Climate Sceptic MP Appointed Chair Of Environment And Energy Committee

The Guardian - Gabrielle Chan

Liberal Craig Kelly will lead backbench committee that provides advice and feedback on legislation and policies

Liberal member for Hughes Craig Kelly with Tony Abbott during question time in 2015. Kelly has been appointed chairman of the environment and energy committee. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The climate sceptic Liberal MP Craig Kelly has been appointed chairman of the backbench environment and energy committee, with National party MP Kevin Hogan as secretary.
The committee will provide feedback on legislation and policies relating to the environment and energy, including to the minister, Josh Frydenberg.
Kelly served on the committee during the last parliament and previously invited climate sceptics to “balance” a presentation given by top climate scientists.
He has been writing on the issue for a number of years, noting that the convicts found it hotter in the 1700s.
“But I wonder if any of these people actually knew that Sydney’s so-called ‘record hot day’ on Tuesday 8th Jan this year [2013], that had them screaming “Global Warming”, was actually COOLER than the weather experienced by the convicts of the First Fleet in Sydney way back in the summer of 1790/91?” Kelly wrote.
He wrote on his Facebook page during the election campaign: “And with freezing temperatures and even snow forecast for Melbourne’s outskirts and in parts of New South Wales, I hope many of the warmists haven’t sold their coats.”
Hogan holds the marginal seat of Page on the New South Wales north coast. He has opposed coal seam gas development in his area.
The appointments were part of the political housekeeping required by the return of parliament after the election. The Coalition party room elected all the backbench committees and those with legislation to scrutinise met immediately to consider the bills.
Flanked by the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, and the deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop, Malcolm Turnbull addressed the joint party room when it reconvened after lunch for another meeting to consider policy issues such as the contentious superannuation changes.
West Australian Liberal Nola Marino has been reappointed as chief government whip along with South Australian Liberal Rowan Ramsey and Queensland Liberal Bert van Manen. Ramsey and van Manen replace Queensland Liberal Ewen Jones and Tasmanian Liberal Brett Whiteley, both of whom lost their seats in the election.

Links

• One Nation's Malcolm Roberts vows to halt 'ridiculous lies' on climate change
• Q&A smackdown: Brian Cox brings graphs to grapple with Malcolm Roberts
• CSIRO cuts: Turnbull government orders U-turn on climate science research
• 'My work is done': Greg Hunt says mission accomplished on environment portfolio
• Climate change: John Hewson accuses Coalition of 'national disgrace'
• The Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare
• George Brandis says climate science not settled, but CSIRO should act as if it is

A Massive Crack Is Threatening To Cause An Entire Antarctic Ice Shelf To Collapse

ScienceAlert - Bec Crew

An iceberg the size of Delaware is about to break free.

Larsen B ice shelf. Credit: Armin Rose/Shutterstock

Scientists have been monitoring a fracture in one of the world’s biggest ice shelves, and report that in the last five months alone, it’s grown an extra 22 kilometres (13.67 miles) in length, and now stretches for a total of 130 km (80 miles).
It’s now only a matter of time before a massive chunk of this Antarctic ice shelf - known as Larsen C - breaks free, and then we’ll have the third largest loss of Antarctic ice in recorded history on our hands.
Located on the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Larsen ice shelf is split up into three smaller ice shelves - Larsen A, B, and C. Larsen A and B have already experienced massive declines over the past two decades, and now Larsen C, the biggest of them all, is in a world of trouble itself.
Researchers from Project MIDAS, a British Antarctic Survey that involves teams from several UK universities, report that around 12 percent of the entire Larsen C ice shelf is expected to break off, leaving the exposed ice front at its most retreated position ever.
"Computer modelling suggests that the remaining ice could become unstable, and that Larsen C may follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B, which disintegrated in 2002 following a similar rift-induced calving event," they report in a blog post.
What’s left of the Larsen B ice shelf is widely considered to be on borrowed time, having lost a chunk of ice the size of Rhode Island back in 2002. Remember this?

Larsen B ice shelf loss in 2002. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre

It now covers an area of 1,600 square kilometres (625 square miles), and is expected to disintegrate by the end of the decade. That’s pretty devastating, when you consider that Larsen B has been stable for at least the past 12,000 years.
The Larsen A ice shelf disintegrated in January 1995, and now Larsen C looks like it’s on its way out too.
Just to give you an idea of how much ice we’re talking about here, Larsen C covers around 55,000 square km (21,235 square miles). That’s 10 times the size of Larsen B, and about half the size of Iceland.
Last year, the MIDAS team published a study in the journal Cryosphere describing how Larsen C is currently melting from the surface and the base, and now its gigantic fracture is cracking at a rate no one could have predicted.
Once the outer edge breaks free, researchers are predicting an iceberg measuring about 6,000 square kilometres (2,316 square miles) - close to the size of Delaware - will fall off into the ocean.
"If this will calve off in the next, say two or three years, the calving front will be retreated very far back, further than we’ve seen it since we were able to monitor this," one of the team, Daniela Jansen from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, told Chris Mooney at The Washington Post.
"And our theory in this paper was basically that the calving front might become unstable. Once the iceberg has calved off completely, there might be a tendency for the ice front to crumble backwards."

IMAGE

Just to add to Larsen C’s woes, a separate study published in Nature Communications in June found that meltponds have been forming on the surface - something that’s just recently been found by the thousands on the Langhovde Glacier in East Antarctica.
This will only serve to accelerate the disintegration process.
If Larsen C did end up losing all its ice, scientists have predicted that this could raise global sea levels by around 10 cm (3.9 inches).
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. As Mooney points out, a large loss of ice from Larsen C won’t necessarily be a terrible thing for the world’s oceans - not immediately, at least.
"A study earlier this year in Nature Climate Change looked at ice shelves around Antarctica to determine how much area they could lose without ceasing to form their crucial function of buttressing glaciers and holding them back, and found that Larsen C actually has a lot of 'passive' ice that it can lose without major consequences," he says.
The MIDAS team isn’t as optimistic, so unfortunately, we’re left to wait and see when this massive chunk will break off, and what the consequences will be for life on Earth. Watch this space.

Links

• A growing rift on Larsen C
• A rift is speeding up its spread across the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica
• NASA Study Shows Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Nearing Its Final Act
• Antarctic ice shelf melting from above and below
• A widening 80 mile crack is threatening one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
• Massive subsurface ice formed by refreezing of ice-shelf melt ponds

Australian Conservation Foundation Loses Federal Court Case On Adani Coal

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Adani has welcomed today's decision by the Federal Court. (ABC News)

Adani's Carmichael coal mine has cleared another legal hurdle after the Federal Court threw out a challenge against the project by the Australian Conservation Foundation.
The ACF had sought to establish a landmark climate change case in Australia, arguing approval of the proposed mega coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin was inconsistent with the country's international obligations to protect the Great Barrier Reef.
The case had gained more urgency since being lodged in November last year, with the reef experiencing its worst recorded bleaching event, which scientists say may have killed off a fifth or more of its corals in one hit.

Federal court rejects environmental challenge against Adani Carmichael mine. Stefan Armbruster

Adani Australia welcomed Monday's decision, stating on Facebook that the verdict "again reinforces the stringency of the strict, science and evidence-based federal environmental approval process governing the company's planned mine at Carmichael".
"At their core, these challenges have been about stopping investment and jobs as part of a wider activist campaign against mining," the Indian-based miner said, adding that a recent report by PwC had put the costs of delay at about $3 billion.
Matthew Canavan, federal minister for resources, said on Twitter that the decision was "good news for jobs".
The conservation group, however, vowed to keep fighting to prevent the mine - with a production capacity of as much as 60 million tonnes a year - from going ahead.

Adani's giant coal mine in the Galilee Basin aims to export mainly to India if it proceeds. Photo: NYT

"If the Carmichael mine proceeds, its coal will create 4.7 billion tonnes of climate pollution over the proposed life of the mine, wiping out Australia's efforts to reduce pollution and contributing to more frequent and severe bleaching events on the reef," Kelly O'Shanassy, ACF's chief executive, said in a statement.
"It is extraordinary that in 2016 a federal Environment Minister can argue in court that a mega-polluting coal mine will have no impact on the climate and the Great Barrier Reef," she said. "We'll do everything we can to stop this mine."
Before the verdict from Justice Griffiths, ACF chairman Geoff Cousins predicted more challenges against coal mines such as Adani's.
"Win or lose ... these issues will become and more prominent as time goes on," Mr Cousins said.
Mr Cousins said groups such as ACF were pinning their hopes on Josh Frydenberg, the new federal environment and energy minister, to take a different stance on climate matters.
"Josh Frydenberg has a great opportunity to lead," Mr Cousins said. "He's certainly aware of all these issues."
Mr Frydenberg replaced Greg Hunt after the July 2 election returned the Turnbull government to power.
ACF has said Carmichael would be Australia's largest mine, covering more than 45,000 hectares in size and producing as much carbon dioxide annually as New Zealand.
A spokesman for Adani said the company is ready to proceed with the mine "pending the resolution of a small number of outstanding legal challenges".
"[I]f those issues are finalised, construction can commence in 2017," he said.
The parties have seven days to agree on the legal costs of the case, ACF said.

Links

• Australian Conservation Foundation's case against $21b Adani Carmichael mine dismissed
• Federal court to rule on Adani challenge
• Bid to halt Adani' Carmichael coal mine fails
• Indigenous challenge to Adani Carmichael coal mine dismissed
• Mining leases approved for $21b Carmichael coal mine

Four Infographics That Show How Climate Change Is Affecting Your Health

ThinkProgress - Jeremy Deaton | Mina Lee

From carbon to coffin.

Click image for larger view.  Source Mina Lee

The dog days of summer were particularly dogged this year. July clocked in as the hottest month on record, marking the midpoint of what is likely to be the hottest year on record. With sweltering temperatures came a litany of crummy climate news — floods in Louisiana, Zika in Miami, searing heat waves across the Northeast — with dire implications for human health.

Source: NASA

Last year's Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change warned that the carbon crisis could undo the last half-century of progress in public health. And yet, for many, it remains unclear how climate change could land them in the hospital. Just one in four Americans can identify the ways that rising temperatures threaten their health. To clarify that link, Climate Nexus and the American Public Health Association developed a series of infographics that illustrate the connection between climate change and all manner of life-threatening illness. [Disclosure: Climate Nexus and Nexus Media are both sponsored projects of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.] Let's begin with air quality. Climate change is producing shorter winters and longer summers, extending allergy season. Warmer weather is also worsening pollution by fueling the formation of ozone. Heat and drought are setting the stage for wildfires, like the blaze recently seen in California, which produce smoke, threatening respiratory health.

Source: Mina Lee

Rising temperatures are also producing longer and more severe heat waves, like the scorcher that just descended on the East Coast. Extreme heat can lead to dehydration and stroke. Children and the elderly are most vulnerable.

Source: Mina Lee

With extreme heat, expect to see more mosquitos. According to an analysis from Climate Central, climate change is extending mosquito season across the United States, expanding the range of vector-borne diseases, like Zika, which just made landfall in Florida.

Source: Mina Lee

Finally, severe storms, like the torrent that just hit Louisiana, are damaging infrastructure, leaving those many of those affected without food, shelter or access to clean water.

Source: Mina Lee

The good news is that slashing planet-warming carbon pollution would be a boon for public health. The Lancet Commission said that tackling climate change "could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century." Drastically reducing emissions from cars, planes, and power plants wouldn't just curb the rise in temperatures. It would also prevent millions of deaths from air pollution. As the country shifts to clean energy, we can expect big measurable gains in public health. For Americans currently sweating it out in the summer heat, that might offer a little consolation.

Links 

• Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change
• Climate Nexus
• American Public Health Association
• Climate Central

Big Oil’s Nightmare Comes True

EcoWatch - Carl Pope

"This was retail politics and oil lost," was how Adrienne Alvord of Union of Concerned Scientists summed up the stunning environmental victory Tuesday in the California legislature, a victory which cemented the state's commitment to a 40 percent reduction in climate pollution by 2030.

It's not accidental that states providing climate leadership are the states with the biggest clean energy sectors, including California.

Only a few weeks ago there was a strong consensus that the oil industry, by spending millions of dollars on behalf of a cadre of moderate Democrats in the Assembly, had blocked just such a doubling down on the state's existing 2020 goals. For the oil industry, victory was an existential necessity. Only by holding future climate commitments hostage could the industry hope to get Gov. Brown to abandon the state's existing mandate that by 2020 the carbon content of fuels be cut by 10 percent. As a practical matter, the requirement means roughly 20 percent of California's more vehicles will be driving on something other than oil—electricity, natural gas or biofuels.
And oil knows it cannot withstand a competitive transportation fuels market. Once California creates such a market and builds businesses that can produce low carbon fuels at scale, fuels competition will go global and oil's empire will wither. But it looked like oil had survived to fight another day. Gov. Brown had signaled his next move by forming a ballot committee for a (high-risk) initiative for the fall of 2018. But a small group of climate and environmental justice advocates refused to let the Assembly moderates off the hook. Demanding a vote, they re-energized their broad coalition of main-line businesses, EJ advocates, labor, climate greens, the faith community, clean tech and clean fuels businesses, local government and public health advocates.
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon told them he would give them a vote once they had the votes—and on Tuesday he pulled the trigger, giving the oil industry, which thought it had won, only 24 hours to regroup. It wasn't enough and the Assembly passed SB32 by 47 votes, a six vote margin over the 41 needed. The California Nurses Association was heard from, but so was Ebay. Gov. Brown and the White House weighed in, but a lone Republican, Assemblywoman Catherine Baker joined them in supporting progress. Wednesday the Senate concurred and the bill, linked to an environmental justice focused companion bill, went to the governor for his signature.
Why the victory? Quite simply, retail politics. Clean energy now provides far more stimulus and creates far more jobs than fossil fuels. Clean power is seen by the public as the linch-pin of the state's economic future. Jobs on the ground trump oil industry ads on the screen. It's not accidental that states providing climate leadership are the states with the biggest clean energy sectors—California, Washington, Nevada, Oregon—and Iowa, with its nation leading wind sector and a public utility, Mid-America, that is planning to shortly hit 85 percent renewables and go on to 100 percent.
And it's cheaper.
The oil industry is in a state of shock. Their press release bizarrely asserted that Rendon had scheduled the vote to "cover up" the fact that the state's latest auction for carbon emission permits had attracted few buyers—a result oil called "terrible." The auction simply reflected the fact that emitters, uncertain if the law would be extended past 2020, did not know how many permits they needed to buy. The oil industry conceded as much, saying "Today's miserable auction result reflects the market's lack of certainty." But it is revealing that oil called it "terrible" and "miserable" that the cost of carbon permits was low—demonstrating again that what they fear is not that decarbonizing will cost too much and hurt the economy, but that it will prove irresistibly cheap and strand them. Also revealing—SB32 was written precisely to provide the certainty whose absence the oil industry allegedly deplores!
(In fact, the legislature is going home next week and Rendon had to bring the bill up more or less when he did. The short notice was tactical—but hardly conspiratorial).
Ideological, right-wing opponents of climate progress and clean energy stayed more on message, releasing a poll purporting to show that the public, all the other evidence to the contrary, didn't really favor tougher clean-up of carbon pollution or California climate leadership after all.
Read carefully, however, the poll says something quite different. It confirms that most Californians want to move forward on clean energy and climate, believe that such progress is good for California even if others do not lead and want action. Even California Republicans are part of this consensus. Sixty-two percent of California Republican voters think that climate change is either a very serious or somewhat serious threat to the state. Again, of Republicans, 67 percent expect the changes resulting from global warming to occur in their lifetimes. A majority favor the state's current climate goals and a plurality favor the longer-term, more ambitious goals just passed.
It is true that, if nudged to believe that after such action, "hundreds of local manufacturing facilities would be shut down and thousands of middle-class jobs would be lost in California" large majorities of Republicans, and Democrats and Independents, lose their appetite. But if you said to the same sample that ambitious climate progress would mean "continued economic growth, an end to air pollution, cheaper gas and billions of dollars of new exports for California industries" the supportive numbers among Republicans would probably jump from a plurality to a super-majority. The latter statement is the true one, it turns out—and, more or less, it is what most California voters are experiencing—which explains why, un-manipulated, even Republicans are happy that the state continues to move forward.
But California is not the only arena where oil's long regime is coming to an end. Investors are watching warily as the majors—Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell have now accumulated an unprecedented $184 billion in debt, fallen far short ($40 billion short in the first half of 2016) of their promised goals of paying their dividends from profits, not borrowing. Shell, Chevron, Exxon and BP have all seen their previous platinum grade credit ratings cut a notch. To placate investors, the majors pledge that they have new (but far from transparent) business plans to someday make money again—if only oil will stay at some magic level. For BP it's $50-55/barrel. Unfortunately, it has not been in that range since 2014.
Many of the independent oil producers, of course, have gone bankrupt. Oil remains stubbornly below $50. Most independent analysts believe that for the oil majors, prices in the $75 range are required to compete with Persian Gulf and other OPEC members in the long term. And those prices, unequivocally, require one thing: a continuation of oil's monopoly in transportation fuel.
California this week called the question. That monopoly is going away. Oil has lost before, but never because the retail politics of its competitors proved more compelling. This was no decisive battle. There may be none, just as there is no moment when the fate of the Roman Empire was sealed.
But the sands of time are running. Oil's empire is in its decline and fall.

Links

• Mount Everest Climbers May One Day Climb Ice-Free
• Biofuels Worse for Climate Than Gasoline, New Study Finds
• Delaware-Sized Chunk of Ice Could Dislodge from Antarctic Shelf
• Renewable Energy Generation Breaks Records Every Month in 2016
• Bill Nye: 'There's Enough Wind and Solar' to Power the World
• 97% of Most Species-Rich Places on Earth Have Been Seriously Altered by Humans

Michael Leunig: Climate Change

Letter Signed By 154 Australian Experts Demands Climate Policy Match The Science

The Guardian* - James Whitmore

Leading climate and environmental scientists urge Malcolm Turnbull to take urgent action ‘while there is still time’

The Great Barrier Reef from space. Reef scientists are among the leading experts who have written to Malcolm Turnbull stressing that the world is already in the grip of climate change. Photograph: International Space Station/Nasa/ESA

More than 150 Australian experts have signed an open letter to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, demanding urgent action on climate change that matches the dire warnings coming from climate scientists.
The letter, organised by the Australian National University climatologist Andrew Glikson, calls on the federal government to make “meaningful reductions of Australia’s peak carbon emissions and coal exports, while there is still time”.
The 154 signatories include leading climate and environmental scientists such as the Climate Council’s Tim Flannery, Will Steffen and Lesley Hughes, as well as reef scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Charlie Veron.
They point out that July 2016 was the hottest month on record, and followed a nine-month streak of record-breaking months. Average carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million in 2015, and are rising at a rate of nearly 3 ppm each year.
The world is already witnessing the effects of climate change, the letter argues, including an increase in extreme weather events, melting of the polar ice sheets and ocean acidification.
Australia, along with 179 other countries, has signed the climate treaty brokered in Paris last year, aiming to limit average global warming to “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C”.
But Glikson warned that “the Paris agreement, being non-binding, is in danger of not being fulfilled by many of the signatories”. The deal will not enter into force until it is ratified by 55 countries accounting for at least 55% of the world’s greenhouse emissions.
Glikson called for action to “transition from carbon-emitting technologies to alternative clean energy as fast as possible, and focus technology on draw-down (sequestration) of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere”.
Australia’s current greenhouse gas target, which it took to December’s Paris climate summit, calls for emissions to be reduced by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. It has been widely criticised by experts as not ambitious enough.
Andrew Blakers, professor of engineering at ANU, said Australia could reduce emissions by two-thirds by 2030 “at negligible cost”.
He said the falling cost of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, the replacement of gas with electricity for heating, and the advent of electric vehicles would eliminate most emissions. Solar and wind installation, now at 1 gigawatt each year, would need to be increased to 2.5 gigawatts each year to reach 100% renewable energy by 2030.
Remaining emissions, from shipping, aviation, and industry, could be eliminated after 2030 at slightly higher costs.
Lesley Hughes, a member of the Climate Council and professor at Macquarie University, said there were a number of factors causing the gap between science and policy, including vested interests, perception of economic downsides of climate action, ideological biases and inertia in the system from investment in fossil fuels. But she said the “most important issue” was the difficulty in convincing people to act to reduce risk decades in the future.
The Climate Change Authority, which advises the government on climate policy, in 2014 recommended Australia adopt a target of 40% to 60% below 2000 levels by 2030.
In a report released on Wednesday, the Climate Institute highlighted that aiming for 1.5C instead of 2C would avoid longer heatwaves and droughts, and give the Great Barrier Reef a better chance of survival.
The institute recommended that Australia adopt an emissions reduction target of 65% below 2005 levels by 2030 and phase out coal power by 2035.

*This article is reproduced from The Conversation.

Links

• Climate scientists write another letter warning of unfolding crisis for Turnbull to ignore
• Queensland solar projects that could create 2,600 jobs at risk in federal cuts
• Human-induced climate change began earlier than previously thought
• Climate change: big four banks' lending to Australian renewables projects falls
• What will fill the hole left by coal?
• Business and academic leaders urge new conversation about coal-free future
• Labor proposes two emissions trading schemes costing $355.9m
• Carbon price needed to avoid economic disruption from Paris climate goals – analysis
• Climate crisis should be top of world leaders' agenda
• Shorten: Coalition rightwingers forcing Australians to 'pledge loyalty' to coal