05/04/2018

Climate Change: 1.5°C Is Closer Than We Imagine

RenewEconomy - *

Global warming of 1.5°C is imminent, likely in just a decade from now. That’s the stunning conclusion to be drawn from a number of recent studies.
So how does that square with the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C” (above a late-nineteenth-century baseline)?
It doesn’t.
The Paris text was a political fix in which grand words masked inadequate deeds. The voluntary national emission reduction commitments since Paris now put the world on a path of 3.4°C of warming by 2100, and more than 5°C if high-end risks including carbon-cycle feedbacks are taken into account.
The Paris outcome is a path of emissions continuing to rise for another fifteen years, when it was already clear that “if the 1.5°C limit should not be breached in any given year, the budget  already overspent today ”.
Two years ago, Prof. Michael E. Mann noted: “And what about 1.5°C stabilisation? We’re already overdrawn.”
In fact, the emission scenarios associated with the Paris goal shows that the temperature will “overshoot” the 1.5°C target by up to half a degree, before cooling back to it by the end of this century.
Those scenarios rely unduly on unproven Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technology, because the Paris Agreement does not encompass the steep emissions reductions that are required right now.
Average global warming is now 1.1°C above the late nineteenth century, and the rate of warming is likely to accelerate due to record levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and because efforts to clean up some of the world’s dirtiest power plants is reducing the emission of aerosols (mainly sulphates) which have a very short-term cooling impact.
So now, in 2018, the benchmark of 1.5°C of warming is just a decade away or even less, according to multiple lines of evidence from climate researchers:

HENLEY and KING: In 2017 Melbourne researchers Ben Henley and Andrew King published Trajectories toward the 1.5°C Paris target: Modulation by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation on the impact of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) on future warming, (The IPO is characterized by sea surface temperature fluctuations and sea level pressure changes in the north and south Pacific Ocean that occur on a 15-30 year cycle.
In the IPO’s positive phase, surface temperatures are warmer due to the transfer of ocean heat to the atmosphere. The IPO has been in a negative phase since 1999 but recent predictions suggest that it is now moving to a positive phase.)
The authors found that “in the absence of external cooling influences, such as volcanic eruptions, the midpoint of the spread of temperature projections exceeds the 1.5°C target before 2029 , based on temperatures relative to 1850–1900”.
In more detail,”a transition to the positive phase of the IPO would lead to a projected exceedance of the target centered around 2026 ”, and “if the Pacific Ocean remains in its negative decadal phase, the target will be reached around 5 years later, in 2031 ”.
Projected temperature rises with IPO in positive mode (red) and negative mode (blue) (Henley and King, 2017)
JACOB et al: A set of four future emission scenarios, known as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) have been used since 2013 as a guide for climate research and modelling.
The four pathways, known as RCPs 2.6, 4.5, 6 and 8.5, are based on the total energy imbalance in the energy system by 2100. RCP8.5 is the highest, and is the current emissions path.
In Climate Impacts in Europe Under +1.5°C Global Warming, released this year, Daniela Jacob and her co researchers found that the world is likely to pass the +1.5°C threshold around 2026 for RCP8.5, and “for the intermediate RCP4.5 pathway the central estimates lie in the relatively narrow window around 2030 .
In all likelihood, this means that a +1.5°C world is imminent.”

KONG AND WANG: In a study of projected permafrost change, Responses and changes in the permafrost and snow water equivalent in the Northern Hemisphere under a scenario of 1.5 °C warming, researchers Ying Kong and Cheng-Hai Wang use a multi-model ensemble mean from 17 global climate models, with results showing that the threshold of 1.5°C warming will be reached in 2027, 2026, and 2023 under RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP8.5, respectively.
On the present, high-emissions RCP8.5 path, the estimated permafrost area will be reduced by 25.55% or 4.15 million square kilometres.

XU and RAMANTHAN: A recent study by Yangyang Xu and Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Well below 2 °C: Mitigation strategies for avoiding dangerous to catastrophic climate changes, looked at the high-end or “fat-tail” risks of climate change, in an analysis of the existential risks in a warming world.
One of two baseline scenarios used, named Baseline-Fast, assumed an 80% reduction in fossil fuel energy intensity by 2100 compared to 2010 energy intensity.
In this scenario, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide had reached 437 parts per million (ppm) by 2030 and the warming was 1.6°C, suggesting that the 1.5°C would be exceed around 2028 . The study is discussed in more detail here.

ROGELJ et al: In Scenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5C, Joeri Rogelj and co-researchers plot future emissions and warming based on five distinct “Shared Socioeconomic Pathways” (SSPs).
These “present five possible future worlds that differ in their population, economic growth, energy demand, equality and other factors”, according to CarbonBrief.
The fourth and fifth paths are the world we now live in: SSP4 is a world of “high inequality”, whilst SSP5 is a world of “rapid economic growth” and “energy intensive lifestyles”. If we look at these paths charted against projected temperatures, then SSP5 exceeds 1.5°C in 2029 and SSP4 by 2031.

Projected global mean temperature for five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (CarbonBrief)
SCHURER et al: In Interpretations of the Paris climate target, Andrew Schurer and colleagues demonstrated that the IPCC uses a
definition of global mean surface temperature which underestimates the amount of warming over the pre-industrial level. The underestimation is around 0.3°C, and a higher figure includes the effect of calculating warming for total global coverage rather than for the coverage for which observations are
available, and warming from a true pre-industrial, instead of a late-nineteenth century, baseline. If their finding were applied, warming would now be 1.3°C or more, and hitting the 1.5°C benchmark just half a decade away.

CONSEQUENCES: In their 2017 paper on catastrophic climate risks, Xu and Ramanathan defined 1.5°C as a benchmark for “dangerous” climate change, compared to the convention policy-making mark of 2°C.
But even this lower mark may be too optimistic, given the impacts we have seen at both poles in the last decade.
In any case, it contemplating the imminent reality of the 1.5°C benchmark, it is important to consider what is at stake:
  • In another decade and by 1.5°C, we may well have witnessed an Arctic free of summer sea ice, a circumstance that just two decades ago was not expected to occur for another hundred years. The consequences would be devastating.
  •  In 2012, then NASA climate science chief James Hansen told Bloomberg that: “Our greatest concern is that loss of Arctic sea ice creates a grave threat of passing two other tipping points – the potential instability of the Greenland ice sheet and methane hydrates… These latter two tipping points would have consequences that are practically irreversible on time scales of relevance to humanity.” One highly-regarded research paper in 2012 estimated that “the warming threshold leading to a monostable, essentially ice-free state is in the range of 0.8–3.2°C, with a best estimate of 1.6°C” for the Greenland ice sheet.
  •  In 2015, researchers looked at the damage to system elements — including water security, staple crops land, coral reefs, vegetation and UNESCO World Heritage sites — as the temperature increases. They found all the damage from climate change to vulnerable categories like coral reefs, freshwater availability and plant life could happen before 2°C warming is reached, and much of it before 1.5°C warming.
  •  In 2009, Australian scientists contributed to an important research paper which found that preserving more than 10% of coral reefs worldwide would require limiting warming to below 1.5°C. Recent research found that the surge in ocean warming around the Great Barrier Reef in 2016, which led to the loss of half the reef, has a 31% probability of occuring in any year at just the current level of warming. In other words, severe bleaching and coral loss is likely on average every 3–4 years, whereas corals take 10–15 years to recover from such events.
  •  At 1.5°C, the loss of permafrost area is estimated to be four million square kilometres, and there is evidence that a 1.5oC global rise in temperature compared to the pre-industrial level is enough to start a general permafrost melt.
  •  The frequency of extreme El Nino events is likely to double by 1.5°C of warming.
  • At 1.5°C, it is very likely that conclusions first aired in 2014 –– that sections of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have already passed their tippings point for a multi-metre sea-level rise –– will have been confirmed. Four years ago scientists found that “the retreat of ice in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica was unstoppable, with major consequences – it will mean that sea levels will rise 1 metre worldwide… Its disappearance will likely trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which comes with a sea-level rise of between 3–5 metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide.” Leading cryosphere researcher Eric Rignot muses: “You look at West Antarctica and you think: How come it’s still there?
  •  By 1.5°C, a sea-level rise of many metres, and perhaps tens of metres will have been locked into the system. In past climates, carbon dioxide levels of around 400 ppm (which we exceed three years ago) have been associated with sea levels around 25 metres above the present. And six years ago, Prof. Kenneth G. Miller notes that “the natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present”.
Clearly, as James Hansen and co-authors wrote last year, “the world has overshot the appropriate target for global temperature”.
They noted a danger of 1.5°C or 2°C targets is that they are far above the Holocene temperature range and if such temperature levels are allowed to long exist they will spur “slow” amplifying feedbacks which have potential to run out of humanity’s control, so “limiting the period and magnitude of temperature excursion above the Holocene range is crucial to avoid strong stimulation of slow feedbacks”.
And in all this evidence, what worries me most?
It is my experience that with few exceptions neither climate policy-makers nor climate action advocates have a reasonable understanding of the imminence of 1.5°C and its consequences.

*David Spratt is Research Director for Breakthrough National centre for Climate Restoration, www.breakthroughonline.org.au/

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BHP Formally Leaves World Coal Association Over Climate Change Stance

AFR - James Thomson

BHP has welcomed the new energy stance from Australia's Mineral's Council. PETER BRAIG
BHP has officially dumped its membership of the World Coal Association due to the lobby group's stance on energy and climate change, but will retain its membership of the United States Chamber of Commerce for now.
The mining giant had made a preliminary decision to leave the WCA in December last year, but provided the lobby group with an opportunity to provide a response on the decision, which centred on BHP's belief there were "material differences" between its stance on climate change and that on the WCA, particularly around issues.
BHP was particularly unimpressed with comments made by WCA chief executive Benjamin Sporton in The Australian Financial Review in September, where he backed the federal government's abandonment of its clean energy target and said Australian banks should continue to lend to projects that underpinned high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power stations.
BHP believes lobby groups such as the WCA and Australia's Minerals Council should be "technology neutral" when it comes to energy policy, and not push coal over other energy sources.
BHP said on Thursday that it "appreciates the constructive approach undertaken by the WCA" in discussions following its initial review but "material difference identified by the review and the narrow range of activities of benefit to BHP from membership" had led to its final decision.
The resources giant continues to have issues with the US Chamber of Commerce's stance on energy and climate change issues, but said it "derives a range of benefits from the broader activities of the Chamber, particularly its advocacy on economic issues such as free trade".
"On the basis of these broader benefits, and in light of the chamber's willingness to engage further on climate and energy issues through an invitation extended to BHP to join its energy and environment committee, BHP has determined to remain a member of the chamber," the mining giant said.

Keeping the pressure
But BHP will keep the pressure on the USCC by requesting it to refrain from policy activity or advocacy in the areas of climate change and energy, and by keeping its membership of the chamber under review.
The final review made no major changes to BHP's stance on its membership of the MCA, beyond saying that it welcomed the release of the association's new energy policy on March 14.
The Minerals Council's energy policy had previously focused on the "importance of access to reliable, affordable energy" but the new stance gave a clear nod to BHP's view that energy policy should encompass what it calls the "trilemma" of reliability, affordability and emissions reduction.
"Reliable and affordable energy is central to our economy," said the MCA in the statement. "Policy measures must deliver reliable and affordable energy at least cost while putting Australia on a pathway to meeting its emissions reduction targets."
BHP said on Thursday that it "welcomes this revised policy position, which is aligned with BHP's approach to climate and energy policy".
"In particular, from a policy perspective, the updated MCA position addresses the two areas identified as material differences by BHP, relating to the energy trilemma and technology neutrality."
The miner also said it rates the "broader benefits provided by its membership of the MCA, relating to health and safety, environment, community, workforce and economics" as high.
BHP's review of its industry association memberships was sparked by a shareholder resolution lobbed at last year's annual general meeting by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility. The green group also targeted Rio Tinto.

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Half Of Earth’s Satellites Restrict Use Of Climate Data

The Conversation - 


Dust storms in the Gulf of Alaska, captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite. NASA
Scientists and policymakers need satellite data to understand and address climate change. Yet data from more than half of unclassified Earth-observing satellites is restricted in some way, rather than shared openly.
When governments restrict who can access data, or limit how people can use or redistribute it, that slows the progress of science. Now, as U.S. climate funding is under threat, it’s more important than ever to ensure that researchers and others make the most of the collected data.
Why do some nations choose to restrict satellite data, while others make it openly available? My book, “Open Space,” uses a series of historical case studies, as well as a broad survey of national practices, to show how economic concerns and agency priorities shape the way nations treat their data.

The price of data
Satellites can collect comprehensive data over the oceans, arctic areas and other sparsely populated zones that are difficult for humans to monitor. They can collect data consistently over both space and time, which allows for a high level of accuracy in climate change research.
For example, scientists use data from the U.S.-German GRACE satellite mission to measure the mass of the land ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic. By collecting data on a regular basis over 15 years, GRACE demonstrated that land ice sheets in both Antarctica and Greenland have been losing mass since 2002. Both lost ice mass more rapidly since 2009.
Satellites collect valuable data, but they’re also expensive, typically ranging from US$100 million to nearly $1 billion per mission. They’re usually designed to operate for three to five years, but quite often continue well beyond their design life.
Many nations attempt to sell or commercialize data to recoup some of the costs. Even the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the European Space Agency – agencies that now make nearly all of their satellite data openly available – attempted data sales at an earlier stage in their programs. The U.S. Landsat program, originally developed by NASA in the early 1970s, was turned over to a private firm in the 1980s before later returning to government control. Under these systems, prices often ranged from hundreds to thousands of dollars per image.

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: 'Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data' by Mariel Borowitz (MIT Press 2017) Get the data
In other cases, agency priorities prevent any data access at all. As of 2016, more than 35 nations have been involved in the development or operation of an Earth observation satellite. In many cases, nations with small or emerging space programs, such as Egypt and Indonesia, have chosen to build relatively simple satellites to give their engineers hands-on experience.
Since these programs aim to build capacity and demonstrate new technology, rather than distribute or use data, data systems don’t receive significant funding. Agencies can’t afford to develop data portals and other systems that would facilitate broad data access. They also often mistakenly believe that demand for the data from these experimental satellites is low.
If scientists want to encourage nations to make more of their satellite data openly available, both of these issues need to be addressed.

Landsat 8, an American Earth observation satellite. NASA, CC BY
Promoting access
Since providing data to one user doesn’t reduce the amount available for everyone else, distributing data widely will maximize the benefits to society. The more that open data is used, the more we all benefit from new research and products.
In my research, I’ve found that making data freely available is the best way to make sure the greatest number of people access and use it. In 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey sold 25,000 Landsat images, a record at the time. Then Landsat data was made openly available in 2008. In the year following, the agency distributed more than 1 million Landsat images.
For nations that believe demand for their data is low, or that lack resources to invest in data distribution systems, economic arguments alone are unlikely to spur action. Researchers and other user groups need to raise awareness of the potential uses of this data and make clear to governments their desire to access and use it.
Intergovernmental organizations like the Group on Earth Observations can help with these efforts by connecting research and user communities with relevant government decision-makers. International organizations can also encourage sharing by providing nations with global recognition of their data-sharing efforts. Technical and logistical assistance - helping to set up data portals or hosting foreign data in existing portals - can further reduce the resource investment required by smaller programs.

Promise for future
Satellite technology is improving rapidly. I believe that agencies must find ways to take advantage of these developments while continuing to make data as widely available as possible.
Satellites are collecting more data than ever before. Landsat 8 collected more data in its first two years of operation than Landsat 4 and 5 collected over their combined 32-year lifespan. The Landsat archive currently grows by a terabyte a day.
This avalanche of data opens promising new possibilities for big data and machine learning analyses – but that would require new data access systems. Agencies are embracing cloud technology as a way to address this challenge, but many still struggle with the costs. Should agencies pay commercial cloud providers to store their data, or develop their own systems? Who pays for the cloud resources needed to carry out the analysis: agencies or users?
Satellite data can contribute significantly to a wide range of areas – climate change, weather, natural disasters, agricultural development and more – but only if users can access the data.

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Shell Threatened With Legal Action Over Climate Change Contributions

The Guardian - 

Friends of the Earth demands the oil firm move away from fossil fuels to comply with Paris deal
The Royal Dutch Shell stand at Gastech, the world’s biggest expo for the gas industry, in Chiba, Japan. Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters
The global flurry of legal campaigns against “big oil” has widened, with Royal Dutch Shell being threatened with legal action unless it steps up efforts to comply with the Paris climate agreement.
Friends of the Earth Netherlands on Wednesday demanded the Anglo-Dutch company revise plans to invest only 5% in sustainable energy and 95% in greenhouse-gas emitting oil and gas.
The environmental group said this business strategy would increase the impact of climate change, especially on the world’s poorest people and those most prone to flooding. It has given Shell eight weeks to shift to a cleaner tack, after which it says it is prepared to invoke international obligations, human rights treaties and laws on hazardous negligence.
Heading the group’s legal team is Roger Cox, who led and won a landmark climate case in 2015 that insisted the Dutch government should set more ambitious emissions targets.
“This is the first case we know of in the world that seeks preventive action from a company over climate change,” Cox told the Guardian. “We are not asking for damages. We want Shell to steer away from its current course and to get in line with the Paris agreement.”
Shell is one of the world’s 10 biggest carbon emitters. In its annual report last year, the company publicly declared support for the Paris climate deal. It has also outlined “decarbonisation pathways” to move away from dependency on fossil fuels, but environmentalists are frustrated at the glacial pace of change and the weak investment in renewables and carbon capture technology.
Friends of the Earth says the company should be held to account for the approximately 2% of the historical emissions of carbon dioxide and methane it has added to the atmosphere between 1854 and 2010. It has previously taken the company to court for the damage it caused around oil fields in Nigeria.
“Currently Shell and companies like it are acting like big tobacco in decades past by failing to take responsibility for the harm that they cause,” said Craig Bennett, chief executive of Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland. “Shell must now move on from its history of Earth-damaging fossil fuel extraction and play a major part in the transition to a sustainable future, to keep temperature rises to near 1.5C.”
A spokesperson for Shell said the company strongly supported the Paris agreement, “but we believe climate change is a complex societal challenge that should be addressed through sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers, not by the courts.”
Given the vast discrepancy in financial resources, any legal battle between Friends of the Earth and Shell would be a challenge of David and Goliath proportions.
But Dutch courts have produced surprises. Arguably the biggest victory for climate litigators anywhere in the world was the 2015 ruling that the Dutch government’s plans to cut emissions by just 14-17% compared to 1990 levels by 2020 were unlawful, given the scale of the threat posed by climate change. The court in The Hague ordered the government to raise targets to at least 25% within five years, although the government is appealing against the decision.
If the Friends of the Earth case goes ahead, Cox said it will depend on the legal duty of everyone in the Netherlands to prevent harm to others when it is reasonably preventable. The duty of public care was easier to prove against the government. It will be tougher against a private company, but Cox said the plaintiffs will emphasises that Shell has specific responsibilities because it has contributed to greatly to the problem of climate change.
Courts in other countries are increasingly a climate change battleground.
According to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia law school in New York, there are now more than 1,000 cases in the world. Most are claims for damages in the US.
In January, New York city announced plans to sue five fossil fuel firms – BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell – for their contribution to climate change, which has caused flooding and erosion in the city. Local governments in California and elsewhere have launched legal actions, alongside private citizens. Last month, a group of 21 young plaintiffs overcame a major hurdle when a judge rejected moves to dismiss their lawsuit, which argues the US government’s failure to curb CO2 emissions violated their generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.
In the most prominent UK case to date, a high court heard the first climate challenge last month against the British government, brought by 12 citizens through a legal group called Plan B which has the support of the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Prof Sir David King.
Nasa scientist-turned activist James Hansen has called for a wave of litigation alongside political mobilisation because, he says, judges are less likely than politicians to be in the pocket of oil, coal and gas companies.

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04/04/2018

Malcolm Turnbull Pressures AGL To Sell Liddell To Alinta

AFR - Phillip Coorey


Malcolm Turnbull is stepping up pressure on AGL Energy to sell its ageing Liddell power station to Chinese owned Alinta. Alex Ellinghausen
Malcolm Turnbull is stepping up pressure on AGL Energy to sell its ageing Liddell power station rather than redevelop the site after Alinta Energy expressed interest in taking over the coal-fired facility.
The Prime Minister rang AGL chairman Graeme Hunt on Tuesday night following confirmation from Alinta chief executive officer Geoff Dimery that his company was interested in prolonging the life of the Hunter Valley power station for up to seven years.
Delta Electricity, which has previously expressed interest in Liddell, also renewed its interest again on Wednesday.
AGL remained unenthusiastic, indicating it would fulfil its legal obligation to consider an offer but no more.
"AGL is relying on Liddell to generate power for our customers until 2022 and we will require its infrastructure for our replacement plans into the future," it said in a statement.
"AGL received an approach from Alinta last night expressing an interest in entering negotiations to acquire the Liddell Power Station. No formal offer has been received.
"Should a formal offer for Liddell be received, it would be given consideration in order to meet our obligations to customers and shareholders."
Mr Turnbull told reporters on Wednesday there was no reason why Liddell could not be kept operating for a few more years.
"We know that there is going to be a shortage of dispatchible power, electricity, in NSW between Liddell closing and the Snowy 2.0 coming online which is to be 2024, 2025," he said.
" So there's at least two, three years where there is a risk of a shortfall in dispatchible electricity in NSW.
"I spoke to the chairman of AGL again last night, and...I said to him, 'look, it's in the public interest, it's in the community's interest...it's in AGL's interests to be seen to be a responsible player in the electricity market to keep this power station going for a few more years to make sure there isn't a shortfall'.
"Then if they choose to close it, then they can do so. But it's really a timing issue.
" AGL should do the right thing by the - their customers, by the community, and I think by their own shareholders, and either keep this plant going for another four or five years and - or sell it to somebody who is prepared to do so."
AGL has been resisting demands from the government it either sell the power station or prolong its life in the interests of providing cheaper, more reliable power for a few years more.
Instead, it wants to decommission the power station and replace it with a clean energy plan.
Last month, the Australia Energy Market Operator said closing Liddell in 2022 in accordance with AGL's plans would leave an initial generation capacity shortfall of 850 megawatts, which could mean blackouts for about 200,000 homes in NSW.
But if all three stages of AGL's proposed post-Liddell plan were delivered "the resource gap will be eliminated".
Simultaneously, Mr Turnbull is under pressure from a growing group of backbenchers for the government to invest up to $4 billion to build a so-called clean coal power plant in Victoria, on the site of the old Hazelwood power station.
The government is refusing to do so, saying its proposed National Energy Guarantee provides ample scope for the private sector to build such a facility. The private sector has no desire to invest in coal.
Mr Turnbull's renewed pressure in AGL has momentarily eased some of the pressure from the backbench group known as the Monash Forum.
Monash Forum member Eric Abetz welcomed Mr Turnbull's intervention over Liddell and told Sky News that "hopefully it would" negate the need for a new coal plant. But he cautioned all options should be left on the table.
Alinta, a Chinese-owened generator, was encouraged by both the government and lobby group Manufacturing Australia.
In a statement, Mr Dimery said his company had "been approached about our interest in buying and running Liddell for five-to-seven years past AGL's current closure date of 2022".
"We are open to that proposal; it fits with our strong desire to maintain reliability and affordability for customers as we transition to a lower emissions energy sector," he said.
"Manufacturing Australia has raised concerns with us about the impact of the closure of the Northern and Hazelwood stations on energy prices. Businesses are anxious about the impact the closure of a bigger station like Liddell could have on them – and we are sympathetic to those concerns.
"While it is an aging facility, and we would need to do due diligence, we think it could survive a little longer in the marketplace.
"Of course we recognise the need to transition to a lower emissions energy sector, but it has to be pragmatic. We must be mindful of the impact taking large and affordable chunks of capacity out of the market could have, not only on businesses but on everyday Aussies who are finding it hard to meet the rising cost of energy.
"We are absolutely open to discussing it further with AGL."

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An Alarming 10 Percent Of Antarctica’s Coastal Glaciers Are Now In Retreat, Scientists Find

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

Map showing rates of grounding-line migration and their coincidence with ocean conditions around Antarctica between 2010 and 2016. (Credit: Hannes Konrad et al, University of Leeds.)
Antarctica’s ocean-front glaciers are retreating, according a new satellite survey that raises additional concerns about the massive continent’s potential contribution to rising sea levels.
Antarctica, which contains enough ice to raise the oceans by about 200 feet, is a continent of ice that flows outward to the ocean at numerous large glaciers. These mostly submerged glaciers rest deep on the seafloor at a point called the “grounding line,” where ocean, ice and bedrock meet.
But at 10.7 percent of these glaciers, the ice masses are moving at a significant speed back toward the center of the continent as they melt from below, often because of the incursion of warm ocean water, which causes the grounding line to retreat. Only about 1.9 percent of glaciers were growing at a significant speed, suggesting a net retreat.
And the more glaciers are retreating, the more one worries about sea-level rise. Retreating grounding lines can expose more ice to the ocean, allowing it to flow outward more rapidly.
Here’s a brief video of the process provided by the authors of the new study, which was published in Nature Geosciences:



The research used satellite techniques to infer changes to glacier grounding lines based on changes in the height of the glacier’s surface. Scanning one-third of Antarctica’s marine-based glaciers along a roughly 10,000-mile stretch of coastline, the work presents a more comprehensive look than other studies of Antarctic glaciers, which have tended to focus on grounding lines in just one key region.
“We were able to quantify more or less all around Antarctica,” said Hannes Konrad, the lead author of the research. Konrad works at the University of Leeds in Britain, along with a number of co-authors of the study. Other authors worked at University College London.
The research found that from 2010 through 2016, about 80 square miles per year of ice is being lifted off of the seafloor and going afloat as grounding lines retreat. That’s about four times the size of Manhattan every year.
At the same time, the 10.7 percent of Antarctic grounding lines were retreating at a rate faster than 25 meters per year, which the study takes as a benchmark because that rate of retreat is believed to have occurred at the end of the last ice age. Just 1.9 percent of Antarctic grounding lines were advancing faster than 25 meters per year.
The sea-level implications of the research are troubling, if not direct — researchers cannot precisely quantify sea-level rise just based on the retreat of grounding lines, although they are certainly related.
“We find that 10 percent of the Antarctica ice sheet significantly retreating, but we can’t somehow extrapolate sea level rates that come from that,” Konrad said. “But to say 10 percent of Antarctica, this massive ice body, is retreating, still should be some sign of warning. It’s large.”
A key factor driving the retreat of Antarctic grounding lines is the incursion of warm, deep ocean water which melts glaciers at their bases and causes the grounding line to retreat.
The situation is the worst in West Antarctica, something that has been widely known and that the new research confirms. The enormous Thwaites glacier — which has the potential to unlock several meters of sea-level rise if it retreats entirely into the center of West Antarctica — was found to be retreating at 300 to 400 meters per year along a 25-mile central section of the glacier. The study also found that Thwaites’s retreat had increased between 1996 and 2011.
“Imagine other coastlines changing at an equal speed, that’s really massive,” Konrad said of what’s happening to Thwaites.
Science agencies in the United States and Britain are mobilizing an urgent mission to study Thwaites up close, because of the belief among scientists that it could be the one glacier with the greatest potential to remake world coastlines in coming decades and centuries.
“We focus especially on Thwaites because sufficiently large retreat there could evacuate the entire central region of the West Antarctic ice sheet, perhaps raising global average sea level more than 3 m through that one outlet,” Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University, said in an emailed comment on the study.
In West Antarctica, more than 20 percent of grounding lines were retreating faster than 25 meters per year. In East Antarctica, which contains massively more ice, the percentage was considerably lower — and some areas, which are receiving more snowfall, are seeing grounding lines advance.
But the largest East Antarctic glacier, Totten, is an exception and is indeed showing a fast rate of retreat, the study confirmed.
Finally, in the Antarctic peninsula, which contains the least ice, 10 percent of grounding lines were retreating faster than the 25 meter-per-year rate.
Eric Rignot, an Antarctic expert at the University of California at Irvine, who has also documented grounding-line retreat in key parts of the continent, said by email that “the grounding line is an essential indicator of glacier change in Antarctica, and this study brings important information about the rates of changes and geographic distribution.”
Penn State’s Alley, who was also not involved in the research, added that the new work “generally confirms our understanding — increased snowfall is contributing to locally small, slow advances of grounding lines in some places, and increased temperature of offshore ocean water is contributing to large, rapid retreats of grounding lines.”
He said the next step will be for scientists to plug data such as these into simulations that will let them better calculate precisely how much the sea-level-rise risk is from Antarctica going forward.
“This new study thus is an important step in the long-term effort to learn the future of the ice sheet,” Alley said.

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Coalition Back-Bench’s Crazy Last Gasp Attempt To Save Coal

RenewEconomy - 

Alpha Males and the Lump of Coal.
Facing certain defeat in the next election, the hard right rump of the governing Coalition government (that’s more than half the party), are making a last ditch attempt to reverse the course of technology and have the government fund new coal-fired generators.
A newly-named “ginger group” known as the Monash Forum has burst from the bleechers to put the case for coal, arguing – despite all evidence to the contrary – that new coal-fired generation is the key to restoring low power prices.
Newspaper reports suggest more than half of the Coalition back bench are behind this move for more coal – which is consistent with other estimates that put the percentage of Coalition MPs and Senators who don’t accept climate science at around the same level.
The push for more coal, and the rejection of climate evidence, goes hand in hand.
This new push – announced across the spectrum of Murdoch media (Sky News, the front pages of The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and in other News Ltd tabloids) is designed to put pressure on prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and is led by the usual noisy group of climate science deniers and coal industry boosters – Craig Kelly, Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, George Christensen, Eri Abetz, Kevin Andrews et al.
It comes amid a major new advertising campaign from the coal industry on television and other media, and comes as the Energy Security Board prepares its latest version of the proposed National Energy Guarantee that will be presented to COAG energy ministers in a fortnight.
That’s the interesting part of this push. The NEG was designed specifically with the Coalition back-bench in mind, as we reported (again) last week in our story Who is Turnbull trying to fool with the NEG.
The NEG’s official modelling promised to extend the life of the coal fired power stations, bring investment in renewables to an effective halt, and lock in an emissions reduction target for the electricity sector that would actually be worse than doing nothing.
The emergence of the Monash Forum – named after John Monash, the former Gallipoli commander and the man credited for helping develop coal-fired generation in Victoria – appears deliberately timed to ensure that the Coalition doesn’t flag from its endeavours to ensure the NEG is a “do nothing”, or even a “do less” policy.
Kelly, the chairman of the backbench committee on energy and climate who has led the Hard Right’s  demonisation of everything modern – wind and solar farms, battery storage, demand management and electric vehicles – is once again at the forefront.
His appearances on Sky TV on Monday night and ABC Radio National on Tuesday sought to justify the Monash Forum’s nostalgia for coal on two lies that neither media organisation challenged: the level of subsidies for renewables in Australia and the push for new coal generation around the world.
Kelly, indeed the Coalition as a whole and the Murdoch media in particular, continue to prosecute the line that renewable energy depend on $60 billion in subsidies, and Kelly said this amounted to $3.6 billion this year alone.
Of course, this is pure fiction, and has been repeatedly disproved. As is the claim, made by Kelly again, that 40 new HELE (high emissions, low efficiency) coal generators are being built in Japan, and 600 around the world.


In fact, none has been completed since Fukushima, according to Simon Holmes a Court, from the Energy Transition Hub. Global data suggests the pace of new coal fired generation is slowing dramatically, for economic and environmental reasons.
But even the so-called moderates are being caught up with this: The Nationals deputy leader,  Bridget McKenzie, who sought to justify the Monash Forum’s position this way: “We’re not going to get ideological about this … we are going to let the science inform our policy, that’s a real change for us.”
Trumpian indeed.


Of course, if the Coalition had not become ideological, and if it had respected the science, then Australia would still have a carbon price, and not celebrated its demise with such glee (photo above).
The country would also be on downward trend on emissions, would not have stuffed around with the renewable energy target and would now have a workable plan to usher in the enery transition, and would have significantly lower energy prices than it has now.
And it would be on a path to content to deal with the other emissions impact of coal fired generators, such as the huge increase of dangerous fine particle pollution (PM2.5) from the largest power stations. (McKenzie is minister for Rural Health, so should be concerned).
But, because of its ideology, and its demonisation of climate science and climate scientists, and modern technology, Australia has no policy, but a “backbone” of a new idea that appears to serve no other purpose than to bow to the hard right.


Kelly’s comments on the NEG were interesting – he supported it in principle, but conceded there was actually no flesh (or “parameters”, as he put it) on the backbone. But he wanted it to ensure that new coal fired generators were built.
Indeed, according to Sky News, the Monash Forum’s demands are based on a new $4 billion coal fired generator in the Latrobe Valley, a Hazelwood 2.0. If the government wants Snowy 2.0, then why not Hazelwood 2.0?
It’s true that there is no flesh on the bone with the NEG, but Kelly’s insistence that it should be of a certain colour was quickly heeded by energy minister Josh Frydenberg, who said that the NEG was “an opportunity that’ can’t be missed …. to get the best investment signals at the right place and the right time.”
This has been the line of the lobby groups supporting the NEG since it was hurriedly unveiled late last year – that this is the best policy that can be expected given the majority of one of the two big mainstream parties simply does not accept climate science or modern engineering.
The ultimatum to Labor, and the Labor states is clear – accept this, or the Coalition will continue to accept nothing that even looks like clearing the path for lower emissions and new technologies.
“I’m not pro coal, not anti coal,” Frydenberg insisted. “I’m not pro renewables, I’m not anti renewables …. What I am in favour of is lower energy prices and a more reliable energy system.”
But he then went on to say that the NEG would provide opporutnituies for coal oupgrades, and for coal to be important part of the energy mix.
“It puts a premium on reliable dispatchable power and that is something that coal does provide,” he told journalists. “I’d be please to see coal continue and for more investments in coal fired power stations – whether they be upgrades or others.”
Turnbull on Tuesday said the NEG would put a premium on 24/7 power – and coal could provide that. He said the NEG was a “real breakthrough” that would deliver affordable, reliable power. He said it had received strong support from industry and government.
But as the submissions from more than 100 industry players have made clear – the NEG as currently envisioned will deliver neither lower energy prices nor a more reliable energy system. There are massive questions, and not just because there is no flesh.
Turnbull said the NEG would put a premium on 24/7 power – and coal could provide that. He said the NEG was a “real breakthrough” that would deliver affordable, reliable power.
“This is a test of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership, but given his track record of failing to stand up to the hard right of his party room and caving in on two energy policies, no one should be surprised if he caved into the hard right fossils again,” Labor energy spokesman Mark Butler said.
“Malcolm Turnbull’s inability to rein in his party room exemplifies the chaos which has surrounded his leadership over the energy crisis.
“All while household and business power bills continue to skyrocket, while pollution under this out of touch government continues to go up, and up, and up.”
His comments were echoed by John Grimes, of the Smart Energy Council, who noted the NEG was a recipe for delay and inaction on renewable energy and climate change.
“We need smart national energy policy – strong support for solar, storage and renewable energy and strong action on climate change,” he said in a statement.
“If you are aggressively supporting coal, you are not supporting smart energy policy – and Australia is not meeting its international climate change commitments.”

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