Climate Change Doubled The Likelihood Of The New South Wales Heatwave

The Conversation - Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick | Andrew King | Matthew Hale

Emergency crews tackle a bushfire at Boggabri, one of dozens across NSW during the heatwave. AAP/Karen Hodge

The heatwave that engulfed southeastern Australia at the end of last week has seen heat records continue to tumble like Jenga blocks.
On Saturday February 11, as New South Wales suffered through the heatwave's peak, temperatures soared to 47℃ in Richmond, 50km northwest of Sydney, while 87 fires raged across the state amid catastrophic fire conditions.
On that day, most of NSW experienced temperatures at least 12℃ above normal for this time of year. In White Cliffs, the overnight minimum was 34.2℃, a new record for the state's highest observed minimum temperature.
On Friday, the average maximum temperature right across NSW hit 42.4℃, beating the previous February record of 42.0℃. The new record stood for all of 24 hours before it was smashed again on Saturday, as the whole state averaged 44.0℃ at its peak. At this time, NSW was the hottest place on Earth.
A degree or two here or there might not sound like much, but to put it in cricketing parlance, those temperature records are the equivalent of a modern test batsman retiring with an average of over 100 – the feat of outdoing Don Bradman's fabled 99.94 would undoubtedly be front-page news.
And still the records continue to fall. Mungindi, on the border of NSW and Queensland, broke the Australian record of 50 days in a row above 35℃, set just four years ago at Bourke Airport, with the new record now at 52 days.
Meanwhile, two days after that sweltering Saturday we woke to find the fires ignited during the heatwave still cutting a swathe of destruction, with the small town of Uarbry, east of Dunedoo, all but burned to the ground.

Maximum temperature anomalies across NSW on February 11, the peak of the heatwave. Bureau of Meteorology, Author provided

This is all the more noteworthy when we consider that the El Niño of 2015-16 is long gone and the conditions that ordinarily influence our weather are firmly in neutral. This means we should expect average, not sweltering, temperatures.
Since Christmas, much of eastern Australia has been in a flux of extreme temperatures. This increased frequency of heatwaves shows a strong trend in observations, which is set to continue as the human influence on the climate deepens.
It is all part of a rapid warming trend that over the past decade has seen new heat records in Australia outnumber new cold records by 12 to 1.
Let's be clear, this is not natural. Climate scientists have long been saying that we would feel the impacts of human-caused climate change in heat records first, before noticing the upward swing in average temperatures (although that is happening too). This heatwave is simply the latest example.
What's more, in just a few decades' time, summer conditions like these will be felt across the whole country regularly.

Attributing the heat
The useful thing scientifically about heatwaves is that we can estimate the role that climate change plays in these individual events. This is a relatively new field known as "event attribution", which has grown and improved significantly over the past decade.
Using the Weather@Home climate model, we looked at the role of human-induced climate change in this latest heatwave, as we have for other events before.
We compared the likelihood of such a heatwave in model simulations that factor in human greenhouse gas emissions, compared with simulations in which there is no such human influence. Since 2017 has only just begun, we used model runs representing 2014, which was similarly an El Niño-neutral year, while also experiencing similar levels of human influence on the climate.
Based on this analysis, we found that heatwaves at least as hot as this one are now twice as likely to occur. In the current climate, a heatwave of this severity and extent occurs, on average, once every 120 years, so is still quite rare. However, without human-induced climate change, this heatwave would only occur once every 240 years.
In other words, the waiting time for the recent east Australian heatwave has halved. As climate change worsens in the coming decades, the waiting time will reduce even further.
Our results show very clearly the influence of climate change on this heatwave event. They tell us that what we saw last weekend is a taste of what our future will bring, unless humans can rapidly and deeply cut our greenhouse emissions.
Our increasingly fragile electricity networks will struggle to cope, as the threat of rolling blackouts across NSW showed. It is worth noting that the large number of rooftop solar panels in NSW may have helped to avert such a crisis this time around.
Our hospital emergency departments also feel the added stress of heat waves. When an estimated 374 people died from the heatwave that preceded the Black Saturday bushfires the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine resorted to storing bodies in hospitals, universities and funeral parlours. The Victorian heatwave of January 2014 saw 167 more deaths than expected, along with significant increases in emergency department presentations and ambulance callouts.
Infrastructure breaks down during heatwaves, as we saw in 2009 when railway lines buckled under the extreme conditions, stranding thousands of commuters. It can also strain Australia's beloved sporting events, as the 2014 Australian Open showed.
These impacts have led state governments and other bodies to investigate heatwave management strategies, while our colleagues at the Bureau of Meteorology have developed a heatwave forecast service for Australia.
These are likely to be just the beginning of strategies needed to combat heatwaves, with conditions currently regarded as extreme set to be the "new normal" by the 2030s. With the ramifications of extreme weather clear to everyone who experienced this heatwave, there is no better time to talk about how we can ready ourselves.
We urgently need to discuss the health and economic impacts of heatwaves, and how we are going to cope with more of them in the future.

Links

• Human hands are all over Australia's hottest ever year
• It's a scorcher: new site tracks heatwaves across Australia
• Climate Council: heatwaves are getting hotter and more frequent
• Global meteorology report puts yet more heat on climate politics

The Simple Truth: Coal-Fired Generators Have No Future In Australia

ABC News - Ian Verrender

The debate over carbon emissions and electricity couldn't have occurred at a more appropriate time. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)

Maybe it's the heat, or the unprecedented run of searing temperatures scorching the continent.

Whatever the cause, the torrid debate in Parliament over carbon emissions and electricity in recent months couldn't have occurred at a more appropriate moment.
The only problem is that every politician, state and federal, has always clung to the truism that power begets power or, perhaps the inverse; that whoever delivers blackouts gets booted out of office.

Turnbull's turnaround

The man who lost the leadership by fighting to introduce a carbon price is now against renewable energy, Stephen Long writes.

As the finger-pointing over higher prices nationally, blackouts in South Australia and threatened disruptions across the eastern states escalates, any notion over rational debate on how best to address the nation's long-term energy challenges has evaporated.
Put aside the irony that the recent run of misfortune on the national electricity grid is the direct result of a savage uptick in extreme weather conditions, a trend the vast bulk of climate scientists have been warning of for decades.
The simple truth is that, despite the entertaining theatre of insults in the national capital, Australia's future power needs overwhelmingly will be provided by renewables and gas. Coal-fired generators have no future in Australia.
That is a trend driven by energy generators and consumers, both of which have abandoned hope of policy leadership from Parliament.
Generators jettisoned the idea of coal years ago, at least when it comes to building new power stations, because they carry too much risk. You're looking at upwards of $1 billion for a large-scale coal-fired generator that would be expected to last around 50 years.
No rational businessperson is willing to commit that kind of funding over that period, in an electoral cycle that lasts just three years. And that's just the equity side.
An investment of that magnitude also requires huge amounts of project debt and, faced with the prospect of stranded assets and non-performing loans, financiers have wiped their hands of the idea of coal-fired electricity.
Consumers, meanwhile, have plunged into renewables, with Australians among the world's fastest adopters of rooftop solar.

Renewables v coal
Sadly, much of the debate about our future power generation has become mired in political point-scoring and simplistic arguments designed to inflame and outrage; where ignorance dominates academic research. The recent power outages in South Australia are a prime example.
While it has become fashionable to denigrate scientists, particularly when related to climate or energy, it's worth reading through the CSIRO's 2015 report into Australia's future energy needs.

"Electricity grids are complex systems and the largest machines ever developed by humans," it notes.

With that in mind, it attempted to compare the costs of various forms of power generation, from traditional fossil fuel plants to the renewable technologies and everything in between.

Govt may fund coal power

Treasurer Scott Morrison says the Clean Energy Finance Corporation could be used to fund new clean coal power stations.

What it found was that none of the new technologies can deliver power as cheaply as our current batch of carbon belching coal plants.
When it came to renewable energy, wind was the winner while among the new-generation fossil fuel plants, gas-fired combined cycle plants and supercritical coal-fired generation came out on top.
In a nutshell, the study explains that renewable energy has high upfront costs but is extremely cheap to run, given the fuel — wind and sun — comes at no cost. Gas plants are cheaper to build, but have higher running costs.
But there's one crucial cost that weighs heavily on the minds of investors and bankers. And that's carbon.
According to the CSIRO, if a carbon price was introduced, the economics of power generation shifts in favour of renewables, although a relatively high price is required. Wind is competitive with new-generation coal at $30 a tonne of carbon dioxide, solar at $70 a tonne.
Carbon storage, the kind of technology the Government is now looking at, can also be expensive, ranging from $5 to up to $70 a tonne.

"On this side of the house you will not find a fear of coal," Treasurer Scott Morrison said. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)

Carbon pricing is inevitable
Although early attempts at pricing carbon emissions have failed, no-one in the power industry, or those that finance it, is under any illusion that emissions will be free forever.
It is the same in mining. Every major corporation views carbon pricing as inevitable and includes a range of prices when determining the economics of long term projects.

Why is everyone talking
about a carbon tax?

These are the five things you need to know about the debate over carbon pricing.

Given the significant costs levied on those putting waste into landfill and the prohibition on disposing of noxious materials into our waterways, it's remarkable that to this day, the atmosphere is freely used as a garbage dump at no cost.
Last week, a study commissioned by the Minerals Council claimed that renewable energy in Australia was the beneficiary of huge subsidies.
Large-scale renewable projects, it claimed, were on the receiving end of $1.8 billion in direct subsidies last year alone. That's a claim rejected as simplistic and incorrect by those in the renewables industry.
Whatever the number, there is no doubt that renewable energy has been on the receiving end of vast subsidy handouts both for large scale and home generation here and around the globe.
But it's equally true that, in the absence of a carbon price, high-polluting industries have been getting a free ride, not only by avoiding the cost of damage to the environment and the planet, as the science overwhelmingly points to, but through the damage to the health of countless millions of people.
It's also worth noting that every Australian coal-fired power plant was built with taxpayer money. As were the electricity distribution systems. And while many since have been sold to private interests, the sales processes have thrown up some interesting numbers.
When the NSW government sold its electricity generation assets for $1.5 billion, the deal was hailed a breakthrough. But the Tamberlin Inquiry in 2011 discovered about $4 billion worth of taxpayer subsidies to the generators in the form of cheap long-term coal contracts.
Coal-fired generators also use huge amounts of water, much of which — unlike farmers — is gifted to them. Then, of course, there are the would-be new coal miners up in the Carmichael Basin — most notably the Adani family — with their hands out for about $1 billion in taxpayer-funded infrastructure.

What's the solution?
From an economic perspective, it would be far more efficient to eliminate subsidies altogether and to put a price on carbon that reflected its true cost. Private investors then would be able to choose which technology was most efficient.
One of the great drawbacks of renewables has been the intermittent nature of its generation. As a famous politician once noted wryly:

"If the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine, there is no power being generated."

That's true. But energy storage, particularly batteries, is the game changer that could rectify that shortcoming.
Just as the cost of solar panels has plummeted in recent years, as production technology has improved and the huge demand from households and business has improved economies of scale, the same can be expected from energy storage technology systems.
That will create a new set of technical headaches and cost challenges on how best to maintain a national power network, for which we appear to be entirely unprepared.

The Engie-owned Hazelwood power station and brown coal mine. (ABC Gippsland: Nicole Asher)

Links

• Power prices could double with new coal-fired stations: experts
• Turnbull's turnaround from pro-carbon price to anti-renewables
• Irrigators switch to solar to reduce power costs
• Renewables the solution to rising power prices: Energy Australia 
• Industry groups demand bipartisan energy policy 
• Solar batteries 'exploding' in popularity with uptake tipped to triple: audit
• What is load shedding and why is it happening?

Climate Change Is Already Battering Hundreds Of Animal Species

New Scientist - Anita Makri

Under pressure

Climate change is already harming around 700 species of mammals and birds. That means that warming is not just a theoretical future threat, and conservation work must focus on the “here and now”, says a new study.
It reviewed 136 studies published between 1990 and 2015, as well as modelling the risks to animals on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It concluded that almost half of terrestrial mammal species and nearly a quarter of all bird species could already be negatively affected, without us even realising.
“We have the knowledge to take action,” says Lee Hannah, a conservation ecologist and senior researcher at Conservation International, a non-profit based in Arlington, Virginia. “Truly massive climate-triggered insect outbreaks have killed millions of trees in North America. Heat flashes in the oceans have killed corals and changed coral reefs in every ocean.”
A third of all species may be at risk of extinction, says Hannah, and the study shows the changes are happening already.
Lead author Michela Pacifici at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, says their results also show the most affected species are in highly developed areas or areas expecting a human population boom in coming decades. So conservation needs to focus more on monitoring in these locations and on “control of human demand for natural resources”, she says.

Risk assessment
The team assessed the risk to animals by looking at traits including body mass, population numbers, geographic range, reproductive rate and survival rate. If at least one of these shows a decline affecting half the animal population or more, they reasoned, it shows climate change is already taking its toll.
Applying their model, they estimated that 47 per cent of 873 species of threatened terrestrial mammals and 23.4 per cent of 1272 threatened bird species are showing signs of harm. Elephants, primates and marsupials are the most affected.
The reasons why species are affected vary. Some mammals are struggling to adapt as temperatures are changing too fast or because their diets are specialised. For some birds, living at high altitude means fewer opportunities to move to cooler areas, while seabirds and others that live close to water face fragmented habitats or algal blooms.
Some 92 per cent of existing data on species vulnerabilities that the study reviewed came from Europe and North America. Hannah says we can expect the tropics to be even more climate-sensitive, with massive changes already under way.

Links

• Global warming threatens millions of species
• Map reveals species most at risk from climate change
• Bear dung helps Japanese cherry trees survive climate change
• New talk of warming pause just another faux climate controversy

Abbott/Turnbull Policy On Climate Change And Energy Caused Current Mess

Independent Australia - John Menadue

Alan Kohler and The Great Coal Hoax. (Image via @australian)

Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party have only their own kack-handed efforts to blame for blackouts by failing to come up with a responsible solution to energy security. Can't be all that hard, says John Menadue.
LET'S BE clear, the Coalition and particularly the Liberal Party and Malcolm Turnbull are responsible for the current mess and impasse on electricity prices and reliability and supply. This is the result of years of policy and political failure. We are now seeing the dreadful consequences.
Pleading by the Business Council and others for bipartisanship on energy policy is a political cover for their past and very politically partisan support of the Coalition on energy policy such as an Emissions Trading Scheme and a carbon price.
In 2006, John Howard asked Peter Shergold, the Head of PM & C, to examine the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions. Peter Shergold advised that an ETS was necessary. There was no progress.
Then the first Rudd government, following discussion papers, introduced its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in 2009. Unfortunately the legislation was rejected in the Senate because of the combined opposition of the Coalition and the Greens. By then the Coalition was at the peak of its climate change denial and the Greens said that the CPRS was not good enough. Disappointingly, Kevin Rudd decided not to take the issue to a double dissolution. After the disappointment of Copenhagen he lost his "mojo".

IMAGE

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that if the CPRS had been agreed, the issue of global warming and carbon pollution would have been almost done and settled. Or at least we had the beginnings of good policy.
But worse was to follow. Malcolm Turnbull supported CPRS because we thought he believed in its importance as a market mechanism to put a price on carbon and let the market influence investment decisions. Unfortunately, many Coalition members, including Tony Abbott, disagreed with him and Malcolm Turnbull was defeated by one vote in the Liberal Party in 2009.
After the 2010 election, the Gillard Government proposed a carbon tax which I still believe is sensible policy. But the carbon tax let loose a scare campaign by Tony Abbott and his business and media supporters that we have not seen the like of before. Tony Abbott won the 2013 election quite handsomely with a dishonest campaign of opposition to the carbon tax and scant regard for the damage that climate change was already causing in Australia.

IMAGE

Restored to the leadership of the Liberal Party in September 2015, and as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has been crab-walking away from climate change and related policies as fast as he can in order to placate the right-wing climate change deniers in his own party. He blamed the SA government for blackouts which had very little to do with renewables, but were due to the collapse of the pylons. He continually talks about blackouts in SA but in NSW with a state Liberal government he refers merely to "power shedding". There certainly have been substantial electricity price increases in SA but the price increases have been much greater in Queensland which is very dependent upon coal-fired generators. Almost all the media, including the ABC. have been complicit in not exposing the PM’s false claims.

'Almost all the media, including the ABC, have been complicit in not exposing the PM’s false claims'

Malcolm Turnbull has abandoned almost all those things that we thought he believed in. In a difficult situation he cannot be relied on. He is not there when we need him.
He installs solar panels and a battery in his own private residence, yet attacks state premiers in their commitment to renewable energy.
For years there have been cries for a stable and predictable environment on climate and energy policies in order that wise and efficient business decisions could be made. It didn’t happen. We were warned about a system crisis. We now have one as our record hot summer unfolds.

The great coal hoax by @AlanKohler https://t.co/PGXmOPVzBF #qt #auspol pic.twitter.com/c4YBnX3NTs

— Get Shortened (@Get_Shortened) February 13, 2017

In his journal, The Constant Investor, under the heading 'The Great Coal Hoax', Alan Kohler sheeted blame very directly to the Coalition and Malcolm Turnbull. He said:

Those crises have now arrived in the form of blackouts, and they are not caused by too much renewable energy… it’s due to a lack of investment, in turn due to a lack of policy certainty and clarity.
This is entirely the Liberal Party’s fault — not just Malcolm Turnbull’s, although he is a rather pathetic figure now. If he didn’t go along with the hoax, he’d be sacked and another PM would.
By taking the low road in 2009 instead of the high road, and deciding to mislead Australians about the true cost of energy, the Liberal Party condemned the country to a decade of confusion and stasis on energy policy.
That reached a nadir of absurdity last week with the Treasurer’s coal stunt.
The rest of Australia’s leaders, in particular the CEOs of our largest companies, should declare now that enough is enough, and pull these idiots into line.

See also Quentin Dempster in The New Daily on Tony Abbott’s role in Australia’s energy crisis.

IMAGE

Links

• Meet "Mr Coal" — our new climate change minister
• Citibank: Global cost of climate change inaction — $44 trillion by 2040
• Australian scientists warn of climate change flash flood risk in cities
• Turnbull's first budget ignores climate change and dumps clean energy: That's #innovative?
• How the IPA feeds kids lies about climate change

The Coal War: Inside The Fight Against Adani's Plans To Build Australia'S Biggest Coal Mine

Fairfax - Nick McKenzie | Richard Baker | Peter Ker

It's the fight that has become a proxy war between forces for and against the coal industry in Australia and it's entering its fiercest round.
Indian conglomerate Adani's plans to build Australia's biggest coal mine have been heralded by the federal and Queensland governments as a boon for local jobs and the economy.

Abbot Point in Queensland, a proposed terminal for coal produced at Adani's Carmichael mine. 

But environmentalists are adamant the mine is a ticking time bomb that may imperil the Galilee Basin and Great Barrier Reef, as well as serving as an up-yours to the Paris climate change accord.
The battle will escalate this week when its opponents launch a campaign targeting 13 marginal federal Coalition seats and at least three Queensland state seats.
This comes as new details emerge about Adani's chequered history in India, where the conglomerate and its subsidiaries have come under fire from environmental courts.

The mine
The $22 billion mega mine Adani plans to build in Carmichael, Queensland will have six open-cut pits and several underground mines.
Coal will be extracted from the mine site west of Rockhampton and transported 400 kilometres by rail to the Abbot Point Terminal, south of Townsville.
It will be processed offshore, before being shipped to energy-hungry India. The federal government is considering granting Adani a $1 billion concessional loan to help build the railway line to the Abbot Point Terminal but the mine's opponents consider the loan a key battleground in the war against the coal project.


ABC spreading fake news: Canavan
Nationals MP Matt Canavan has had a bizarre spray on radio, accusing the ABC of reporting fake news over the Adani coal mine.

Killing the mine 
The anti-mine campaign is no empty threat. It has a $1 million war chest, nine full-time staff including polling and social media experts, hundreds of volunteers and is being run by left-leaning activist group GetUp.
While the anti-Adani movement wants to ensure the firm isn't granted the $1 billion loan, its end game is to kill off the project.

The Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and 350.org rally in Melbourne against the coal mine. Photo: Wayne Taylor

"We will win," says businessman turned environmental crusader Geoff Cousins.
This week, the Australian Conservation Foundation, a host of NGOs and GetUp will launch a campaign targeting 13 marginal coalition seats in Queensland, NSW and Victoria.

Abbot Point is surrounded by wetlands and coral reefs. 

The campaign will employ cutting-edge and traditional tactics. Voters will be contacted by telephone, advertising and a social media blitz. GetUp's campaigning is said to have contributed to the loss of several coalition seats during the 2016 election and the group is hoping to force Resources Minister Matt Canavan to ditch the proposed $1 billion concessional loan.
"We're aiming to make 50,000 calls into these seats over the next three months, and have conversations with at least the number of people that is equal to that MP's margin in votes. For example it would take just 532 votes to change the outcome of the seat of Forde in Queensland," says GetUp's Miriam Lyons.

Adani's proposed mine and rail lines. 

The mine opponents will also lobby Westpac bank to join a host of other financial institutions in ruling out funding the $22 billion project, while continuing to use the courts to frustrate the government and Adani's ambitions.
Adani believes it has become a proxy for the nation's coal industry in a campaign that has seen calls from one environmental group to get activists to infiltrate the firm by posing as job seekers.
"This is the most regulated project in the history of Australia and we are yet to push a shovel in the ground and get one ounce of coal. If they kill us, they will move on to other companies," an Adani insider says.

The political pay-off
In cities such as Townsville, heaving with Australian soldiers, and the sweltering, sprawling country town of Rockhampton, the mine is mostly seen as a godsend.
"I have come under fire from those opposed to coal for my vocal support of this project, but I won't take a backward step," Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow recently said.
The Queensland Labor government faces an election in 2018 and, short on major infrastructure projects, hopes the mine and resulting jobs will see it returned to office.
Adani and the Queensland government say the project will deliver an employment bonanza, creating thousands of jobs during the construction phase. This will level off to 1500 or so employees when the mine is fully operational.
Pauline Hanson has backed the mine, subject to assurances around water management and the use of foreign labour, while local LNP member George Christensen supports both the mine and the subsidy.
The Minerals Council of Australia's CEO Brendan Pearson says the anti-mine campaign amounts to "futile grandstanding" that will only delay job and business opportunities for thousands of Australians.
"It is patently clear that the Adani mine will proceed and that is a good thing for regional communities in Central and Northern Queensland," he said.
Federal LNP members are also barracking for the mine.
One senior federal minister told Fairfax Media that regardless of opposition by "zealots", the Carmichael coal project is likely to receive the $1 billion concessional loan from the government.
But the minister also privately acknowledges that subsidising a firm controlled by a controversial Indian billionaire is not without its problems.

A grubby past
The Adani Group is a diversified conglomerate headed by billionaire Gautam Adani, one of India's wealthiest magnates and a man who has cultivated powerful friends, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mr Adani recently met Malcolm Turnbull, whose renewed support for coal (Treasurer Scott Morrison brandished a lump of coal in federal parliament last week) is at the heart of the Coalition's claim that Labor's renewable energy policy will lead to a surge in power prices and imperil energy security.
The power and reach of the Adani Group is legendary in India. But the group's subsidiaries have also faced allegations of involvement in fraud and corruption, environmental destruction and labour exploitation.
A recent ABC investigation into the conglomerate focused on ongoing investigations by Indian authorities, widely reported by the local media, into alleged money laundering and tax fraud by Adani subsidiaries.
The federal resources minister described the ABC report as 'fake news' and said the allegations were untested.
But official Indian tribunals and watchdogs have landed punches on a number of Adani firms, including:

• an August 2016 finding previously unreported in Australia by the Indian National Green Tribunal- an environmental court- which found Adani partly responsible for failing to clean up after an oil and coal spill caused by an unseaworthy ship that ran aground off the coast of Mumbai in 2011. The ship had been chartered by Adani and was carrying the firm's coal and fuel; and 
• in January 2016, the same tribunal fined an Adani subsidiary $4.8 million after finding it had caused environmental destruction while undertaking works at a fishing village in the Indian port city of Surat.

A report released by lawyers from Environmental Justice Australia documents these and other alleged Adani misdeeds in India, including an illegal iron ore mining and export operation and an environmental disaster at the Mundra port.
Mr Canavan believes Adani has "been exposed to unfair scrutiny" and criticisms of the firm carry "xenophobic undertones."
"There have been some high-profile incidents by Australian mining and resources companies recently, some instances that are quite dire. But it seems to be, because they [Adani] are Indian or because they want to develop a new coal basin, they are exposed to a different standard."
Mr Canavan insists Australia has the regulatory checks and balances to keep Adani in line. For example, there are dozens of criteria for Adani to meet in order to meet and maintain its government approval.
And for all the doomsday warnings about Adani coal ships navigating the Great Barrier Reef, a company insider says such predictions overlook the fact that other vessels carrying the quarry of other big miners have for years been making a similar journey to little, if any, protest.
Queensland has exported more than 200 million tonnes of coal per year in recent times (more than triple the volume Adani plans to export) and the majority of that goes through the reef.
But a businessman who knows how corporate Australia operates, former Optus CEO, Geoff Cousins, is dismissive of the protections proffered by the federal government and Adani. Mr Cousins, a former adviser to prime minister John Howard and current Australian Conservation Foundation chairman, notes that "major projects get a wide variety of conditions attached to them and state and federal  governments hide behind those conditions. But when you go to see if anyone checked on those conditions or whether they were met, the record is generally appalling."

Where will the coal go
The coal Adani wants to mine is bound for India's power plants, including those the company owns. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is championing renewable energy in line with the aims of last year's Paris Agreement (looking increasingly shaky in the wake of Donald Tump's election. At the same time, India is also seeking to ramp up its own coal production in line with its ambitious aim to become self sufficient in its production of coal.
The mine's proponents say if India's power stations are denied Australian coal, they will be forced to use a dirtier local alternative, with greater emissions. This claim addresses the argument that the burning of Carmichael coal will undermine efforts to combat climate change. As with most claims connected to the mine, this is fiercely contested, including by the progressive Australia Institute, who argue the Galilee Basin's coal is dirtier than that in other Australian mines. They also contest the mine's trumpeted job figures.
Ultimately, the fight about Adani's Carmichael project is about the wisdom of building a massive new coal mine as the world moves towards less polluting sources of energy. The issue of climate change is the ultimate political fault line on which environmentalists believe the fight against Adani must be waged.
Mr Canavan says it's all about jobs and economic opportunity. And while the competing battlegrounds aren't mutually exclusive, there will only be one victor.

Links

• Traditional owners, Adani back in court
• Green light for Abbot Point coal expansion
• Malcolm Turnbull wants us to think he's an energy magician
• Australia joining US in openly trashing global climate efforts

Coal Will Kill More People Than World War II. Why Do Our Ministers Joke About It?

Fairfax - Julian Cribb*

While the numbers are not yet in on Australia's latest heatwave summer – one of the worst in our history – between 1100 and 1500 people will have died from heat stress. That's been the average of recent years.
When Treasurer Scott Morrison jovially informed the House of Representatives "Mr Speaker, this is coal. Don't be afraid! Don't be scared! It won't hurt you," he was, according to all reputable scientific and medical studies worldwide, misleading the Parliament.

Scott Morrison with his pet coal in Parliament. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

By mid-century, the effects of worldwide burning of coal and oil in heating the climate to new extremes will claim more than 50,000 Australian lives per decade, a toll nearly double that of World War II.
And that doesn't include the 12.6 million human lives lost globally every year (a quarter of all deaths), according to the World Health Organisation, from "air, water and soil pollution, chemical exposures, climate change, and ultraviolet radiation", all of which are a consequence of human use of fossil fuels. The main sources of those toxins are, indisputably, the coal and petrochemical industries.
To pretend, as do Morrison and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, that this is all a great joke shows a cynical and contemptible disregard for the sufferings and painful deaths of thousands of Australians from exposure to the effects of fossil fuels. Understanding of the toxicity of burnt fossil hydrocarbons has been around since the 19th-century industrial revolution. The climatic effect of fossil fuels has been accepted universally by world climate and weather authorities since the mid-1970s – almost half a century ago.
Yet certain Australian politicians and leaders still pretend they are ignorant of facts that are known to everyone else. And they jeer at Australians with the common sense not to want to die from them.
As eastern Australia sweltered through the recent 40 to 47-degree heatwave and elderly people who couldn't afford to switch on their air conditioners for fear of the power bills suffered and died, floods and bushfires related to the same climatic disturbance claimed further victims.
The Australian Climate Institute warned politicians a decade ago that the death toll from heat stress alone was then about 1100 in the five cities of Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Nationally, the number is now probably 1500 to 2000 a year – but no national records are kept, perhaps for obvious reasons.

'Clean coal' makes a comeback
New technology means coal will play a role in electricity generation long into the future, says Malcolm Turnbull. Courtesy ABC News 24.

The institute said at the time: "With no action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, Australia is projected to warm by between 0.4 to 2.0 degrees by 2030 and 1.0 to 6.0 degrees by 2070. This warming trend is expected to drive large increases in the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme temperature events. For example, by 2030, the yearly average number of days above 35 degrees could increase from 17 to 19-29 in Adelaide and from 9 to 10-16 in Melbourne."
According to more recent projections – such as, for example, those of Professor Peng Bi of Adelaide University – annual heat-related deaths in the capital cities are predicted to climb to an average of 2400 a year in the 2020s and 5300 a year in the 2050s. And that's just in the capital cities.
Added to deaths from fire, flood, cyclone and pollution-related conditions such as cancer and lung diseases, fossil fuels will be far and away the predominant factor in the early deaths of Australians by mid-century. Not a single family will be unaffected by their influence.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the Abbott/Turnbull governments' policy – promoting the use and export of coal, trying to discourage its replacement by clean renewables and foot-dragging on climate remediation measures – has dreadful consequences in the short, medium and long term for individuals and families.

We want to know the road toll – but not the fuel toll.

Directly and indirectly, these policies will contribute to the loss of far more Australians than did the combined policies of the Hitler/Hirohito governments in the 1940s (27,000). They will cost many thousands more Australian lives than terrorism. Yet ministers treat them as a jest.
While it's true Australia's emissions, from fossil-fuel burning, mining and exports, are a small percentage of world emissions, they nevertheless contribute meaningfully to a situation that, unchecked, could see the planet heat by 5 to 6 degrees by 2100. If the frozen methane deposits in the Arctic and ocean are released, then warming may exceed 10 degrees, beyond which large animals, including humans, will struggle to exist.
With such temperatures and climatic extremes, it will become impossible to maintain world food production from agriculture. Hundreds of millions of refugees will flood the planet. According to the US Pentagon, there is a high risk of international conflict, even nuclear war, in such conditions.
These are the rational, evidence-based truths that politicians like Morrison and Joyce gleefully ignore in their enthusiasm for coal. Indeed, Joyce is advocating a course likely to ruin his party's main long-term constituency: farmers.
Australians rightly regard deaths from motor accidents, suicide, domestic violence, preventable disease, war, drugs and other causes as tragic, unjustifiable, unacceptable and unnecessary. Yet there is a curious national silence, a wilful blindness, about the far larger toll of preventable death from coal and oil. We want to know the road toll – but not the fuel toll. This national ignorance encouraged by dishonest claims that they "won't hurt you".
Yes, they will. Coal and oil will hurt you worse than almost anything else in your life. They will reap your family, and maybe you, too.
When there are clean, safe, healthy substitute readily available – renewables, biofuels, green chemistry – sensible Australians will turn their back on the untruths and the propaganda, and vote only for politicians whose policies do not knowingly encompass our early death.

*Julian Cribb is a Canberra science writer and author. His latest book is Surviving the 21st Century (2017).

Links

• What A Relief That Climate Change Doesn't Really Exist
• Turnbull government sharpens attack on Labor's clean energy
• Coalition's renewable energy target won't last forever, says Turnbull
• Malcolm Turnbull says coal, CSG and renewables vital for energy future
• Barnaby Joyce backs Government funding coal-power stations following Malcolm Turnbull's Press Club address
• Turnbull's coal embrace will leave critics cold
• Red hot: NSW smashes February statewide heat records two days in a row
• Old king coal will still be fiddling with his lump as the world burns
• Government on the wrong side of history on the coal debate
• PM dubs Labor's renewable policies mindless, negligent
• Brandishing coal in a heatwave? Morrison might as well fiddle
• Strange bedfellows urge politicians to ditch 'partisan antics' on energy
• PM and ministers told wind not to blame for SA blackout

Heat Waves Scorch The Arctic, Australia, Parts Of U.S.

InsideClimate News - Nicholas Kusnetz

Record-high temperatures spike concerns about climate change's new normal in the melting Arctic and an already-hot Australia.

Melting sea ice is a troubling sign of record warmth in the Arctic. Credit: Getty Images

Heat waves are hitting the globe from north to south, with the Arctic, parts of Australia and the central United States sweating record warmth in recent days.
The Arctic is in the midst of another hot spell, with temperatures soaring far above average for the third time this winter. The heat comes after yet another record-breaking month for low levels of sea ice at the North Pole, part of a dramatic and troubling warming trend that scientists have reported over the past few months.
In Oklahoma and Texas, temperatures reached into the 90s over the weekend. Mangum, Okla. broke a daily record when the thermometer hit 99 degrees on Saturday.Last week, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin issued an emergency burn ban in response to the extreme weather, but a grass fire broke out anyway in Oklahoma City, prompting authorities to ask some residents to leave their homes.
Parts of southeastern Australia are also in the midst of an extreme heat wave, with temperatures topping 115 degrees on Saturday west of Sydney. The heat has helped fuel dozens of bush fires that are forcing evacuations. Authorities have said the fire conditions are as bad as they have seen.
For climate scientists, the relative warmth in the Arctic is arguably the most troubling. Temperatures in the far north of the planet have risen more than 20 degrees above normal on average in the past week, according to data from the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the polar ice cap in January stood at a record low for the 38 years it has collected satellite data. Compared to a year earlier, which set the previous record for the smallest January ice cap, the North Pole had lost a Wyoming-sized area of ice.
"I've been looking at Arctic weather and climate for 35 years and I've never seen anything like the warming conditions we've been seeing this winter," said Mark Serreze, the center's director.
Some scientists believe that climate change is exacerbating weather patterns that allow storms to bring warm air north. The melting ice cap may be playing an important role, scientists say. Patches of open ocean act like reservoirs of heat, pushing the warmth farther north. Water also absorbs far more heat than ice, creating a warming feedback loop.
In December, NOAA released its annual Arctic Report Card, which warned that if the extreme warming of recent years continues, the region could experience a climatic shift. The Arctic is warming at twice the global average, and mean temperatures over land have risen 3.5 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the 20th century.
The dramatic warming has prompted seemingly outlandish proposals from some scientists. Last month, researchers published an article that envisioned an array of wind-powered pumps that would bring seawater from below up onto the ice surface, where it would freeze and thicken the ice cap. An extra several feet of ice, the scientists say, would help the polar cap withstand the warmer temperatures that have been shrinking it to record levels. The authors also put a price tag on their proposal: $500 billion per year.

Links

• Australian Heat Wave Raises Concern for Country's New, Sizzling Normal
• Latest Climate Report: Heat, More Heat and Signs of Worse to Come
• How Much Arctic Sea Ice Is Each of Us Melting? Quite a Bit, New Study Says
• Without Emissions Cuts, Summer Heat Will Get Even Deadlier
• Climate Change Has Likely Harmed Nearly Half of Threatened Mammals, Study Says