01/02/2017

Most Australians Oppose Government's $1bn Adani Loan For Coal Railway Line

The Guardian - 

More than half of Liberal voters also oppose plan to loan Indian company $1bn to build a rail line between proposed Carmichael coalmine and Abbot Point
A protest in Melbourne against the proposed Carmichael coalmine, which scientists say should not go ahead if the Great Barrier Reef is to be protected from the impacts of climate change. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP
Three-quarters of Australians, including most Liberal voters, oppose the government giving a $1bn loan to Adani to build a rail line between its proposed Carmichael coalmine and the Abbot Point shipping terminal.
The government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (Naif) granted Adani “conditional approval” for a $1bn loan in December last year.
The rail line, if built, would allow Adani to build the country’s biggest coalmine and open up the Galilee Basin to further mines by linking them to an export terminal.
Coral scientists have argued the coal needs to stay in the ground if the Great Barrier Reef is to be protected from the impacts of climate change.
The government has argued there is no definite link between the coal from the Adani mine being burned and climate change, and the resources minister, Matthew Canavan, has said the mine would “be a good thing for the environment”.
But a ReachTel poll of 2,126 people across Australia conducted on 12 January, commissioned by GetUp, found 74.4% of respondents said “no” when asked whether “lending $1bn to an offshore mining company to build a coal rail line is a good use of public money”.
Just 16.2% of respondents thought it was a good use of public money, with 9.5% saying they didn’t know.
The opposition was strong regardless of voting intention, with 53.7% of those who said they would vote Liberal opposing the loan. Just over 80% of “undecided” voters, 85.5% of Labor voters and 89.9% of Greens voters said the loan was a bad use of public money.
A previous survey of people living in the region that would host the mine found two-thirds opposed public money being used to support the mine.
Analysis from Greenpeace has suggested the rail project does not meet the requirements for a loan under the scheme, since it will not be “of public benefit” and it is not clear Adani will be able to repay the loan.
GetUp’s Miriam Lyons said: “A mere 16% of Australians think this is a good way to invest public money. While we see hospitals and schools starved of resources, the government sees fit to hand over a billion bucks to build Adani’s shiny new train.”
Lyons called on Malcolm Turnbull to stop the loan going ahead.
“Prime minister Turnbull’s not even playing for his own team – only 32% of Liberal voters agree with this use of public money,” she said.

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Prince Charles May Raise Climate Change During Trump's Visit To Britain

The Guardian - 

Some in Whitehall are urging the prince to challenge US president’s pledge to abandon 2015 UN climate change deal
Royal sources say Prince Charles will not lecture the US president but has not ruled out tackling him on the issue of climate change. Photograph: Richard Stonehouse/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain this year was never likely to fit the mould of previous trips undertaken by his predecessors, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. The US president’s rumoured wish to play nine holes on the Queen’s private golf course at Balmoral and the question of how he might explain his 2012 tweet defending the sale of topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge made sure of that.
But the tour is now looking even more likely to generate controversy as Prince Charles emerged as a possible challenger to the president’s views on climate change and faith issues.
The Guardian understands from royal sources that the prince will not lecture Trump in relation to their starkly divergent views of what needs to be done to tackle global warming but has not ruled out addressing the topic. This poses a challenge not just for the president, who has threatened to “cancel” the United Nations climate change deal signed in Paris in 2015 and who has described climate change as “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”. It is also a conundrum for the British government scrambling to work out how to address Trump’s radical programme and how to make use of a sometimes controversial advocate for climate action.
Charles is being urged by some in Whitehall to use his decades-long experience in environmentalism to challenge Trump’s pledge to abandon the deal, as part of “harmonised” efforts with the UK government to keep the carbon-cutting treaty on track.
But other UK officials are reported to be concerned that the likely meeting between the men has become a “risk factor” for the visit. Another potentially controversial issue that could arise is religion Prince Charles’s history of trying to promote better interfaith relations contrast with Trump’s actions to block travellers from Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.
An anonymous source, described as being close to Trump, said this weekend that the president would not put up with being lectured by the prince, according to the Sunday Times. The source warned against the two men meeting at all.
That appears unlikely. Under the normal choreography of a state visit, Charles is likely to have several opportunities to spend time with Trump. Although details of the visit have yet to be finalised, the Prince of Wales would typically welcome Trump where he is staying, possibly the US ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park, central London. They would then travel together to Horse Guards Parade from where there is normally a formal procession down the Mall to Buckingham Palace for the leader to be greeted by the Queen. That would be followed by a lunch, attended again by Charles.
A state dinner provides another opportunity for interaction and Charles also invites most leaders to afternoon tea at Clarence House. Whether this will happen with Trump is yet to be decided, and is said to depend on how much time is available. Barack Obama did not take tea on his last state visit, but China’s president, Xi Jinping, did.
In parts of Whitehall Charles is now considered to be “an extremely good asset” in helping to maintain the integrity of the UN climate change treaty. He has been “gently primed” to assist diplomatic efforts on the issue, a senior Whitehall source said and there is “a sympathetic hearing” between Clarence House and the government on climate change, with Charles’s views considered “absolutely in line with government policy”.
“It has taken a lot of work by some of us to get him into that place, but what he is doing now is extremely helpful to us,” the source said.
Last week, while Trump issued executive orders to revive oil pipeline projects and told carmakers that environmental regulation was “out of control”, Charles stepped up his own warnings on the environment. In a foreword to a Ladybird book on climate change published on Thursday and co-written by the prince, he described climate change as “the wolf at the door” and said action “must be urgently scaled up and scaled up now”.
One royal aide said Charles “would find a meeting [with Trump] on this subject [climate change] extremely useful” but also made clear that while the agenda might or might not include climate change, the mode of delivery would not be confrontational or hectoring.
“If anything, he is a helpful and honest broker on so many issues,” said one source. The source explained that Charles is usually in listening mode for the first 30 minutes of meetings with heads of state and only towards the end would consider offering thoughts about how problems that had been raised might be addressed.
Another source close to the prince said it would be difficult for him to be very direct with Trump. “He has to retain political neutrality, which is why he is always walking something of a tightrope on this subject,” the source said.
However, the same source added: “It is fair to say he considers the world to be in great peril because of climate change, system degradation and resource depletion and he feels it is necessary for him to use his position to say something about that.”
Some in Whitehall hope that far from causing Trump to “erupt”, as one anonymous US source suggested at the weekend, the US president may in fact be more engaged by Charles expressing views about the need for urgent action on climate change than a politician, in part because of Trump’s admiration of wealth and British royalty.
Trump reportedly told Theresa May in November that his Scottish mother, Mary MacLeod, was “a big fan of the Queen”.
“Trump is the sort of person who loves the panoply surrounding wealth and royalty,” said a senior government source. “He loves reflecting the glory of the royal family. He is pressing for a state visit so he can go and have a meal in Buckingham Palace and he wants to play golf on the Queen’s golf course.”
Environmental campaigners have also backed Charles’s ability to influence the new US president, in part by rallying other countries including Brazil, China and India to stand by the deal, thereby putting indirect pressure on Trump.
“He has an international outreach and he is respected in the US,” said Nick Molho, executive director of the Aldersgate Group, an alliance of businesses, politicians and campaign groups pushing for a sustainable economy. “He has the benefit of being a step removed from everyday politics and I think that is important. It allows him to have more authority and to be a more engaging figure.”
Charles told the 2015 UN climate change conference in Paris: “The moment has arrived to take those long-awaited steps towards rescuing our planet and our fellow man from impending catastrophe.” He has also previously acknowledged the importance of US policy on climate change. In a 2015 speech he told an audience in Washington DC: “America’s impact is profound and it is my, and many others’, fervent hope that you will continue to inspire others both at home and on the global stage.”
In recent years, Charles has focused his campaigning and convening efforts on the fight against climate change. He runs his own international sustainability unit from Clarence House, which describes itself as a trusted forum for “key actors from governments, the private sector and civil society”.

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Donald Trump To Withdraw From Paris Agreement, 'Change Course' On Climate Change, Says Adviser

Fairfax - Nick Miller

London: The man who wrote the Trump administration's environment action plan says the environmental movement is "the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world" and said the United States was about to change course on climate policy, including withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
Myron Ebell, who led the Environmental Protection Agency transition for the new administration, said he gave the president three pathways for withdrawing from the 2015 Paris agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, at least one of which could be done "right now".
President Donald Trump has pledged to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Photo: Bloomberg
He also said the president had been clear he wanted to abolish the EPA - though it might survive as a channel for pollution clean-up grants to states.
And he hinted at an end to emission standards for US vehicles, through abolishing the EPA's 'endangerment finding', which had given it powers to protect the public from the health threat posed by greenhouse gases.
Mr Ebell worked for Mr Trump's transition team delivering a detailed plan on how the president could deliver on his campaign promises.
Mr Ebell was in London as a guest of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a British think tank that promotes climate change scepticism. His role on Trump's transition team ended with the inauguration and he said he never met Mr Trump, but had taken his lead from his campaign promises.
"What the Trump transition did was to try to write departmental or agency plans to fulfil and implement every single one of the promises and commitments that Mr Trump made as a candidate," Mr Ebell said.
"There were a number of very clear, black and white promises. He said he will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, he will defund UN climate programs, at the EPA he will potentially withdraw or repeal all of the Obama administration rules regarding greenhouse gas emissions including the so-called Clean Power Plan.
Mr Ebell said the US would change course on climate policy. Photo: Reuters
"He will undo president Obama's climate action plan… the United States will clearly change course on climate policy and that's the first piece of good news."
Mr Trump's pick for secretary of state Rex Tillerson told senators at his confirmation hearing in January that the risk of climate change did exist, and the US needed a "seat at the table" in international discussions.
Myron Ebell advised Mr Trump during the transition. Photo: AP
But Mr Ebell said the president had given a clear promise to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and "the president would be odds-on favourite to win any disagreement (with Mr Tillerson) over climate policy".
"I don't think there's any doubt that (Mr Trump) thinks global warming is not a crisis. It does not require drastic and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions."
He said there were three ways for the US to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The first was to announce that president Obama's signature was withdrawn from Paris.
Another would be to announce that it was a treaty, not an agreement, and send it to the Senate for ratification "so it will be dead".
The third would be to withdraw from the framework convention itself – the 1992 international agreement to seek a global consensus on climate change mitigation.
"My personal viewpoint is by far the cleanest is to withdraw from the framework convention," Mr Ebell said. "I would say do it right now."
Mr Ebell said Mr Trump's election was a "rejection by the American people of what they are told by the bi-coastal urban elite (and) the chattering classes".
"The people of America have rejected the 'expert-ariat' and I think for good reason."
Though he conceded there was evidence for man-made climate change he did not believe climate science's consensus that it would have dangerous consequences for the planet.
He was dismissive of renewable energy and said Mr Trump would make the US the planet's biggest producer of oil and gas.
He said Mr Trump would end the capture of government by 'special interests'.
"Our special interest is freedom. The enemies of freedom come in many guises and one of the most insidious and dangerous in the modern world is the regulatory regime that we now suffer under.
"A large part of that is due to the environmental movement which in my view is the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world."
Mr Ebell said more than half the EPA's budget already went to state grants for infrastructure and clean-up projects.
"(Mr Trump's) interest is really that the EPA goes back to its core missions … I would expect that in terms of his desire to radically shrink the EPA's bureaucracy you may actually see more money going into state grants."
He said he hoped that the EPA's 'endangerment finding' under the Clean Air Act would be undone, which would lead to the scrapping of greenhouse gas emission rules.

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31/01/2017

3 Things You Need To Know About The Science Rebellion Against Trump

National Geographic -  Laura Parker | Craig Welch

The new president's first moves on science spur a Twitter war and prompt a march.
Ice is melting in much of the Arctic thanks to rising global average temperatures. The new presidential administration is facing heat over its early response. Photograph by Paul Nicklen, National Geographic Creative
The Trump administration was merely minutes old when all references to climate change disappeared from the White House website. Later that day, the National Park Service Twitter account was briefly shutdown because the new president was miffed about a retweet of side-by-side aerial photographs that clearly showed the crowd at former President Obama's 2009 inauguration was larger than the crowd at President Trump's.
Trump was so peeved, he personally ordered acting Park Service director Michael Reynolds in a phone call to come up with additional photographs that would prove the media "had lied in reporting the attendance had been no better than average," the Washington Post reported. Reynolds sent more photos to the White House. But they did not show larger crowds.
So began an unprecedented rebellion inside government agencies that quickly transformed from a duel about presidential popularity into the fate of the government's work on climate change.
By the end of Week One, public affairs officials in agencies where climate scientists work had received directives aimed at silencing them—at least temporarily. The Environmental Protection Agency was ordered, Reuters reported, to take down its climate change page from its website—although that order was shelved in the backlash that followed. Grants and contracts at EPA were also frozen, although there are reports that that edict may also be rescinded.
"Taken together, what we've seen over the first five days is completely unprecedented," says Peter Gleick, a water scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. "I have seen nothing like it in my lifetime and I've been around for a while."


Climate Change 101 With Bill Nye

The Trump administration is hardly the first new executive branch to attempt to influence scientific research that contradicts political party orthodoxy. Under President George W. Bush, Interior Department officials sometimes overruled agency scientists working on endangered species issues. The Obama administration was accused by scientists of underreporting damage from the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and at times required public-relations chaperones when scientists talked to the press.
But the speed and ferocity with which controls on science appeared in the opening days of the Trump administration set off the fury on Twitter and inspired scientists from Maine to California to join a scientists' march on Washington.
More than a dozen "rogue" unofficial Twitter accounts launched to voice resistance to the orders. Some claimed to be tweeting on behalf of unidentified federal scientists at the Park Service, NASA, the U.S. Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments—although no one knows for sure the identities of the people posting the tweets.
Scientists are not known for waging political protest en masse. But they have become so alarmed by what has played out, they are taking a page from the Women's March in Washington that drew an estimated 470,000 protesters, with protests in at least 80 other countries the day after Trump was sworn into office.
"The situation seems more uncertain than ever," says Bethany Wiggin, a University of Pennsylvania humanities professor who directs the Penn Library Data Refuge and has been leading the effort to collect and preserve federal climate and environmental data.
A former NPS employee tweeted climate change information on an official Badlands National Park Twitter account this week, in defiance of a Trump order. Photograph by Annie Griffiths, National Geographic Creative
"We hear there is a gag order and then there is a claim that the gag order has been revoked, and then it is denied that it was ever made. Everything seems incredibly in flux," Wiggin says. "What seems certain is that we have an anti-science administration and an anti-factual and anti-research administration that does not understand what it needs to do."
David Doniger, director of climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says he's less concerned about the Twitter war than efforts to expunge climate information from government websites.
"The most dramatic thing is the turn from full acceptance of climate science to this calculated waffling from all the Cabinet nominees who testified on the Hill," he says. "They are all saying, 'the climate is changing, we just don't know whether it is human influence or how much. That still amounts to climate denial."
Whether intended or not at the start-up of the Trump administration, the question of how the president handles climate change has now become an urgent question to settle. Doniger says the point isn't that EPA contracts were frozen, it's what happens next: "What will be more telling is how they change what's contracted for and what tasks the agency is going to be allowed to do and not be allowed to do."
Below are three takeaways from the tumultuous first week:

Muzzling Agencies Inspires A Scientists' March On Washington
Doubters of science in general date back to Galileo. Climate scientists have been an outspoken voice for as long as the government has been studying climate science.
But instructions to limit communications to the public that were passed on to public affairs officials at the EPA, Agriculture Department, and, according to the Washington Post, the National Institutes of Health, have fed fears that the Trump administration will attempt to filter climate science through a political lens.
"Attacks on climate change are nothing new," Gleick says. "They have always come from the fringe, peripheral groups and individuals. Now it looks as though marginal groups have control of the steering wheel."
Meanwhile, the march, which began as a suggestion on Facebook, has blossomed into a full-force organisational effort, with a web page and activists working to set it up. A date will be announced possibly next week. The March for Science Twitter account has 288,000 followers.
"This has just developed in the last 48 to 72 hours. It's really snowballing," says Jacquelyn Gill, one of the march organisers and a University of Maine paleoecologist who studies how extinction affects biodiversity. "What prompted this is the idea that climate science in particular will be targeted. It's not about cost-cutting. The entire United States science and medical research budget is less than two percent of the federal budget. This is clearly agenda driven."
Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's attorney general, appears at a confirmation hearing before Congress as Trump's pick for the head of the EPA. Conservationists have criticised Pruitt's record. Photograph by Gabriella Demczuk, The New York Times, Redux
The Park Service Became The Unlikely Hero Of The 'Rebellion'
The Park Service is one of the least controversial and most popular federal agencies because its primary task is to take care of the nation's parks. But in the wake of the flap about the size of the inauguration crowd, a former Park Service employee at the Badlands National Park in North Dakota defied President Trump—setting off a broader resistance that quickly spread to other federal agencies.
The Badlands former employee, who still had access to the Park Service's official Twitter account, posted tweets about rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. One of three posts said: "Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate."
By the time those posts were deleted on January 24, the Badlands Twitter account had some 60,000 new followers.
Then, a new account was born—AltUSNatParkService—which used the Park Service logo and identified itself as the "Unofficial #Resistance team of U.S. National Park Service." As of Friday morning, it had 1.24 million followers.
There are now more than a dozen alt-agency Twitter accounts, all posting a combination of climate science facts and taunts at Trump. Although these rogue accounts claim to represent agency employees, it is impossible to confirm who set the accounts up and is actively tweeting.
A Park Service employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being fired told National Geographic that agency workers are concerned that there will be reprisals from the administration, which has been embarrassed by the public show of resistance to the commander in chief—even though it is impossible to determine if the alt-sites are operated by actual government employees or internet trolls. But, the employee said, one tweet in particular posted on the alt-Park Service account suggests the account may indeed be operated by at least one rebellious Park Service employee because it refers to the White House by its official name, President's Park, because the residence is part of the national park system—a tidbit not widely known outside the Park Service.
"Reports of an unidentified orange haired mammal close to President's Park," the tweet says. "Possibly invasive species. DC animal services have been notified." (Read about the new species of moth named after President Trump.)

A Glimmer Of Hope?
It's still early and missteps are not uncommon as new administrations get up and running. The contract freeze at the EPA may, in the end, turn out to be "a tempest in a teapot," Doniger says. Although signals so far have put the scientific community on red alert, it may be too early to reach any conclusion other than the administration's start-up is in disarray.
Despite less-than-compelling testimony about climate change from both Rex Tillerson and Scott Pruitt, Trump's picks to lead the State Department and EPA, a glimmer of hope shone through that at least one of the newcomers understands what's at stake. Billionaire banker Wilbur Ross, the administration's nominee to head the Commerce Department, outlined his views in a letter to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat whose home state of Florida is one of the most vulnerable places to sea-level rise on Earth.
While Ross, who lives part of the year in Palm Beach County, Florida, echoed his fellow Cabinet colleagues in demurring on the cause of climate change, he agreed to focus on addressing the impacts. "Science should be left to the scientists," Ross said.

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Abbott To PM: Scrap RET Or Face Fury

The Australian - Simon Benson

Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: Braden Fastier
Tony Abbott has unleashed anothe­r critique on Malcolm Turn­bull’s leadership, using his Achilles heel — climate change — to accuse the government of treating voters like “mugs” if it did not scrap the renewable energ­y target.
In his second swipe at the Prime Minister in as many weeks, his predecessor said the Coalition would lose all credibility if it did not move to quickly rein in the push to generate more renewable energy.
In a speech yesterday to a Young Liberals conference in Adelaide­, Mr Abbott accused the government of “losing touch” with its traditional supporters.
The escalation of rhetoric contained a charge that the government not only lacked leadership in Mr Turnbull but that the Coal­ition was at risk of elect­oral collapse. It also reveals Mr Abbott is willing to risk further alienation from his own government.
“The past year has shown us what happens when mainstream parties lose touch with their supporters,” he said. “That was the big lesson of 2016. And heed it we must if we are to make a success of the coming year.”
While the RET has resonance among conservative MPs, some have privately expressed frustration that Mr Abbott rejected calls from colleagues when he was leader to do the same.
“Labor wants to more than double the renewable energy target­ to 50 per cent. That means a $50 billion overbuild of unnecessary wind turbines costing each household $5000 — and that’s just for starters,” he said.
“But before we get too self-congratulatory, rather than making power less expensive, our own policy is to subsidise Alcoa to keep it in business; our own policy is to lift renewable power from 15 per cent to 23 per cent within four years at the cost of $1000 per household.
“This is where the public are not mugs. We can’t credibly attack Labor merely for being worse than us.
“This is why our first big fight this year must be to stop any further mandatory use of renewable power.”
The comments build on remarks Mr Abbott made two weeks ago but indicate that he has no intention of remaining silent as the government struggles to regain momentum after a horror start to the year.
They come as Mr Turnbull is due to deliver a major speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister will becoming increasingly frustrated with Mr Abbott’s intervention on the RET, knowing that the government is unlikely to go as far as Mr Abbott is suggesting.
Senior Liberal MPs said it was no coincidence that Mr Abbott was goading the Prime Minister over climate change, as it was the issue that lost Mr Turnbull the leadership to Mr Abbott in 2009.
Mr Abbott, in his speech, recognised that he was responsible for the RET as it stands now but claimed he had brought it down from Labor’s target. He added that the government now risked subsidising renewables by bailing out stranded industries.
“Australia has almost limitless reserves of clean coal and gas. We should have the world’s lowest power prices. Instead, we’re making it harder and harder to use coal and gas through the renewable energy target — so that power is getting more expensive and less reliable,” he said.
“When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the power doesn’t flow. So until there’s baseload power from low-cost batteries, trying to rely on renewables is mad. My government reduced the renewable energy target from 27 to 23 per cent — but after the lights went out in South Australia, it’s obvious that it’s still too high.
“Alcoa is in trouble, Arrium is in trouble, Port Pirie is in trouble, even Roxby Downs has a problem.
“Why is it OK for everyone to get the benefit of Australian coal and gas except us? Why is it OK for other countries to open new power stations using Australian coal but wrong for us?
“So let’s stop forcing people to use the most expensive power and make it easier for them to use the cheapest.”
Mr Abbott also barely concealed his frustration and a belief that, had he fought the last election as leader, he would have won, claiming the Coalition had taken the conservative base for granted and paid the price.
“The British electorate rejected their prime minister’s advice — and that of the political class generally — to leave the European Union,’’ he said.
“The American electorate rejected all the mainstream candidates to catapult into the White House an outsider feeding off grievances that are deeply felt but rarely acknowledged by the system.
“And here in Australia, the resurgence of One Nation is a warning to our Liberal-National coalition that the conservative vote can’t be taken for granted.
“What used to be called the silent majority, Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’, might often lack a voice but they sure haven’t lost their vote.
“Voters will punish governments and parties that they think have lost the plot — and so they should.
“So that’s our challenge for 2017: to tackle real problems in a meaningful way so that people’s lives get better, not worse — and to do so in ways that make sense to our strongest supporters.”

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Changing Climate, Not Humans, Killed Australia’s Massive Mammals

Smithsonian.com - 

But that mass extinction could help us predict what today’s human-wrought climate change may bring
An illustration of Australia's past megafauna. (Illustration by Peter Trusler © Australian Postal Corporation 2008)
If you think Australia is full of weird creatures now, you should have seen it at the end of the last Ice Age. There were wombats the size of Volkswagons, koala cousins that resembled the mythical Drop Bear and enormous, venomous lizards larger than today’s Komodo dragons. But why did these fantastic beasts disappear? After a decade of debating this question, a new study is helping to revive a hypothesis that had previously been pushed aside.

What happened in Australia is just one part of a global story in the decline of the world’s massive mammals. From that island continent through Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, the close of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago saw the worldwide downfall of many large, charismatic creatures from the giant ground sloth to the beloved woolly mammoth. In every case, both humans and a warming climate have been implicated as major suspects, fueling a debate over how the extinction played out and what—or who—was responsible.

As far as Australia goes, humans have been promoted as prime culprits. Not only would early-arriving aboriginals have hunted megafauna, the argument goes, but they would have changed the landscape by using fire to clear large swaths of grassland. Some experts point to Australia’s megafauna crash after human arrival, around 50,000 years ago, as a sure sign of such a human-induced blitzkrieg.

For example, a region called the Sahul—which included Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea during the Ice Age—lost 88 species of animal that weighed over 220 pounds. These included oversized kangaroos that strutted rather than hopped, real-life ninja turtles with tail clubs and flightless birds twice the size of today’s emus.

The problem is, there’s no hard evidence that humans were primarily to blame for the disaster that befell these giants. Judith Field, an archaeologist at the University of New South Wales who focuses on megafauna and indigenous communities in Australia and New Guinea, says the hunting hypothesis has hung on because of its appealing simplicity. “It’s a good sound bite” and “a seductive argument to blame humans for the extinctions” given how simple of a morality fable it is, she says. But when it comes to hard evidence, Field says, the role of humans has not been substantiated.

So what really happened? The picture is far from complete, but a paper by Vanderbilt University paleontologist Larisa DeSantis, Field and colleagues published today in the journal Paleobiology argues that the creeping onset of a warmer, drier climate could have dramatically changed Australia’s wildlife before humans even set foot on the continent. And while this event was natural, it is a frightening portent of what may happen to our modern wildlife if we do nothing to stop the scourge of today's human-caused climate change.
Cuddie Springs is the only site in mainland Australia that has produced insitu fossil evidence of the co-existence of humans and megafauna, as shown here by the discovery of a flaked stone artifact and the bone of a giant flightless bird. (Judith Field / University of New South Wales)
The researchers focused on a spot in southeastern Australia known as Cuddie Springs, which turned out to be an ideal place to interrogate the fate of the continent’s megafauna. Initial scientific forays focused on searching for fossil pollen to reconstruct ancient environments, Field says. But in the process, researchers also found fossils and archaeological artifacts that indicated megafauna and humans lived alongside each other there for 10,000 years or more.

“The combination of the fossil bone, the pollen record and the archaeology make this a really unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between the three,” Field says.

Even better, DeSantis says, Cuddie Springs boasts older beds of fossils deposited long before human arrival. This provided an opportunity to document changes over a longer span of time, “and assess dietary responses to long-term shifts in climate,” she says. To that end, the paleontologists focused on fossils laid out in two horizons—one 570,000-350,000 years old and the other between 40,000 and 30,000 years old. Drawing on chemical clues about diet and microscopic damage to marsupial teeth found in those layers, the researchers were able to document who was around and what they were eating at each layer.

If you were able to take a time machine between the two time periods, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you had moved through space as well as time. “Cuddie Springs, around 400,000 years ago, was wetter,” DeSantis says, and there was enough greenery for the various herbivores to become somewhat specialized in their diets. Kangaroos, wombats and giant herbivores called diprotodontids browsed on a variety of shrubby plants, including saltbush. By 40,000 years ago, a warmer, drying climate had transformed the landscape and the diets of the mammals on it.

By late in the Ice Age, the plant-eating marsupials were all eating more or less the same thing, and the sorts of plants that were better at holding water for these mammals were much rarer. Saltbush, for example, became less palatable because, DeSantis says, “if you haven’t been able to find water for days, the last thing you are going to eat is salty food that requires you to drink more water.” The desert became drier, resources became scarce, and competition for the same food ramped up.

Altogether, DeSantis says, this suggests “climate change stressed megafauna and contributed to their eventual extinction.”

Knowing how climate change impacted Australia’s mammals thousands of years ago isn’t just ancient history. NASA recently reported that we’ve just gone through the hottest year on record in an ongoing string of exceptionally warm years. The only difference is that now, our species is driving climate change. “Australia is projected to experience more extreme droughts and intense precipitation events,” DeSantis says, including a projected temperature increase of around 1-3 degrees Celsius by 2050, thanks to Homo sapiens and our forest-razing, fossil-fuel-burning, factory-farm-dependent lifestyles.

Looking to the past may help us get ready for what’s coming. “Data from Cuddie Springs suggest that there is likely a tipping point beyond which many animals will go extinct,” DeSantis says. We’re on track to play out such a catastrophe again—and today’s changing climate can’t be halted or reversed, the least our species can do is prepare for it. “I always learned in school that the importance of studying history is to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself,” DeSantis says.

Looking at the ghosts of climate change past gives us a preview of what’s coming—and what we might lose if we do not act.

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30/01/2017

Government Facing Legal Action Over Failure To Fight Climate Change

The Independent - Ian Johnston

Lawyers say ministers have been in breach of legal requirements to come up with a plan to make major cuts to the UK's fossil fuel emissions for years – and further delays in its publication could be the final straw
The ongoing delay is potentially serious because it means industry and investors will have less time to plan for the changes that would be required. Getty
The Government is facing legal action over its failure to come up with a plan to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels in order to meet the UK's international commitments in the fight against climate change.
Britain has agreed to cut emissions by 57 per cent by 2032 but is currently nowhere near meeting that goal.
The latest expert report predicted the target would be missed by 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – the equivalent of all the greenhouse gases currently produced by industry.
The Government's Emissions Reduction Plan was supposed to have been ready at the end of last year but the publication date was first put off until February and then again to the end of March.
The Independent can now reveal the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which is responsible for climate change after Theresa May abolished the dedicated department, is no longer standing by this latest deadline.
Under the 2008 Climate Change Act, the Government has a legal duty to come up with ways to meet its carbon reduction targets.
Environmental legal activists at ClientEarth had already put Theresa May on notice that it was considering legal action over the Government's lack of progress on the issue, telling the Financial Times it had been breaking the law for several years.
And climate lawyer Jonathan Church said if the March deadline was missed this could prompt them to go to court.
"We've made it clear that under our analysis, the UK Government is already in breach of the Climate Change Act because its plans don't deliver the emissions reductions the Act demands," he told The Independent.
"If that remains the case come April, after many months of delay, that may be the moment to bring a legal challenge."
ClientEarth has already successfully sued the Government for failing to come up with a plan to cut air pollution to within legally allowed standards.
Barry Gardiner, shadow climate change minister, said he believed the Government was now breaking the law.
The 2008 Climate Change Act "demands" that the Government must produce an Emissions Reduction Plan "as soon as is reasonably practicable", he said, adding: "They are clearly in breach of the statute."
He criticised climate change minister Nick Hurd, who had assured him that the March deadline would be met.
Mr Gardiner confronted Mr Hurd about a potential delay to the plan in the House of Commons on 23 January when the Government's Industrial Strategy report was published. It said the emissions plan would be published "in 2017", rather than "early 2017" as previously stated.
But Mr Gardiner said Mr Hurd had told him: "No, no Barry, it's still our intention to publish by the end of March. That's just loose wording on the part of the officials."
"I said, 'Can I quote you on that?' and he said, 'Oh yes,'" Mr Gardiner said.
"What it means is neither the officials nor the minister know when this is going to come out or how they are going to meet the targets."
He said he believed Mr Hurd, known to be a strong supporter of action to address climate change, would "like to have it out as soon as possible, but his officials simply cannot get it together".
"In order to do this properly, you need cooperation between Transport, Communities and Local Government, the Cabinet Office, Defra as well as BEIS… at least five departments," Mr Gardiner said.
"Because the key areas we are failing on are not actually energy, power production and renewables. It's actually energy efficiency and the transport sector. Housing and transport are key elements of this strategy.
"My view is nobody in those departments is prepared to play ball with them. Nick Hurd is the minister in charge of the brief. He should be damn well making sure that it happens – it's his job to drive it."
He said he did not want to call for Mr Hurd's resignation "at this stage" because the Government had not actually said it would miss the March deadline.
And he added if Mr Hurd did quit it "would probably mean you ended up with somebody worse who didn't even want to reach the March deadline".
The ongoing delay is potentially serious because it means industry and investors will have less time to plan for the changes that would be required, increasing the cost of making them.
Environmentalists and the car industry, a key source of carbon emissions, found themselves united in calling for the Government to get a move on.
Tamzen Isacsson, of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said: "The Government's Emissions Reduction Plan promises to build on its commitment to accelerating take-up of ultra-low emission vehicles, so we welcome its publication as soon as possible.
"Plug-in electric, hybrid and hydrogen cars will deliver even greater improvements in emissions, but this market is still small – meaningful growth will require continued support through infrastructure development, incentives and a tax regime that will stimulate consumer demand."
And Gareth Redmond-King, of conservation charity WWF-UK, said: "We need a plan that gives certainty to the renewables industry, to house-builders, to electric car manufacturers – to all the companies that will invest in the technologies and infrastructure that will not only tackle climate change, but will bring jobs and growth the UK as a result.
"The longer the Government leaves to publish that plan, the harder it becomes to cut emissions in time; any slippage beyond expected publication in March should give us serious cause for concern."
When The Independent asked a BEIS spokesperson to confirm the March deadline would still be met, she refused to answer and insisted a question be emailed so it could receive a formal response.
Asked if the Emissions Reduction Plan was still on course to be published by the end of March, BEIS said: "Our emissions reduction plan will set out how we will reduce emissions through the 2020s and send an important signal to the markets, businesses and investors.
"We are investing the time now to undertake critical preparatory work to ensure we get this right. This includes engaging across businesses, industry and other stakeholders on the shared challenge of moving to a low-carbon economy."
It is understood the Government is working to get the report published "as soon as possible".

CIA director nominee Mike Pompeo refuses to accept NASA's findings on climate change

But Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment, echoed remarks made by Mr Hurd at a BEIS committee hearing earlier this month that it was important to get the plan right, rather than rushing publication.
And he said one "major factor" was likely to be the amount of time civil servants are having to devote to the prospect of leaving the European Union.
"If it doesn't come out in March, it will be unfortunate," he said.
"But most important of all, it's got to be credible.
"I suspect the delay is a combination of: it's going to be a challenge to come up with the right policies and there's a drag effect from having to worry about Brexit."

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