The Turnbull Government's New Energy Policy Will Shave $2 Off Your Weekly Power Bill

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

Households will be an average $2 a week better off under a reinvention of Australia's energy and emissions policy – and the Turnbull government has refused to guarantee even those meagre savings.
It emerged on Tuesday that the savings could start as low as $25 a year, or 50¢ a week.

The government's energy policy explained
Here's what you need to know about the national energy guarantee - the government's newest energy policy.

Despite pitching the policy as a salve to the hip pockets of price-weary power consumers, the government also concedes that the predicted cost saving was based on preliminary analysis, and detailed modelling has not yet been carried out.
The government on Tuesday sought to reset the national energy debate by announcing energy companies will be forced to meet mandated standards of reliability and emissions reduction, which would reduce the risk of blackouts and drive prices down.
Polls show voters are deeply concerned about soaring power bills, and the government's ability to address the problem is a key element on which the policy will be judged.
Mr Turnbull described the measure as a "game-changer ... that will ensure that we have affordable power".
"It provides investor certainty, which the market has been crying out for for a long time. It reduces volatility, which, of course, has been driving up prices," Mr Turnbull said.
Known as the national energy guarantee, the policy is based on a unanimous recommendation by the independent Energy Security Board, chaired by Dr Kerry Schott.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sells the policy during question time on Tuesday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The board advised the government that the guarantee could cut residential bills by an average $100-$115 a year in the decade to 2030.
Wholesale prices were expected to drop by up to 25 per cent a year over the same period.

Energy officials need to do more work to determine the exact potential household saving. Photo: Matt Davidson

Australian Energy Market Commission chair John Pierce on Tuesday told Sky News that under other modelling scenarios, households would save just $25 a year in 2020 – or 50¢ a week.
The annual household saving spruiked by the government is greater than the $90 predicted under the clean energy target recommended by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel – the prospect of which the government has abandoned.
However Mr Turnbull on Tuesday repeatedly refused to guarantee the price saving would be achieved.
He referred inquiries to Mr Pierce, a member of the advisory board who said the figures were based on "analysis and modelling of the market and the alternative schemes that we've looked at in the past".
Mr Pierce said the board would undertake "detailed analysis and modelling" of the proposal ahead of a November meeting of the Council of Australian Governments to provide "firmer estimates of those price effects".
He said the policy would drive down household bills in three ways.
The measures would end policy uncertainty, leading to increased investment, and hence, electricity supply.
The mechanism would also use existing market contracts to find a more efficient mix between dispatchable and low emissions energy, and competition would be improved because energy retailers would enter contracts with the lowest-cost energy providers.
Labor's energy and climate change spokesman Mark Butler on Tuesday said the government was unwilling to guarantee price savings to households and had "confirmed no modelling has been undertaken".
"At best it would appear that the broad analysis that has been undertaken would involve a 50¢ per week saving for households in three years time, perhaps rising to as much as $2 a week."
"It's now incumbent on Malcolm Turnbull to release some real detail about this policy so we can all understand what the impact would be," Mr Butler said.

Links

• Malcolm Turnbull unveils the government's new energy policy
• Meet the NEG: Turnbull's new climate and energy policy
• Turnbull's change to suit the political climate
• PM's energy policy seeks to cut costs, mandate use of 'reliable' coal, gas
• Tony Abbott launches warning shot on climate policy

The World Is Going Slow On Coal, But Misinformation Is Distorting The Facts

The Guardian - Adam Morton

A recent story on 621 plants being built globally was played up in various media – but the figure is way off the mark

China still uses a stack of coal but data shows it has stopped construction at 33 sites in the past three months. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

This is a story about how misinformation can take hold. It’s not always down to dishonesty. Sometimes it’s just a lack of time, a headline and the multiplying power of ideological certainty.
Last week, China announced it was stopping or postponing work on 151 coal plants that were either under, or earmarked for, construction.
Last month, India reported its national coal fleet on average ran at little more than 60% of its capacity – among other things, well below what is generally considered necessary for an individual generator to be financially viable.
Neither of these stories gained much of a foothold in the Australia media. But one story on global coal did: that 621 plants were being built across the planet.
The line was run in print, repeated on national radio and rippled out on social media among likeminded audiences. Some politicians and commentators claimed it showed it was strange, maybe even ridiculous, that MPs, financiers and energy companies said new coal power stations had no role to play in Australia.
But the figure is wrong. Way off, in fact. According to the most recent data, there are 267 coal stations under construction. More than 40% of those are not actually new ones, but expansions of existing generators.

Global coal power construction as at July 2017

A bit of background: the figure dates back to 19 June, when Nationals senator John “Wacka” Williams asked the parliamentary library to answer a few reasonable questions. How many coal plants are there in other countries? How many have been built recently or are being built? How many have closed? According to the parliamentary library analysis, he wanted the answers by 4pm the same day.
Fast forward to September, and the Australian ran a page one story quoting the analysis under the headline “World building new coal plants faster than it shuts them”. The Oz (correctly) reported that the library found 621 coal-fired power units were being built. This was mis-repeated by several people who don’t accept that climate change is a present threat – including blogger and broadcaster Andrew Bolt and government backbench energy and environment committee chair Craig Kelly – as 621 plants being built.
In reality, coal power stations are usually made up of several units. Victoria’s Hazelwood, which shut in March, had eight. But the distinction mattered little once Bolt had provided the shareable online headline: “New coal-fired power stations: World 621, Australia zero. Now understand?”
While the stations/units confusion is relevant, it is not the main issue. The 621 is incorrect, however you cut it.By the time it appeared in the media, it was more than a year out of date. How do we know? The guy behind the data that was the initial source for the library analysis says so.
The parliamentary library used as its source the Comstat Data Portal, a trade-focused African website not known for its energy expertise. As the library noted, the African portal copied its data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker, the widely respected database run by US-based anti-coal organisation CoalSwarm and used by the OECD, International Energy Agency and Bloomberg publications. But none of the players involved in spreading this story in Australia contacted CoalSwarm directly to check if the African database was accurate.
It’s not. Ted Nace, the director of CoalSwarm, says there appeared to be numerous transcription errors. More significantly, the data on Comstat is out of date – from August last year. It did not reflect that new construction of coal plants plummeted in 2016 and 2017 following declines in construction in China and India.
More coal-fired capacity is still being built than closed each year, though the gap has narrowed significantly.

Global coal power capacity built and retired, 2010-2017

Guardian Graphic | Source: Global Coal Plant Tracker, July 2017 *(up to July)

But, crucially, coal stations are not being used as much. The amount of electricity produced across the planet by burning coal has fallen each year since 2013.
“A distinction needs to be kept in mind between capacity and electrical output,” Nace says. “Even though there are more power plants, the actual production of electricity from those plants – and likewise the amount of coal used worldwide – has fallen every year since 2013, with a small drop in 2014 and larger drops in 2015 and 2016.”

Yearly change in coal production, 2010-2016

Guardian graphic | Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy

The parliamentary assessment, and subsequent reporting, would have benefited from a closer glance at a report released in March by CoalSwarm, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Titled Boom and Bust 2017, it found an extraordinary 62% drop in new coal plant construction across the globe last year, and an 85% fall in new coal plant permits in China.
Analysis of CoalSwarm’s database shows that in July, construction was taking place at 300 plants globally. Of those, 183 were new power stations and 117 extensions of existing plants. But that number is changing rapidly.
As in so many things, the extraordinary story in coal comes from China. It still uses a stack of it, and is still building plenty of power stations. But according to a breakdown of the latest cancellation data announced last week by Simon Holmes à Court, senior adviser at the University of Melbourne’s energy transition hub, it stopped construction at 33 sites in the past three months alone.
It means that since July, the number of new coal stations being built in China has fallen from 103 to just 74. There has also been a slight decrease in the number being expanded, down to 46. The reason? A glut in the Chinese electricity market. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found its coal fleet ran at only 47.5% capacity last year.
India is the other big player, with 45 power stations under construction – 19 new plants and 26 being expanded. While debate continues to rage over whether the Australian government should subsidise Adani’s planned giant export coal mine in outback Queensland, existing Indian coal plants – including those owned by Adani – are struggling.
Among countries comparable to Australia in terms of development, Japan – which signalled it would make a significant investment in coal after shutting down its nuclear fleet following the Fukushima disaster six years ago – has 14 construction projects, many of them small by Australian standards.
Germany has been held up by lobby group the Minerals Council of Australia as an industrialised country investing in “high efficiency, low emissions”, or HELE, coal technology. It has one station under construction. Building work at what is known as Datteln 4 started a decade ago next month. After several delays, it is due to be commissioned next year.
It is the only coal station being built in western Europe. Britain’s Conservative party has promised to phase out coal by 2025, and Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government by 2030. The two countries last week said they would work together to push other countries to join them. Despite Donald Trump’s grand promises about reviving the coal industry, there are no new stations under construction in the US.
What does all this mean for Australia? In terms of the political debate, probably very little. Given the modern aversion to the persuasive power of evidence, misinformation will find a way.
But don’t let yourself be kidded into thinking only local investors are leaving coal behind.

Links

• Tony Abbott needs to explain U-turn on climate change, Julie Bishop says
• New coal plants have a role in Australia's energy future, Josh Frydenberg says
• Alan Finkel defends clean energy target as Coalition turns its back
• Government 'clean coal' push would be likely to make Australia's emissions worse
• Hard facts unmask the fiction behind Coalition's 'coal comeback'
• Scott Morrison brings coal to question time: what fresh idiocy is this?
• Why coal-fired power handouts would be an attack on climate and common sense
• How Malcolm Turnbull could ignore the facts and fund the myth of 'clean' coal
• Australia dubbed 'fossil of the day' after lobbying for coal mine at climate talks
• Australian unions call for 'just transition' from coal-generated electricity

Australia Debates: Does A Warming Planet Really Need More Coal?

New York Times - Jacqueline Williams

An enormous expansion at Abbot Point, Australia’s most northern deep water coal port, is planned as part of a controversial mining project. David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

ABBOT POINT, Australia — In a desolate corner of northeastern Australia, about 100 miles from the nearest town, a grassy stretch of prime grazing land sits above a vein of coal so rich and deep that it could be mined for decades.

The Australian government is considering a proposal to build one of the world’s largest coal mines in this remote locale, known as the Galilee Basin, where acacia and eucalyptus trees grow wild between scattered creeks.

An Indian conglomerate, the Adani Group, has asked for a taxpayer-financed loan of as much as $800 million to make the enormous project viable, promising to create thousands of jobs in return.

But the plan has met intense opposition in Australia and abroad, focusing attention on a question with global resonance: Given the threat of climate change and the slowing global demand for coal, does the world really need another giant mine, especially at the public’s expense?

Adani has proposed building six open-cut pits and five underground complexes capable of producing as much as 66 million tons of coal a year. New infrastructure to support the mine — a rail line to the coast and an expanded port — would also make it economically feasible to extract coal from at least eight additional sites in the Galilee Basin.

That could more than double coal output in Australia, which already produces more coal than any other nation except China, the United States and India. About 88 percent of the 487 million tons of coal mined annually in Australia is exported.

Mick Derrick, center, a volunteer from the North Queensland Conservation Council, conducting a survey in Townsville, Queensland, about the proposed Adani coal mine. David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

For many environmentalists, what happens in this mining case is a test of the world’s commitment to fighting climate change. Its failure would register as an unmistakable sign of an international shift away from the fossil fuels behind climate change. But if Australia agrees to subsidize the mine — even though several commercial banks have shunned it — the project would demonstrate the lasting allure and influence of the coal industry.

“How it can be constructed — at a time when the whole world is committed to move away from fossil fuels — is madness that most people just can’t understand,” said Geoffrey Cousins, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The project, known as the Carmichael mine, has provoked strong resistance in part because of its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, a natural wonder that is already dying because of overheated seawater blamed on climate change. Adani plans to deliver most of the coal to India on shipping routes that critics say would further damage the ecosystem of the world’s greatest system of reefs.

The debate over the mine has dominated headlines in Australia for months and fueled one of the most fervent environmental campaigns in the nation’s history. Protests have grown in size and frequency, and polls show Australians who oppose the mine outnumber those who support it by more than two-to-one.

A group of Indigenous Australians is also challenging Adani’s claim to the land.

But Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull supports the project, and it just needs financing to proceed. A government agency established to support private-sector infrastructure investment is reviewing Adani’s loan request, and the company has said it is also lining up money overseas.

“This is a tipping point,” said Maree Dibella, a coordinator of the North Queensland Conservation Council, referring to the mine’s role in the global campaign against coal.

The Collinsville coal mine, the oldest in Queensland. Proponents of a new mine say it would bring thousands of jobs to Queensland. David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Around the Galilee Basin, where a population of less than 20,000 is scattered across an area the size of Britain, opinion is divided.

Bruce Currie, a cattle farmer who lives near the site and has traveled to India to investigate Adani’s record, said he is worried the mine will drain too much groundwater, calling it “yet another burden our small business has to bear.”

Several hours drive north in Collinsville, one of the area’s oldest mining communities, Roderick Macdonald, 57, a retired miner, said Adani had come to the town promising to build mining camps and employ local people.

“From what I can hear and see, Mr. Adani’s going to do nothing for this town,” Mr. Macdonald said, referring to Gautam Adani, the billionaire founder and chairman of the company.

But others in the region are more hopeful. Mining accounts for as much as 7 percent of the Australian economy, and the northeastern state of Queensland, where the Galilee Basin lies, has suffered a downturn in recent years because of slowing demand for natural resources, especially from China.

“I need jobs for Queenslanders,” said the state’s premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, of the Adani proposal.

Roderick Macdonald, a retired miner in Collinsville, Queensland. “From what I can hear and see,” he said, the proposed coal mine project would “do nothing for this town.” David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Towns along the coast have been vying for potential contracts with the mine for maintenance work, construction and other services. “People are really rooting for this because of the economy,” said Stephen Smyth, a local union leader, who started working in underground mines at 17.

The Carmichael mine, he added, is “offering that thing of hope, hope for a better life, secure employment and better wages so people can live a reasonable life.”

Adani has said the project will create as many as 10,000 jobs in the region. But a consultant hired by Adani said the employment claim was overstated in court testimony given in a case where a conservation group was looking to block the mine. Critics have also noted that other mines in Australia may need to scale back production if Carmichael opens, meaning job losses elsewhere.

A host of Australian celebrities — including the rock band Midnight Oil — and international groups have urged Mr. Turnbull to kill the project, arguing that such a large mine would violate Australia’s commitment in the Paris climate accord to work to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

In April, Mr. Turnbull met with Mr. Adani and later told reporters that the mine “will create tens of thousands of jobs,” adding, “Plainly, there is a huge economic benefit from a big project of this kind, assuming it’s built and it proceeds.”

If Adani and other mines in the Galilee Basin go ahead and reach maximum production, coal from the region would release as much as 700 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, or nearly as much as Germany generates in emissions, according to a study by Greenpeace.

Coal awaiting export at the Abbot Point port. David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Australia has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, but the coal it sells to India and other countries would not be counted in its total.

It is unclear if India even needs the extra coal. After years of big increases in coal consumption, the growth rate slowed last year as the nation has improved energy efficiency and shifted to solar, wind and hydropower. India’s coal-fired power plants are running below 60 percent of capacity, a record low, experts say.

That has raised questions about the economics of the Carmichael mine. Australia’s four largest banks have publicly ruled out financing it, and analysts have argued that the mine would face stiff competition from local sources of coal in India and elsewhere.

Globally, coal consumption actually decreased by 1.7 percent in 2016, according to a BP report on energy trends, leading the company to declare that “the fortunes of coal appear to have taken a decisive break from the past.”

Critics worry Adani could default on the government’s loan or flood the market, lowering prices worldwide and allowing coal to make a comeback as an energy source.

The Adani Group’s business record has also drawn scrutiny. The conglomerate, whose interests span natural resources, logistics, energy and agriculture, has faced allegations in India of environmental degradation, money laundering and bribery, but it has denied any illegal activity.

Mike Brunker, a member of the Whitsunday Regional Council, supports the coal mine, viewing it as a potential creator of much needed jobs in the area. David Maurice Smith for The New York Times

Adani leased about 460 square miles of land in the Galilee Basin nearly a decade ago. It can take two to three days to get to the site from the coast, with the last leg of the trip on unpaved roads. Surveying, soil testing and design work has begun, including on an airstrip, mining camp, access roads and the rail link, said Ron Watson, a spokesman for Adani Australia.

Coal from the mine would be transported by rail about 240 miles through grazing land to Abbot Point, the nation’s most northern deep water coal port, which is already used to ship coal to China, Japan and South Korea. Adani has signed a 99-year lease of the port and plans an expansion that would allow it to double the amount of coal going through.

From the air, the piles of coal and equipment at Abbot Point are a striking contrast with the turquoise waters of the Coral Sea. The closest coral of the Great Barrier Reef is just 12 miles away.

A 30-minute drive southeast from Abbot Point is the seaside town of Bowen, where parts of the Nicole Kidman epic “Australia” was filmed a decade ago during better times. Now, the streets are dotted with “For Sale” signs beyond the main drag.

“We had miners living in the high parts of town,” or the most expensive neighborhoods, said Mike Brunker, who represents Bowen in the Whitsunday regional council and is a supporter of the mine for the jobs it is projected to bring. “That was the boom time. They had to leave, they had to go to other mines, or they’ve just gone broke.”

Further up the coast is Townsville, home to Adani’s headquarters in Australia, where protesters sometimes congregate and residents exemplify the conflicts felt by many in the region.

“You don’t know what’s good for us,” one man snapped at an environmental activist conducting a survey recently.

Not too long after, another resident told the activist, “I oppose the mine even though I applied for a job.”

Links

• Mining Companies Buy Political Influence in Australia, Report Says
• Dunedoo Journal: Coal Mining’s Promise Falls Through for Remote Australian Town
• Op-Ed Contributor: Australia’s Addiction to Coal
• Australia's Mining Boom Is Pied Piper for Workers
• Op-Ed Contributor: Help for Australia’s Coal Workers
• Large Sections of Australia’s Great Reef Are Now Dead, Scientists Find

Tony Abbott Launches Warning Shot On Climate Policy

Fairfax - Mark Kenny

Tony Abbott has fired a telling shot across Malcolm Turnbull's bow, warning that any energy package agreed to in cabinet must also pass a party room wary of anything approaching a clean energy target or other subsidy scheme for renewables.
It came as the Turnbull government received more bad news in the fortnightly Newspoll series, prompting Mr Abbott to declare a future return to the leadership was possible but would occur only if he was drafted by colleagues, which he described as "almost impossible to imagine".

Tony's climate complex
Tony Abbott's speech in London "Daring to doubt" reveals how far the former PM needs to travel to find a receptive audience for his climate change denial. Artist: Matt Davidson

Signalling that Coalition MPs will be no rubber stamp on energy, the dumped former prime minister said the backbench deserved "plenty of chance to digest" the formula.
Mr Abbott's blunt message sets the stage for another showdown over a policy area that has divided moderates and conservatives within the Coalition for a decade, and become a constant cipher for simmering leadership rivalries.
Just hours before the Turnbull cabinet was due to discuss the contentious energy affordability and reliability formula, itself a reframed clean energy policy due to internal frictions, Mr Abbott used a regular radio chat with 2GB host Ray Hadley to lay down some political markers.
Acknowledging the government was now just nine losing Newspoll surveys away from the 30-poll benchmark Mr Turnbull set as his trigger for challenging Mr Abbott in September 2015, Mr Abbott emphasised the importance of "getting the right policy".
"I don't think this is something that should be, as it were, rushed through, but nevertheless, it's got to be got right," he said.
"We have to get it right, and I hope that a lot of very serious thought has been given to this matter by [Energy] Minister Josh Frydenberg; he's a bloke I respect, he's very capable, he's very talented, and let's see what he comes up with."

Warning shot on energy: former prime minister Tony Abbott, pictured with then-assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg at Parliament House in March 2015.  Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Abbott, who famously rose to the leadership of the Liberal Party in 2009 at Mr Turnbull's expense by championing a pivot away from Mr Turnbull's pro-emissions trading stance, dismissed any suggestion he would challenge, despite a growing sense that the government was headed towards defeat.
"This was the test the Prime Minister set for leaders; it's his test not mine," he said, while pointedly leaving one avenue open to his return.
"The only way an 'ex' could ever come back is by way of a draft and that's almost impossible to imagine," he said.
"That's a pretty rare and unusual business in politics."
Mr Abbott's own political hero, John Howard, was drafted back to the top position in the 1990s after an initially unsuccessful stint as opposition leader in the 1980s. Mr Howard went on to be prime minister for almost a dozen years.
Others have also made leadership returns after leaving or losing, including Kevin Rudd, Kim Beazley and, of course, Mr Turnbull himself.
Jeff Kennett and Colin Barnett returned to the party leadership to become Liberal premiers of Victoria and Western Australia respectively.

Links

• Turnbull should stand and fight Abbott on climate: Hewson
• Green scheme costs must be 'proportionate'
• This is the only way Abbott's vendetta will end
• Clean Energy Target: There's nothing in the ACCC report that suggests it should be axed
• Senate crossbench looms as government's only path to energy policy deal
• Abbott warns against energy policy 'rush'

NASA's CO2-Tracking Satellite Deconstructs Earth's Carbon Cycle

Wired - Robbie Gonzalez

Artist rendition of the OCO-2 observatory. JPL/NASA

This much scientists know: Humans pump about 40 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every year. Less clear is where the planet puts it.
About half of it stays in the air, where it adds to the annual, two- to three-part-per-million increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration and the gradual warming of the planet. The other half is hoovered up by the planet's carbon sinks—oceans and plants—in roughly equal quantities, slowing its accumulation in the atmosphere. But the rate of carbon dioxide removal, especially by vegetation, varies a lot from year to year. What's more, nobody's certain where or how this reuptake is happening, let alone when the globe's carbon sinks will overflow.
That’s because existing carbon-monitoring methods are predominantly ground-based—and in shockingly short supply. Some 150 of them dot the Earth, sniffing the air and reporting the carbon content of the local firmament. But to study how land and ocean sinks vary on a global scale, from season to season? There just aren't enough.

An artist's rendition of what the OCO-2 spacecraft sees. Debbi McLean/GSFC/NASA-JPL

"They're very precise, but there's very few of them," says Annmarie Eldering, an environmental engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "If you want to understand how the continent of Africa or the Pacific Ocean relate to the global carbon cycle, that data set isn't very sensitive."
For decades, climate scientists have been studying the carbon cycle from the ground, when what they really needed was a 30,000-foot view.
Or better yet: A 2.3-million-foot view.
In July 2014, NASA placed its first and only CO₂-monitoring spacecraft into Earth's orbit, some 435 miles above the planet's surface. Dubbed the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-1 died in 2009, when it failed to launch and crashed into the ocean near Antarctica), it's spent the last three years lapping the globe in a sun-synchronous orbit, collecting millions of measurements per month.
But OCO-2 doesn't measure CO₂ directly. Rather, it measures wavelengths of sunlight reflected off the Earth's surface.
The relative intensity of those wavelengths indicate how much CO₂ the sunlight passes through in the column of air separating the satellite from the ground below.
Every 16 days, NASA assembles these measurements into a map of sorts—a global carbon snapshot that helps researchers understand how Earth's carbon sinks respond to seasonal shifts, human CO₂ emissions, and major climate events. "It's a lot more data than has ever been collected," says Eldering, who serves as OCO-2's deputy project scientist. "And the fun is in the details of the data."
Those details are the subject of several studies published in this week's issue of Science. Taken together, they demonstrate OCO-2's abilities by filling important gaps in scientists' understanding of how carbon shifts between the Earth, the sky, and the sea—and why it moves the way it does.

In this visualization, reds and yellows depict regions of higher than average CO2, while blues show regions lower than average. Atmospheric CO2 levels plummet during spring and explode in the winter before peaking in April, when decomposing plants and humanity's fuel emissions drive atmospheric carbon levels to their annual maximum. A. Eldering et al., Science (2017)

One study reveals a dramatic ebb and flow in the Northern Hemisphere's carbon cycle: Atmospheric CO₂ levels plummet during spring and explode in the winter before peaking in April, when decomposing plants and humanity's fuel emissions drive atmospheric carbon levels to their annual maximum. A different investigation showcases OCO-2's ability to track carbon emissions from individual cities and volcanoes. Yet another study demonstrates the spacecraft's ability to not only detect the faint fluorescent glow emitted by photosynthesizing plants, but use those measurements to infer, from hundreds of miles overhead, the amount of carbon being consumed by vegetation down on Earth.
But the most impressive study illuminates the impact of a powerful El Niño event on the global carbon cycle—and how rising temperatures could push the planet's carbon sinks to their limits.
The 2014–2016 El Niño event was among the strongest in history (Nature, the august scientific journal, referred to it as "Godzilla"), which meant the world's tropical regions were less wet and a lot hotter than usual. It also coincided with the highest rate of atmospheric CO₂ increase ever recorded.
"El Niño provided a very big signal," Eldering says. Much of the world experienced that signal in the form of calamitous weather. But for OCO-2? "It was this great natural experiment where we had heat and drought outside the normal range, and we could study how the carbon system responded," Eldering says. It also let her team peer into the future: Many climate models suggest the world will be warmer and drier at the end of the century than it is today. The conditions precipitated by El Niño served as a dry run.
The event's role in the 2015 carbon spike appears to have been enormous. A study led by JPL climatologist Junjie Liu combined data from OCO-2 and other Earth-observing satellites to show that 80 percent of the record rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels could be attributed to tropical regions of South America, Africa, and Asia releasing more carbon than usual. Together these areas unloaded about 2.5-gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere in 2015 than in 2011—nearly one quarter the amount humans typically emit in a year.

This infographic depicts the unusually high levels of carbon dioxide release from three tropical continents during 2015 El Niño. NASA-JPL/Caltech

More importantly, though, Liu and her colleagues showed that the processes driving this carbon flux varied from continent to continent. In Asia, the principal drivers were massive fires. In South America it was a lack of rain. And Africa? The continent actually saw typical plant growth but hotter than usual temperatures, which accelerated the decomposition of plant matter and the release of CO₂.
Those last two cases carry grave implications for the future of Earth's carbon sinks: The anomalous heat and drought that the researchers observed in Africa and South America are expected to be commonplace by the end of this century. If these regions react in 2100 the way they did in 2015, more of the carbon emissions humans expel into the atmosphere will stay in the atmosphere.
The OCO-2 studies clarify how carbon's movement between Earth's tropics and the atmosphere varies, depending on the region you're looking at. That kind of nuance will be a boon to climate research. "It’s really impressive," says Josep Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project. "It produces a novel, complex picture of the processes behind changes in global CO₂ levels. To me, it signals the beginning of a new era of carbon cycle sciences and the study of the Earth’s carbon sources and sinks."
Not that there isn't a need for more tools. Remember: OCO-2 detects CO₂ indirectly, by measuring light; unlike ground-based measurements, you can't test its accuracy by comparing its readings to known quantities of gas. "This is my hobby horse, but the Achilles heel of the whole carbon-tracking endeavor has been an underinvestment in calibrated measurements," says Pieter Tans, director of NOAA's Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases Group. Remote sensing satellites like OCO-2 offer climatologists a valuable but insufficient vantage point, he says; a comprehensive monitoring network will require more greenhouse gas sensors—not just on the ground, but in the sky. Tans envisions a scenario in which hundreds of commercial airplanes equipped with sensors produce a dense vertical profile of atmospheric gasses. A fleet of high-altitude balloons could collect measurements, as well.
All of which, of course, will require money—a disquieting reality in light of the Trump administration's proposed cuts to science funding and abandonment of Obama-era climate policies. "Obviously I'm worried about budgets," Tans says. "Climate research is a scientific need, but what can I do? Leave the US? Do I have to go to Europe to get science done?"
Perhaps. But then, many of today's most important scientific findings are the product of collaborative, multinational efforts—and the OCO-2 mission is no exception. NASA's CO₂-monitoring spacecraft is but one in a constellation of Earth-observing satellites known in climate circles as the A-Train. "We’ve benefitted from the fact that cooperation across the world manifests in this constellation, and that we can use these satellites together," Eldering says. "If you want to pull things apart—did fire cause this or did heat and drought cause that—you have to look at as many pieces of information as possible."
This much scientists know: Humans pump about 40 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every year. To trace its course through the earth, air, and oceans, they'll need all the sensors, all the satellites, and all the help they can get.


How Climate Change Is Already Affecting Earth
Though the planet has only warmed by one-degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, climate change's effect on earth has been anything but subtle. Here are some of the most astonishing developments over the past few years.

Links

• How Climate Change and 'Smoke Taint' Could Kill Napa Wine
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See It, Say It: Climate Change

Washington Post - Editorial Board

A firefighter works to defend homes from the approaching wildfire in Sonoma, Calif., on Saturday. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

“NOTHING MORE than ash and bones.”
That grim description of how some victims were found underscores the horror of the wildfires that swept through and devastated Northern California.
At least 38 people were killed, including a 14-year-old boy found dead in the driveway of the home he was trying to flee, a 28-year-woman confined to a wheelchair and a couple who recently had celebrated their 75th anniversary. In addition to the lives lost, approximately 5,700 homes and businesses were destroyed, including entire neighborhoods turned into smoldering ruins.
Some 220,000 acres, including prized vineyards, have been scorched, and the danger is not over, as some fires are still burning and officials fear the return of winds could spread more catastrophe.
Fire season is part of life in California, something that residents know and prepare for after the hot, dry summer months.
But the events that began last Sunday have been unprecedented, and so the question that must be confronted is what caused the deadliest week of wildfires in the state’s history.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) pointed the finger at climate change.
“With a warming climate, dry weather and reducing moisture, these kinds of catastrophes have happened and will continue to happen and we have to be ready to mitigate, and it’s going to cost a lot of money,” he said last week.
No single fire can be specifically linked to climate change, and certainly other factors, such as increased development or logging and grazing activities, are involved. But scientists say there is a clear connection between global warming and the increase in recent years in the severity and frequency of wildfires in the West.
“Climate change is kind of turning up the dial on everything,” expert LeRoy Westerling told CBS News. “Dry periods become more extreme. Wet periods become more extreme.”
While California prepares for what promises to be an arduous rebuilding, Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other places hit by this year’s unprecedented back-to-back-to-back hurricanes are still mopping up and, in Puerto Rico’s case, just beginning to rebuild. So it would seem to be a natural time to talk about the possible role climate change played in these disasters and about measures the nation should be taking to slow global warming.
Instead, we have an administration that refuses even to consider the possibility of a connection, much less talk about solutions. Worse, it is taking steps in the wrong direction: pulling out of the Paris climate accord, reversing rules on power plant emissions, staffing key agencies with climate-change deniers.
Sadly, that will increase the likelihood and frequency of tragedies such as the fires in California’s wine country.

Links

• Steve Daines: The American West is burning
• Chad Hanson and Mike Garrity: No, we can’t — and shouldn’t — stop forest fires
• Vernon Loeb: Harvey should be the turning point in fighting climate change
• The Post’s View: This is how bad things could get if Trump denies the reality of climate change
• Bill McKibben: Donald Trump is betting against all odds on climate change

Aristotle To Abbott: Climate Change Sceptics Through The Ages

Fairfax - Ian Warden

For atheists (this columnist's mob and guild), all Christians are equally mystifying. But some Christians are more equally mystifying than others. Roman Catholics are the most equally mystifying of all.
For example, atheists are marvelling this week, how can it be that Tony Abbott, a conspicuous Catholic, can have global warming beliefs so totally at odds with those of the CEO of his faith, Pope Francis?

Abbott has just given a much reported speech in London, scoffing at climate change science. John Shakespeare 

Abbott has just given a much reported, idiocy-pocked, banality-sprinkled speech in London, scoffing at climate change science. In this same week Labor leader Bill Shorten has deplored the Turnbull government's apparent plans to abandon a clean energy target. Shorten says this is the PM capitulating to Tony Abbott and other "knuckle draggers" of the coalition parties.
But back to the Tony Abbott/Pope Francis climate change schism and clash. Isn't it a hallmark of Catholicism, atheists ask, that rank and file Catholics defer obediently to the wisdom and the rank of the pope, the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church? (The pope has eight official titles and today's column will respectfully use some of the biggest and best of them.)
Did the Pope prick up his ears at reports of Abbott's speech, a delivery so at odds with his, the Pope's, 2015 encyclical titled Laudato Si? In Laudato Si, Francis insists that the scientists are right, that global warming is happening, that it is substantially mankind-driven and that we must act, now.
What if, now, Abbott is summoned to the Vatican to explain himself?
In one's mind's eye we see him ushered into the papal presence. In the long walk up to the papal throne one can see his, Abbott's, knuckles dragging on the Vatican's deep and sumptuous crimson carpets. They, the two pairs of the recalcitrant's knuckles, leave a parallel trail in the carpet's sumptuous pile, a bit like wheelchair tracks in snow.
Surely, at our imagined audience, The Successor of the Prince of Apostles will present the erring Abbott with a copy of his, His Holiness's, Laudato Si.
Earlier this year, the Pope handed a copy to the Kuckledragger In Chief, President Trump. But of course to present a novella-length read (Laudato Si is 38,000 words long) to Trump suggests a triumph of optimism over what's likely to happen. At 38,000 words, Laudato Si is longer than C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Trump, with the attention span of a soap bubble, is not a reader.
In our imagination we see Abbott, after our imagined audience, leaving the Vatican with a signed copy of Laudato Si. Will he read it? Probably not. A knuckle dragging man like Abbott reads what he wants to read and disregards the rest.
This seems a shame. Given the climate-based events of this week (including the Abbott speech, the political imbroglio over the abandoned clean energy target and the unprecedented fires in California) I have begun reading Laudato Si.
Once the atheist reader has forgiven it for one or two small, recurring errors of fact (for example, it says mistakenly that there is a God and that He made our planet) Laudato Si is a terrific and often very beautiful read. It bristles with sincere love of and heartfelt anxiety for our tender and fragile planet we are so sinfully buggering up.
The sensitively green St Francis of Assissi is recommended as our role model. "Just as happens when we fall in love with someone," the impassioned pontiff writes, "whenever he [St Francis] would gaze at the sun, the moon or the smallest of animals, he burst into song, drawing all other creatures into his praise. He felt called to care for all that exists."
Such a conviction cannot be written off as naive romanticism, for if we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters …"
Thus far today's column has been spiteful to Tony Abbott. And so in a pathetic, token attempt to appear open-minded about him I point out that not all climate change deniers are necessarily knuckle draggers.
For example, few men have walked with their knuckles further from the ground than Aristotle, the towering philosopher and scientist of ancient Greece. In the latest online Lapham's Quarterly the cerebral Lewis Lapham looks at climate change denial - ancient and modern - and reflects that, "While today environmental scientists warn of rising sea levels, ancient Athenians worried that the sea was going to dry up."

U.S. secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue meets with German minister of food and agriculture Christian Schmidt, 2017. Photograph by Preston Keres / USDA Office of Communications.

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right) arguing in The School of Athens, by Raphael, c. 1509–10. Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.

"Any fluctuation in climate was understandably disastrous for an agricultural society, and natural philosophers took the issue seriously. Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus discussed permanent weather change …concluding that if the Cretans are correct about colder winters, a certain type of wind must be increasing in frequency.
''But Aristotle himself disagreed and argued against climate-change fearmongering in his geological treatise Meteorology, telling us we have nothing to worry about – climate is cyclical."
Perhaps Aristotle was right, then, in 350BC. But Lapham reminds us that today, according to NASA, 97 per cent of published scientists agree that global warming is occurring.

Links

• Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ Of The Holy Father Francis On Care For Our Common Home
• Equal Climates
• Meteorology (Aristotle) - Wikipedia
• Theophrastus - Wikipedia