13/06/2018

Power Sector Emissions Dip Stalls, While Transport Revs Up

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Diesel's carbon emissions have matched petrol for the first time in Australia's transport sector. Photo: Dmitry Panchenko
Cuts in power sector emissions are unlikely to be maintained, while those from the transport sector will continue to climb in the absence of mandatory standards, according to analysis by The Australia Institute.
A separate report by the institute also found Australia's Paris climate goals to be "grossly inadequate".
At the end of March, carbon emissions from electricity generation were down more than 12 per cent compared with mid-2011, with almost the entire drop made up by brown coal-fired power stations.
The closure of Victoria's Hazelwood power plant in March 2017 removed Australia's most carbon-intensive power station.
"From now on ... electricity emissions will fall much more slowly" if not remain flat, Hugh Saddler, an energy analyst and author of the report, said.
"Total energy combustion emissions may well start to increase, as they were doing up to the beginning of 2017 [prior to the Hazelwood closure]."
In the most recent government greenhouse gas data, electricity generation emissions fell 3.1 per cent in 2017, the only sector to record a drop.
Total emissions rose 1.5 per cent last year and are on course to notch a fourth consecutive year of growth. That's a trend at odds with Australia's pledge to cut carbon pollution 26-28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030,  particularly in the absence of policies to curb fossil-fuel use and looser curbs on land clearing.
In the transport sector – Australia's second-largest source of emissions after power generation – diesel now accounts for more than half the pollution, and is responsible for all its continuing growth, Dr Saddler said in the National Energy Emissions Audit.
Burning diesel typically emits 17 per cent more greenhouse gas than the same amount of petrol, offsetting its higher efficiency.
"Unless the Australian government takes action on emissions standards, we will continue to drive up emissions in the transport sector with one of the least efficient, highest-emission motor vehicle fleets in the world," said Dr Saddler.
"Australia's average fleet efficiency hasn't changed for years and years," he said. Most other wealthy nations had such controls, while emerging giants India and China had them.

Changes in fossil fuel combustion emissions since 2011

Fairfax Media approached Josh Frydenberg, environment and energy minister, for comment.
Mr Frydenberg has said previously Australia's per capita reduction targets were among the highest for any nation, that the country would likely easily achieve its climate targets.
Australia's emissions pledge to Paris was less than the country's fair share, The Australia Institute says. Photo: Paul Crock
'Unfair'
In a separate report out Tuesday, however, The Australia Institute took aim at Australia's international commitments, saying the country was not doing its "fair share" to combat climate change.
Applying several approaches used widely to assess nations' contribution, the institute found the government's Paris pledge to be "grossly inadequate".

How they compare
Average greenhouse gas emissions (including land use change and forestry) per capita 1990-2014
Source: The Australia Institute


“Whether you assess the fairness of a country’s emissions reduction target by population, economic cost, or a combination, our analysis shows Australia’s reduction target is unambitious, unfair and irresponsible,” Richie Merzian, director of the institute’s Climate & Energy Program, said.
Given Australia's per capita emissions are among the highest in the world, its ambitions should also be high, with a national 2030 reduction target of 45-63 per cent to be fair, the report said.  Labor's target is 45 per cent.
To have a mid-probability of meeting the Paris goal of keeping global warming to well below 2 degrees – compared with about 1 degree to date since pre-industrial times – the world can emit only a further 1040 gigatonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent, the report noted.
According to Australia's population, the country's fair share of that total would be about 3392 million tonnes – an amount that would be taken up in about six years of current annual emissions.
Getting international co-operation on emissions, though, may be come more difficult in the short term, at least.
US President Donald Trump exited the G7 leaders summit over the weekend in Canada early, avoiding discussions on tackling climate change.  The US signalled a year ago that it would pull out of the Paris accord.
The other six nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain – all pledged to implement the climate agreement, but the US only promised to "work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently", according to a report by Inside Climate News.

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Antarctic Ocean Discovery Warns Of Faster Global Warming

Climate Central - Mikayla Mace, Arizona Daily Star

A group of scientists, including one from the University of Arizona, has new findings suggesting Antarctica's Southern Ocean — long known to play an integral role in climate change — may not be absorbing as much pollution as previously thought.
The old belief was the ocean pulled about 13 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change — out of the atmosphere, helping put the brakes on rising global temperatures.
To reach their contradictory conclusion, the team used state-of-the-art sensors to collect more data on the Southern Ocean than ever before, including during the perilous winter months that previously made the research difficult if not impossible.
Some oceanographers suspect that less CO2 is being absorbed because the westerlies — the winds that ring the southernmost continent — are tightening like a noose. As these powerful winds get more concentrated, they dig at the water, pushing it out and away.
The crew of the N.B. Palmer used satellite imagery to avoid large fields of sea ice during a mission to deploy and recover floats, which remotely monitor ocean conditions, but sometimes encounters were unavoidable. The research vessel can break through ice three feet thick while traveling at three knots. Credit: Greta Shum/Climate Central
Water from below rises to take its place, dragging up decaying muck made of carbon from deep in the ocean that can then either be released into the atmosphere in the form of CO2 or slow the rate that CO2 is absorbed by the water. Either way, it's not good.
The Southern Ocean is far away, but “for Arizona, this is what matters,” said Joellen Russell, the University of Arizona oceanographer and co-author on the paper revealing these findings. “We don’t see the Southern Ocean, and yet it has reached out the icy hand.”
Joellen Russell, associate professor of geoscience at the University of Arizona, with a climate model of sea surface temperatures. Credit: Kelly Presnell/Arizona Daily Star 
Oceans, rivers, lakes and vegetation can moderate extreme changes in temperature. Southern Arizona has no such buffers, leaving us vulnerable as average global temperatures march upward.
“Everybody asks, ‘Why are you at the UA?’” Russell said about studying the Southern Ocean from the desert at the University of Arizona. She said the research is important to Arizona and the university supports her work.

Making measurements
The Southern Ocean is a formidable place, especially in winter. Winds can howl at nearly 100 mph, churning waves that can surge 80 feet high. The temperature dips below freezing for prolonged periods.
“Very few people who have a sane view of the world go down there in winter,” said Rik Wanninkhof, an oceanographer from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and one of the paper’s co-authors.
For this reason, scientists know less about the Southern Ocean than the rest of the world’s oceans. What they do know is mostly limited to surface CO2 levels in the summer, when it’s safer to take measurements by ships with researchers aboard. Shipboard sensors that directly measure CO2 are the accepted scientific standard in these types of studies.
Understanding CO2 levels within the air, land and sea and how it is exchanged between the three is necessary for making more accurate future climate predictions.
To fill the gap in knowledge, Russell and her team have deployed an array of cylindrical tanks, called floats, that collect data on carbon and more in the Southern Ocean year-round. Russell leads the modeling component of this project called Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling, or SOCCOM.
Aboard the N.B. Palmer research vessel, marine technician MacKenzie Haberman assisted with the launch of a profiling float in the Southern Ocean, which remotely monitors ocean conditions. Credit: Greta Shum/Climate Central
The floats drift 1,000 meters below the surface. Every 10 days, they plunge a thousand meters deeper, then bob up to the surface before returning to their original depth.
For three years, 35 floats equipped with state-of-the-art sensors the size of a coffee cup have been collecting data along the way and beaming it back to the researchers, like Russell in Tucson. Within hours, the data is freely available online.
They measure ocean acidity, or pH, and other metrics to understand the biogeochemistry of the elusive ocean, but not without controversy.

Making a splash
Alison Gray, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, is the lead author on the study. She said there are two reasons the study may contradict what has previously been thought of about the Southern Ocean: The lack of winter-time observations at the ocean by other researchers and the fact that ocean carbon levels might vary throughout the year.
So while SOCCOM is making it possible to get more data than ever before, others question her nontraditional methods. They suggest that Gray’s alarming results are derived from error.
“Whether the Southern Ocean is absorbing a large quantity of CO2 from the atmosphere is a hot topic for environmental science and global policy making,” said Taro Takahashi, a geochemist from Columbia University, in an email. He is not involved with SOCCOM.
Takahashi is not entirely convinced the measurements reported by the authors are scientifically reliable enough to support their conclusions.
The issue with the findings is that researchers are not directly measuring CO2 but rather calculating it from the measurements taken with the new sensors, he said. The standard shipboard sensors don’t work at the depth the floats operate, and the traditional sensors are too large to fit on a float.

Pushback
Publishing the paper has been laborious as well, Russell said.
SOCCOM is like the disruptive startup in the carbon counting industry.
“(Reviewers) kept saying, ‘It’s a new sensor, so if you want us to trust it, we want more time and more of them,’ which is legitimate and annoying,” she said.
Additionally, while the floats are convenient year-round tools, some worry the floats will render measurements made by shipboard crews with the older, larger sensors obsolete. But Russell wants to reassure them: "We don’t think we should ever replace the ships because that together actually gets us this transformational science.”
The N.B. Palmer research vessel carried scientists across the Southern Ocean as they collected samples and launched floats, which remotely monitor ocean conditions. Credit: Ted Blanco/Climate Central
What’s next
Gray remains confident in her findings, "but we need to keep making measurements to verify our results," she said.
“Even assuming large uncertainty, our results are still significantly different than previous estimates," Gray said. "So even if we are off, the take-home message is the same."
The team only wants to improve the models with more data so that future climate predictions can bet more accurate, Gray said.
“If the Southern Ocean is not taking up as much carbon as we believed, it could be that things are changing more rapidly,” Wanninkhof said.
And that matters, even in a desert thousands of miles from the Antarctica since climate change will make extreme weather events more extreme in Arizona, he said.

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It's Hooray For Climate Scientists Day (Formerly Hug A Climate Scientist Day)

The Guardian - 



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12/06/2018

Geoengineering: The Quick, And Potentially Catastrophic, Fix For Climate Change

ABC - Michael Dulaney

Geo-engineering can involve putting reflective particles in the sky to reduce solar radiation. (clouds, Mattias, Flickr.com, CC BY 2.0)
Proposals for geoengineering projects sound like something out of science fiction.
Pumping aerosols into the upper atmosphere to make clouds more reflective, for example. Or fertilizing oceans with iron to promote the growth of plankton and algae so they consume more carbon dioxide.
Then there are proposals to plant vast swathes of trees in desert areas, or brighten clouds above marine areas to prevent ocean warming.
They sound like drastic interventions because that's what geoengineering is: the active and intentional modification of the climate.
As the Paris agreement target of limiting global temperature rise to two degrees or less seems increasingly improbable, there has been renewed interest in solutions that once seemed morally challenging, or difficult to contemplate.
To proponents, like Cambridge University's Hugh Hunt, geoengineering could mitigate the worst aspects of climate change, and provide time to look for more permanent solutions.
"It's a little bit like someone with lung cancer - we're not going to give you a transplant if you're going to carry on smoking," he said.
"Geoengineering will buy us some time, until we get this sorted out."

Dare not speak its name
Dr Hunt is currently investigating the construction of huge updraft towers in the desert, and using the air flows to generate electricity while stripping the airstream of greenhouse gasses.
He previously worked on a project named SPICE — Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering — which looked at sending a tethered balloon 20km above to earth to seed aerosols into the stratosphere.
In theory, the particles would change the optical properties of sunlight, reflecting more solar radiation into space and reducing global temperatures.
The idea was to emulate natural volcanic events, like the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which caused global cooling of one degree for about a year.
The Great Barrier Reef has struggled with two consecutive years of serious bleaching. (Supplied: Caitlin Seaview Survey 2015)
Intellectual property concerns were among the reasons SPICE and its balloon fell back to earth, figuratively speaking.
"It was closed down because it was deemed to be controversial," he said.
Dr Hunt is concerned about the lack of research into geoengineering solutions, which he says could leave the international community seriously unprepared if any country decided to act unilaterally.
"If they could be made to work, they could be quite cheap - the development time can be short, and the cost low," he said.
"It's like the Voldemort of climate change - it shall not be mentioned.
"My view is if something is going to be done, best we know how to do it safely. I think we should be allowing experiments, but I'm in a very small minority.

Adaptation on the Great Barrier Reef
They may seem far fetched, but geoengineering projects have already been proposed for areas in Australia's backyard.
One of the markers of global climate change is the health of the world's coral reefs, which are particularly sensitive to changing temperatures.


Aerial survey shows the extent of coral bleaching on section of Great Barrier Reef

Following two consecutive years of mass coral bleaching, a team of researchers at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science last year proposed altering the clouds above the reef in a bid to save the delicate coral communities below.
They advocated "marine cloud brightening", making larger and more reflective clouds over the ocean to cool the water underneath.
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) chief scientist David Wachenfeld said the authority has already undertaken local action to improve the resilience of the reef to climate change, which he said was "far and away the greatest threat" to its survival.
Although they are much smaller in scope than those proposed by geoengineering advocates like Dr Hunt, Dr Wachenfeld said the GBRMPA had already looked at adaptation and marine park management to reduce human impact on the reef, include altering turtle nesting habitats to ensure greater numbers survive each year.
"These areas can certainly still recover if we do the right thing in terms of global mitigation of climate change and local actions to improve resilience," he said.
"We need to try harder, do more and act now."

'What happens if we screw it all up?'
Summer ice in the Arctic is now so thin that researchers last year sailed in small yachts rather than large ice breaking ships.
Scientists say as much as 50 gigatons of methane trapped under the Arctic could be released into the atmosphere if — or when — the protective permafrost completely melts, rapidly speeding up global climate change.
Ice is disappearing from the Arctic. (Kathryn Hansen/NASA)
The upshot of this and other climatic developments, according to Dr Hunt, is the need to urgently look at solutions that would otherwise seem unthinkable.
But he is not closed to the very real risk of catastrophe that geoengineering poses, pointing out that there are "hundreds" of potential adverse impacts. Most importantly, there is no "Planet B" if we get it wrong.
"The obvious ones are pumping something up high into the atmosphere and we know so little about the upper atmosphere - whatever we put up there has got to be safe," he said.
"What happens if we screw it all up? What happens if we accidentally switch off the Indian monsoon?"
Besides this, there is the risk the projects do not work at all, or are not as effective as advertised.
But Dr Hunt said this required more research and thought applied to the topic.
"I don't know which is worse - a seven metre sea level rise or geoengineering.
"That's putting it in a very pointed way, but we've got to think hard about this.
"It could be that there should be absolutely no way we ever do this. But that's why we've got to do the research."

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End Of The Journey For Iceberg B-15?

EarthSky - 

B15 was the largest iceberg ever recorded to break away from Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf. That was in the year 2000. Now the iceberg is nearly gone. See its remnant from space, and the track of its journey.
When ISS astronauts shot this photo on May 22, this chunk of iceberg B-15 measured 10 nautical miles long and 5 nautical miles wide, still within trackable size. It probably won’t be for long. Image via NASA Earth Observatory.
Iceberg B-15 was about the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut when it broke from Antarctica in late March 2000. It’s still the biggest iceberg recorded so far from Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf. Now in its 18th year drifting with the currents – being battered by wind and sea – B-15 has since fractured into many smaller bergs, and most have melted away. Just four pieces of B-15 are still big enough to be tracked by the National Ice Center (at least 20 square nautical miles, or 69 square km). The photo at top – taken on May 22, 2018, by astronauts aboard the International Space Station – shows the piece of the original iceberg called B-15Z.
This chunk of ice – one of the only remaining pieces of the original iceberg – is likely nearing the end of its voyage. As these images show, there’s already a large fracture along the center of the berg, and smaller pieces are splintering off from the edges.
May 22, 2018. Image via NASA.
The little square shows the location of the iceberg when astronauts captured the image above, on May 22, 2018. Image via NASA.
Image via NASA.
  • Melting and breakup would not be surprising, given the berg’s long journey and northerly location. A previous image showed B-15Z farther south in October 2017, after it had ridden the coastal countercurrent about three-quarters of the way around Antarctica bringing it to the Southern Ocean off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
  • Currents prevented the berg from continuing through the Drake Passage; instead, B-15Z cruised north into the southern Atlantic Ocean. When the May 2018 photograph was acquired, the berg was about 150 nautical miles northwest of the South Georgia islands. Icebergs that make it this far have been known to rapidly melt and end their life cycles here.
Satellite image from April 13, 2000. Iceberg B-15 broke from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in late March 2000. Image via NASA.
Bottom line: The enormous iceberg B-15, which broke off Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf in 2000, has melted and fractured. Shown here is a May 22, 2018, image from space of one of four remaining pieces of the iceberg.

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OUR FUTURE | Leaders Must Act On Climate Change Now

Illawarra Mercury - Dr Marianne Cannon*

 Working within the medical and health sector means I have seen first-hand the effects climate change is already inflicting on our wellbeing.




Increasing storms, heat waves and natural disasters amplify the traffic that comes through our door. We see more people than ever with heat-related illness, respiratory issues due to storms and injuries from natural disasters such as bushfires and floods.
There’s no questioning climate change is taking its toll - and this is only the beginning.
While at state level there are good initiatives taking place to prevent impacts, Australia is still trailing the world on taking action on climate change.
The "it’s too late" belief, and the excuse that it’s “too far into the future to contemplate”, have combined to bring on a failure of both leadership and collective decision-making.
The worst affected by climate-related health impacts are generally the very old, the very young and people with existing health issues.
Why is it we have to wait for this to affect less vulnerable people, rather than taking action while we still can?
With a policy vacuum on climate change, it seems the general public are the ones who will need to act for the sake of our own wellbeing.
This doesn’t mean each and every one of us needs to get on the streets and rally for action, but it does mean we can start the discussion in our local organisations - as farmers, nurses, first responders - we must do what we can to help.
Time is short. If we want to re-frame the debate, we need to drag our leaders along so they have no choice but to listen.
Climate change is already affecting our society, let’s initiate change before it really is too late for all of us.

*Dr Marianne Cannon is an emergency physician based in Northern Rivers NSW.

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Australia 'Unfairly Shirking Global Responsibilities' On Climate Change

AFR - Tom McIlroy

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the UN Paris climate talks in 2015. Francois Mori 
Australia is shirking its international responsibilities to fight climate change with a focus on Paris agreement targets overshadowing need for greater action, a new report has warned.
Analysis of approaches to the world's remaining carbon emissions budget for this century by think tank the Australia Institute finds the country's targets won't meet a fair share by population size, economic costs or a combination of both factors and will need to be ramped up.
Australia's current 2030 emissions reduction target is for a 26 to 28 per cent reduction on 2005 levels, while Labor plans to adopt a 2030 target of 45 per cent below 2005 levels.
On current levels, cumulative global greenhouse gas emissions will surpass levels needed to keep global average surface temperature increases to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels within 20 years.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop hugs then Marshall Islands minister Tony de Brum at the Paris climate summit in 2015. Andrew McLeish
The new report, released on Tuesday, says in the context of the global carbon budget set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, neither party's policy would see Australia doing its fair share in concert with the international community.
Ahead of the next major international climate talks in Katowice, Poland in December, the report says the Turnbull government's policy is "inadequate according to any recognised principle-based approach" while Labor's alternative can be regarded as "the bare minimum necessary".
When considered by Australia's population count, the remaining budget would be quickly surpassed and net zero emissions required to be reached in about six years.
On a modified approach considering development and population, Australia's current target of 26 per cent reductions by 2030 would require complete decarbonisation within five years.
Australia wouldn't meet targets under an international cost-sharing approach, designed to equalise economic impacts across countries, with both targets seeing consumption grow and insufficient reductions in place.
The report comes amid concerns about targets for the electricity sector's contribution to carbon emission savings and the impact on other sectors.
"Given Australia's high historic emissions, high per capita emissions and high income, other approaches to assessing nations' contributions to climate action all show that Australia's climate targets are not doing a fair share," the report said.
"Any principle-based approach to target setting will result in highly developed, emissions-intensive nations like Australia having to pursue aggressive emissions reductions immediately and sustaining these reductions over the coming decades.
"The small size of the remaining global emissions budget poses a significant challenge. All countries will need to ramp-up mitigation efforts.
"If the global community is to succeed in keeping emissions within the 2°C budget, mitigation efforts in Australia and elsewhere need to be significantly accelerated on time scales shorter than those contained in the Paris Agreement."
Report author and Australia Institute climate and energy program director Richie Merzian said Australia was unfairly shirking its global responsibilities and predicted the country would come under pressure from allies and neighbours in future climate talks.
"Whether you assess the fairness of a country's emissions reduction target by population, economic cost, or a combination, our analysis shows Australia's reduction target is unambitious, unfair and irresponsible," he said.
"Australia continues to profit from high emissions rather than take up its fair share of reductions."
Emissions reductions and the transition to renewable energy sources remain a key tension point for the Coalition, as it works to deliver the National Energy Guarantee policy.
"It is in Australia's best interest to have targets that do our fair share. Inadequate targets that need continual revision brings uncertainty to business," Mr Merzian said.
"The reduction target uncertainty that has plagued the energy sector will spread and be experienced by all sectors unless we get this right."

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