tax and scant regard for the damage that climate change was
already causing in Australia.
IMAGE
Restored to the leadership of the Liberal Party in September 2015,
and as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has been crab-walking away from
climate change and related policies as fast as he can in order to
placate the right-wing climate change deniers in his own party. He
blamed the SA government for blackouts which had very little to do with
renewables, but were due to the collapse of the pylons. He continually
talks about blackouts in SA but in NSW with a state Liberal government
he refers merely to "power shedding". There certainly have been
substantial electricity price increases in SA but the price increases
have been much greater in Queensland which is very dependent upon
coal-fired generators. Almost all the media, including the ABC. have
been complicit in not exposing the PM’s false claims.
'Almost all the media, including the ABC, have been complicit in not exposing the PM’s false claims'
Malcolm Turnbull has abandoned almost all those things that we
thought he believed in. In a difficult situation he cannot be relied on.
He is not there when we need him.
He installs solar panels and a battery in his own private residence,
yet attacks state premiers in their commitment to renewable energy.
For years there have been cries for a stable and predictable
environment on climate and energy policies in order that wise and
efficient business decisions could be made. It didn’t happen. We were
warned about a system crisis. We now have one as our record hot summer
unfolds.
In his journal, The Constant Investor, under the heading 'The Great Coal Hoax', Alan Kohler sheeted blame very directly to the Coalition and Malcolm Turnbull. He said:
Those crises have now arrived in the form of blackouts, and they
are not caused by too much renewable energy… it’s due to a lack of
investment, in turn due to a lack of policy certainty and clarity. This is entirely the Liberal Party’s fault — not just Malcolm
Turnbull’s, although he is a rather pathetic figure now. If he didn’t go
along with the hoax, he’d be sacked and another PM would. By taking the low road in 2009 instead of the high road, and
deciding to mislead Australians about the true cost of energy, the
Liberal Party condemned the country to a decade of confusion and stasis
on energy policy. That reached a nadir of absurdity last week with the Treasurer’s coal stunt. The rest of Australia’s leaders, in particular the CEOs of our
largest companies, should declare now that enough is enough, and pull
these idiots into line.
Fairfax - Nick McKenzie | Richard Baker | Peter Ker
It's the fight that has become a proxy war between forces for and
against the coal industry in Australia and it's entering its fiercest
round.
Indian conglomerate Adani's plans to build Australia's
biggest coal mine have been heralded by the federal and Queensland
governments as a boon for local jobs and the economy.
Abbot Point in Queensland, a proposed terminal for coal produced at Adani's Carmichael mine.
But environmentalists are adamant the mine is a ticking time bomb
that may imperil the Galilee Basin and Great Barrier Reef, as well as
serving as an up-yours to the Paris climate change accord.
The
battle will escalate this week when its opponents launch a campaign
targeting 13 marginal federal Coalition seats and at least three
Queensland state seats.
This comes as new details emerge about Adani's chequered history in
India, where the conglomerate and its subsidiaries have come under fire
from environmental courts.
The mine
The $22 billion mega mine Adani plans to build in Carmichael,
Queensland will have six open-cut pits and several underground mines.
Coal will be extracted from the mine site west of Rockhampton and
transported 400 kilometres by rail to the Abbot Point Terminal, south of
Townsville.
It will be processed offshore, before being shipped
to energy-hungry India. The federal government is considering granting
Adani a $1 billion concessional loan to help build the railway line to
the Abbot Point Terminal but the mine's opponents consider the loan a
key battleground in the war against the coal project.
ABC spreading fake news: Canavan Nationals MP Matt Canavan has had a bizarre spray on radio, accusing the ABC of reporting fake news over the Adani coal mine.
Killing the mine
The anti-mine campaign is no empty threat. It has a $1 million war
chest, nine full-time staff including polling and social media experts,
hundreds of volunteers and is being run by left-leaning activist group
GetUp.
While the anti-Adani movement wants to ensure the firm
isn't granted the $1 billion loan, its end game is to kill off the
project.
The Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate
Coalition and 350.org rally in Melbourne against the coal mine. Photo: Wayne Taylor
"We will win," says businessman turned environmental crusader Geoff Cousins.
This
week, the Australian Conservation Foundation, a host of NGOs and GetUp
will launch a campaign targeting 13 marginal coalition seats in
Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
Abbot Point is surrounded by wetlands and coral reefs.
The campaign will employ cutting-edge and traditional tactics. Voters
will be contacted by telephone, advertising and a social media blitz.
GetUp's campaigning is said to have contributed to the loss of several
coalition seats during the 2016 election and the group is hoping to
force Resources Minister Matt Canavan to ditch the proposed $1 billion
concessional loan.
"We're aiming to make 50,000 calls into these
seats over the next three months, and have conversations with at least
the number of people that is equal to that MP's margin in votes. For
example it would take just 532 votes to change the outcome of the seat
of Forde in Queensland," says GetUp's Miriam Lyons.
Adani's proposed mine and rail lines.
The mine opponents will also lobby Westpac bank to join a host of
other financial institutions in ruling out funding the $22 billion
project, while continuing to use the courts to frustrate the government
and Adani's ambitions.
Adani believes it has become a proxy for
the nation's coal industry in a campaign that has seen calls from one
environmental group to get activists to infiltrate the firm by posing as
job seekers.
"This is the most regulated project in the history
of Australia and we are yet to push a shovel in the ground and get one
ounce of coal. If they kill us, they will move on to other companies,"
an Adani insider says.
The political pay-off
In cities such as Townsville, heaving with Australian soldiers, and
the sweltering, sprawling country town of Rockhampton, the mine is
mostly seen as a godsend.
"I have come under fire from those
opposed to coal for my vocal support of this project, but I won't take a
backward step," Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow recently said.
The
Queensland Labor government faces an election in 2018 and, short on
major infrastructure projects, hopes the mine and resulting jobs will
see it returned to office.
Adani and the Queensland government say
the project will deliver an employment bonanza, creating thousands of
jobs during the construction phase. This will level off to 1500 or so
employees when the mine is fully operational.
Pauline Hanson has
backed the mine, subject to assurances around water management and the
use of foreign labour, while local LNP member George Christensen
supports both the mine and the subsidy.
The Minerals Council of
Australia's CEO Brendan Pearson says the anti-mine campaign amounts to
"futile grandstanding" that will only delay job and business
opportunities for thousands of Australians.
"It is patently clear
that the Adani mine will proceed and that is a good thing for regional
communities in Central and Northern Queensland," he said.
Federal LNP members are also barracking for the mine.
One
senior federal minister told Fairfax Media that regardless of
opposition by "zealots", the Carmichael coal project is likely to
receive the $1 billion concessional loan from the government.
But
the minister also privately acknowledges that subsidising a firm
controlled by a controversial Indian billionaire is not without its
problems.
A grubby past
The Adani Group is a diversified conglomerate headed by billionaire
Gautam Adani, one of India's wealthiest magnates and a man who has
cultivated powerful friends, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mr Adani recently met Malcolm Turnbull, whose renewed support for coal (Treasurer Scott Morrison brandished a lump of coal in federal parliament last week)
is at the heart of the Coalition's claim that Labor's renewable energy
policy will lead to a surge in power prices and imperil energy security.
The
power and reach of the Adani Group is legendary in India. But the
group's subsidiaries have also faced allegations of involvement in fraud
and corruption, environmental destruction and labour exploitation.
A
recent ABC investigation into the conglomerate focused on ongoing
investigations by Indian authorities, widely reported by the local
media, into alleged money laundering and tax fraud by Adani
subsidiaries.
The federal resources minister described the ABC report as 'fake news' and said the allegations were untested.
But official Indian tribunals and watchdogs have landed punches on a number of Adani firms, including:
an August 2016 finding previously unreported in Australia by
the Indian National Green Tribunal- an environmental court- which found
Adani partly responsible for failing to clean up after an oil and coal
spill caused by an unseaworthy ship that ran aground off the coast of
Mumbai in 2011. The ship had been chartered by Adani and was carrying
the firm's coal and fuel; and
in January 2016, the same tribunal fined an Adani subsidiary
$4.8 million after finding it had caused environmental destruction while
undertaking works at a fishing village in the Indian port city of
Surat.
A report released by lawyers from Environmental Justice
Australia documents these and other alleged Adani misdeeds in India,
including an illegal iron ore mining and export operation and an
environmental disaster at the Mundra port.
Mr Canavan believes Adani has "been exposed to unfair scrutiny" and criticisms of the firm carry "xenophobic undertones."
"There
have been some high-profile incidents by Australian mining and
resources companies recently, some instances that are quite dire. But it
seems to be, because they [Adani] are Indian or because they want to
develop a new coal basin, they are exposed to a different standard."
Mr
Canavan insists Australia has the regulatory checks and balances to
keep Adani in line. For example, there are dozens of criteria for Adani
to meet in order to meet and maintain its government approval.
And
for all the doomsday warnings about Adani coal ships navigating the
Great Barrier Reef, a company insider says such predictions overlook the
fact that other vessels carrying the quarry of other big miners have
for years been making a similar journey to little, if any, protest.
Queensland
has exported more than 200 million tonnes of coal per year in recent
times (more than triple the volume Adani plans to export) and the
majority of that goes through the reef.
But a businessman who
knows how corporate Australia operates, former Optus CEO, Geoff Cousins,
is dismissive of the protections proffered by the federal government
and Adani. Mr Cousins, a former adviser to prime minister John Howard
and current Australian Conservation Foundation chairman, notes that
"major projects get a wide variety of conditions attached to them and
state and federal governments hide behind those conditions. But when
you go to see if anyone checked on those conditions or whether they were
met, the record is generally appalling."
Where will the coal go
The coal Adani wants to mine is bound for India's power plants,
including those the company owns. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is
championing renewable energy in line with the aims of last year's Paris
Agreement (looking increasingly shaky in the wake of Donald
Tump's election. At the same time, India is also seeking to ramp up its
own coal production in line with its ambitious aim to become self
sufficient in its production of coal.
The mine's proponents say
if India's power stations are denied Australian coal, they will be
forced to use a dirtier local alternative, with greater emissions. This
claim addresses the argument that the burning of Carmichael coal will
undermine efforts to combat climate change. As with most claims
connected to the mine, this is fiercely contested, including by the
progressive Australia Institute, who argue the Galilee Basin's coal is
dirtier than that in other Australian mines. They also contest the
mine's trumpeted job figures.
Ultimately, the fight about Adani's
Carmichael project is about the wisdom of building a massive new coal
mine as the world moves towards less polluting sources of energy. The
issue of climate change is the ultimate political fault line on which
environmentalists believe the fight against Adani must be waged.
Mr
Canavan says it's all about jobs and economic opportunity. And while
the competing battlegrounds aren't mutually exclusive, there will only
be one victor.
While the numbers are not yet in on Australia's latest heatwave
summer – one of the worst in our history – between 1100 and 1500 people
will have died from heat stress. That's been the average of recent
years.
When Treasurer Scott Morrison jovially informed the House
of Representatives "Mr Speaker, this is coal. Don't be afraid! Don't be
scared! It won't hurt you," he was, according to all reputable
scientific and medical studies worldwide, misleading the Parliament.
Scott Morrison with his pet coal in Parliament. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
By mid-century, the effects of worldwide burning of coal and oil in
heating the climate to new extremes will claim more than 50,000
Australian lives per decade, a toll nearly double that of World War II.
And
that doesn't include the 12.6 million human lives lost globally every
year (a quarter of all deaths), according to the World Health
Organisation, from "air, water and soil pollution, chemical exposures,
climate change, and ultraviolet radiation", all of which are a consequence of human use of fossil fuels. The main sources of those toxins are, indisputably, the coal and petrochemical industries.
To pretend, as do Morrison and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, that
this is all a great joke shows a cynical and contemptible disregard for
the sufferings and painful deaths of thousands of Australians from
exposure to the effects of fossil fuels. Understanding of the toxicity
of burnt fossil hydrocarbons has been around since the 19th-century
industrial revolution. The climatic effect of fossil fuels has been
accepted universally by world climate and weather authorities since the
mid-1970s – almost half a century ago.
Yet certain Australian
politicians and leaders still pretend they are ignorant of facts that
are known to everyone else. And they jeer at Australians with the common
sense not to want to die from them.
As eastern Australia sweltered through the recent 40 to 47-degree
heatwave and elderly people who couldn't afford to switch on their air
conditioners for fear of the power bills suffered and died, floods and
bushfires related to the same climatic disturbance claimed further
victims.
The Australian Climate Institute warned politicians a
decade ago that the death toll from heat stress alone was then about
1100 in the five cities of Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and
Brisbane. Nationally, the number is now probably 1500 to 2000 a year –
but no national records are kept, perhaps for obvious reasons.
'Clean coal' makes a comeback New technology means coal will play a role in electricity
generation long into the future, says Malcolm Turnbull. Courtesy ABC
News 24. The institute said at the time:
"With no action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, Australia is
projected to warm by between 0.4 to 2.0 degrees by 2030 and 1.0 to 6.0
degrees by 2070. This warming trend is expected to drive large increases
in the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme temperature events.
For example, by 2030, the yearly average number of days above 35
degrees could increase from 17 to 19-29 in Adelaide and from 9 to 10-16
in Melbourne."
According to more recent projections – such as, for example, those of Professor Peng Bi of Adelaide University
– annual heat-related deaths in the capital cities are predicted to
climb to an average of 2400 a year in the 2020s and 5300 a year in the
2050s. And that's just in the capital cities.
Added to deaths from
fire, flood, cyclone and pollution-related conditions such as cancer
and lung diseases, fossil fuels will be far and away the predominant
factor in the early deaths of Australians by mid-century. Not a single
family will be unaffected by their influence.
It's hard to avoid
the conclusion that the Abbott/Turnbull governments' policy – promoting
the use and export of coal, trying to discourage its replacement by
clean renewables and foot-dragging on climate remediation measures – has
dreadful consequences in the short, medium and long term for
individuals and families.
We want to know the road toll – but not the fuel toll.
Directly and indirectly, these policies will contribute to the loss
of far more Australians than did the combined policies of the
Hitler/Hirohito governments in the 1940s (27,000). They will cost many
thousands more Australian lives than terrorism. Yet ministers treat them
as a jest.
While it's true Australia's emissions, from
fossil-fuel burning, mining and exports, are a small percentage of world
emissions, they nevertheless contribute meaningfully to a situation
that, unchecked, could see the planet heat by 5 to 6 degrees by 2100. If
the frozen methane deposits in the Arctic and ocean are released, then
warming may exceed 10 degrees, beyond which large animals, including
humans, will struggle to exist.
With such temperatures and
climatic extremes, it will become impossible to maintain world food
production from agriculture. Hundreds of millions of refugees will flood
the planet. According to the US Pentagon, there is a high risk of international conflict, even nuclear war, in such conditions.
These
are the rational, evidence-based truths that politicians like Morrison
and Joyce gleefully ignore in their enthusiasm for coal. Indeed, Joyce
is advocating a course likely to ruin his party's main long-term
constituency: farmers.
Australians rightly regard deaths from
motor accidents, suicide, domestic violence, preventable disease, war,
drugs and other causes as tragic, unjustifiable, unacceptable and
unnecessary. Yet there is a curious national silence, a wilful
blindness, about the far larger toll of preventable death from coal and
oil. We want to know the road toll – but not the fuel toll. This
national ignorance encouraged by dishonest claims that they "won't hurt
you".
Yes, they will. Coal and oil will hurt you worse than almost
anything else in your life. They will reap your family, and maybe you,
too.
When there are clean, safe, healthy substitute readily
available – renewables, biofuels, green chemistry – sensible Australians
will turn their back on the untruths and the propaganda, and vote only
for politicians whose policies do not knowingly encompass our early
death.
*Julian Cribb is a Canberra science writer and author. His latest book is Surviving the 21st Century (2017). Links
Record-high temperatures spike concerns about climate change's new normal in the melting Arctic and an already-hot Australia.
Melting sea ice is a troubling sign of record warmth in the Arctic. Credit: Getty Images
Heat
waves are hitting the globe from north to south, with the Arctic, parts
of Australia and the central United States sweating record warmth in
recent days.
The Arctic is in the midst of another hot spell, with temperatures soaring
far above average for the third time this winter. The heat comes after
yet another record-breaking month for low levels of sea ice at the North
Pole, part of a dramatic and troubling warming trend that scientists
have reported over the past few months.
In Oklahoma and Texas, temperatures reached into the 90s over the weekend. Mangum, Okla. broke a daily record when the thermometer hit 99 degrees on Saturday.Last week, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin issued an emergency burn ban in response to the extreme weather, but a grass fire broke out anyway in Oklahoma City, prompting authorities to ask some residents to leave their homes.
Parts of southeastern Australia are also in the midst of an extreme heat wave, with temperatures topping 115 degrees on Saturday west of Sydney. The heat has helped fuel dozens of bush fires that are forcing evacuations. Authorities have said the fire conditions are as bad as they have seen.
For climate scientists, the relative warmth in the Arctic is arguably
the most troubling. Temperatures in the far north of the planet have
risen more than 20 degrees above normal on average in the past week, according to data from the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the polar ice cap in January stood at a record low
for the 38 years it has collected satellite data. Compared to a year
earlier, which set the previous record for the smallest January ice cap,
the North Pole had lost a Wyoming-sized area of ice.
"I've been looking at Arctic weather and climate for 35 years and
I've never seen anything like the warming conditions we've been seeing
this winter," said Mark Serreze, the center's director.
Some scientists believe that climate change is exacerbating weather
patterns that allow storms to bring warm air north. The melting ice cap
may be playing an important role, scientists say. Patches of open ocean act like reservoirs of heat, pushing the warmth farther north. Water also absorbs far more heat than ice, creating a warming feedback loop.
In December, NOAA released its annual Arctic Report Card,
which warned that if the extreme warming of recent years continues, the
region could experience a climatic shift. The Arctic is warming at
twice the global average, and mean temperatures over land have risen 3.5
degrees Celsius since the beginning of the 20th century.
The dramatic warming has prompted seemingly outlandish proposals from
some scientists. Last month, researchers published an article that
envisioned an array of wind-powered pumps
that would bring seawater from below up onto the ice surface, where it
would freeze and thicken the ice cap. An extra several feet of ice, the
scientists say, would help the polar cap withstand the warmer
temperatures that have been shrinking it to record levels. The authors
also put a price tag on their proposal: $500 billion per year. Links
Researchers behind ‘Anthropocene equation’ say impact of people’s intense activity on Earth far exceeds that of natural events spread across millennia
Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans over the past 45 years have
increased the rate of temperature rise to 1.7 degrees celsius per
century.
Photograph: ISS/NASA
For the first time, researchers have developed a mathematical
equation to describe the impact of human activity on the earth, finding
people are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural
forces.
The equation was developed in conjunction with Professor Will
Steffen, a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian
National University, and was published in the journal The Anthropocene Review.
The authors of the paper
wrote that for the past 4.5bn years astronomical and geophysical
factors have been the dominating influences on the Earth system. The
Earth system is defined by the researchers as the biosphere, including
interactions and feedbacks with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere
and upper lithosphere.
But over the past six decades human forces “have driven exceptionally
rapid rates of change in the Earth system,” the authors wrote, giving
rise to a period known as the Anthropocene.
“Human activities now rival the great forces of nature in driving changes to the Earth system,” the paper said.
Steffen and his co-researcher, Owen Gaffney, from the Stockholm
Resilience Centre, came up with an “Anthropocene Equation” to determine
the impact of this period of intense human activity on the earth.
Explaining the equation in New Scientist,
Gaffney said they developed it “by homing in on the rate of change of
Earth’s life support system: the atmosphere, oceans, forests and
wetlands, waterways and ice sheets and fabulous diversity of life”.
“For four billion years the rate of change of the Earth system has
been a complex function of astronomical and geophysical forces plus
internal dynamics: Earth’s orbit around the sun, gravitational
interactions with other planets, the sun’s heat output, colliding
continents, volcanoes and evolution, among others,” he wrote.
“In the equation, astronomical and geophysical forces tend to zero
because of their slow nature or rarity, as do internal dynamics, for
now. All these forces still exert pressure, but currently on orders of
magnitude less than human impact.”
According to Steffen these forces have driven a rate of change of 0.01 degrees Celsius per century.
Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans over the past 45 years, on
the other hand, “have increased the rate of temperature rise to 1.7
degrees Celsius per century, dwarfing the natural background rate,” he
said.
This represented a change to the climate that was 170 times faster than natural forces.
“We are not saying the astronomical forces of our solar system or
geological processes have disappeared, but in terms of their impact in
such a short period of time they are now negligible compared with our
own influence,” Steffen said.
“Crystallising this evidence in the form of a simple equation gives
the current situation a clarity that the wealth of data often dilutes.
“What we do is give a very specific number to show how humans are
affecting the earth over a short timeframe. It shows that while other
forces operate over millions of years, we as humans are having an impact
at the same strength as the many of these other forces, but in the
timeframe of just a couple of centuries.
“The human magnitude of climate change looks more like a meteorite strike than a gradual change.”
Gaffney and Steffen wrote that while the Earth system had proven
resilient, achieving millions of years of relative stability due to the
complex interactions between the Earth’s core and the biosphere, human
societies would be unlikely to fare so well.
Failure to reduce anthropological climate change could “trigger societal collapse”, their research concluded.
As we've sweltered through this terrible summer – and lately, as
bushfires have raged – what a comfort it's been to know that climate
change doesn't exist and isn't happening.
Or, if it does exist, it's not caused by anything humans have done, so there's nothing we can do about it.
The Sir Ivan bushfire started east of Duneedoo in the NSW Central
tablelands on a day that NSW fire authorities classified as
catastrophic. Photo: Dean Sewell/Oculi
Or, if it is caused by humans burning fossil fuels for the past 200 years, let's say
we've got a policy to deal with it, go to international conferences and
make pledges to act, then come home and not do much about it.
That
way, we'll have all bases covered: something to calm the consciences of
those still silly enough to believe climate change is real, but not
enough to annoy the party's many climate change deniers, nor our
generous donors in the coal industry.
12 homes lost to NSW bushfires More than 40,000 hectares and at least 12 homes have been destroyed, but no loss of life reported, in NSW worst ever fire day.
And, just to make you feel better, let me remind you of the big win
the deniers have had. The Coalition's leading, longest-standing and most
articulate supporter of action on climate change has changed sides.
Malcolm
Turnbull, the man who lost his job as party leader because was so keen
to see action he supported the Labor government's emissions trading
scheme, is now keen to ensure it never happens again.
The squeakiest wheels in the party want him to demonise renewable
energy, blaming it for all the blackouts and price rises? Introduce new
government subsidies for coal while making the future for power
generation so uncertain no one's game to invest in anything?
Sure. Whatever it takes.
(Don't
worry, Malcolm, I'm sure all the people inside and outside the Liberal
fold who were so pleased when you became Prime Minister – me included
– will learn to accept your need to abandon everything we know you
believe and start doing Tony Abbott impressions.)
It's the easiest
thing in the world for people to imagine that whatever's been happening
lately is much bigger and more terrible than ever before.
Trouble is, the scientists keep confirming our casual impressions. A report this month prepared by top climate scientists for the independent Climate Council, is all bad news.
They
say all extreme weather events in Australia are now occurring in an
atmosphere that's warmer and wetter than it was in the 1950s.
"Heatwaves are becoming hotter, lasting longer and occurring more often," they say.
"Extreme fire weather and the length of the fire season is increasing, leading to an increase in bushfire risk."
This fits with the findings of the latest biennial CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology State of the Climate report.
According
to the bureau's Dr Karl Braganza, Australia is already experiencing the
effects of climate change, with record-breaking heat now becoming
commonplace across the country.
"Australia experienced its three
warmest springs on record in 2013, 2014 and 2015," he says. "Temperature
and rainfall during this period is critical to southern Australia's
fire season.
"We've already seen an increase in fire weather and a longer fire season across southern and eastern Australia since the 1970s.
"In these regions the number of days with weather conducive to fire is likely to increase.
"Whilst
the observations show us increased rainfall in some parts of Australia,
we have also seen significant seasonal decline, such as in the
April-October growing season, where an 11 per cent decline in rainfall
has been experienced in the continental southeast since the mid-1990s.
"The
changing climate significantly affects all Australians through
increased heatwaves, more significant wet weather events and more severe
fire weather conditions.
"Some of the record-breaking extreme heat we have been seeing recently will be considered normal in 30 years' time."
Oh, good.
Of
course, none of this is having any effect on agriculture. It must be a
great comfort to our farmers to know that, by order of Barnaby Joyce and
the National Party, climate change is a figment of the climate
scientists' imagination.
This is good news, since I read that
reliable rainfall and predictable temperature ranges are critical to
agricultural production, and these are the very factors affected by a
changing climate – if it was changing, which it isn't.
A new CSIRO study,
led by Dr Zvi Hochman, has found that Australia's average yields from
wheat-growing more than tripled been 1900 and 1990 thanks to advances in
technology, but have stalled in the years since then.
The study
found that, since 1990, our wheat-growing zone had experienced an
average rainfall decline of 2.8 millimetres, or 28 per cent per cropping
season, and a maximum daily temperature increase of about 1 degree.
Australia's
"yield potential" – determined by climate and soil type – which is
always much higher than farmers' actual yields, has fallen by 27 per
cent since 1990.
So all the efforts farmers have made to improve
their yields with better technology and methods have served only to
offset the effects of climate change, leaving them no better off.
"Assuming
the climate trends we have observed over the past 26 years continue at
the same rate, even if farmers continue to improve their practices, it
is likely that the national wheat yield will fall," Hochman says.
He
says these findings would be broadly applicable to other cereal grains,
pulses and oilseed crops, which grow in the same regions and season.
But not to worry. They're only scientists. What would they know that our pollies didn't want to know?
