Six Sentences Of Hope: Defining A Unifying Vision In The Face Of The Climate Crisis

The Guardian - Richard Flanagan

A sense of futility haunts us all, so I sought to distill in as few words as possible what could be done by us as a people. Writing them, I felt my despair lift

‘It’s time to take our future back. It’s time to stand and fight.’ An anti-Adani coalmine protest at Airlie Beach, Queensland. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

In 1971, the Liberal Billy McMahon – routinely judged the worst Australian prime minister ever, an achievement not to be underestimated in a nation where the worst routinely rule – created a new portfolio: Environment, Arts and Aboriginal Affairs. Nobody wanted the job: given it, Peter Howson observed that he was responsible for “trees, boongs and poofters.”
What’s changed with our conservative rulers over the last half century? On the evidence of the shame the prime minister, Scott Morrison, visited on all Australians last week at the Pacific Islands Forum, not very much. There he tried to pressure Pacific leaders to remove from the final forum communique and climate change statement all references to coal, to limiting warming to less than 1.5C, and to setting out a plan for net zero emissions by 2050.
Tuvalu’s prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, was too diplomatic when he told Scott Morrison: “You are trying to save your economy, I am trying to save my people.”
Because it isn’t Australia’s economic security that is at stake, but the security of the profits of coalmining corporations and their owners – the likes of Gautam Adani and Gina Rinehart – along with the security of the seats of influential Queensland MPs for whom Clive Palmer’s $60m-plus election campaign was so important.
And for them, and his own electoral security, Scott Morrison was willing to sacrifice any sense of national security.
Not content at a time of growing global tensions to have deeply damaged our standing with our close neighbours, the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, observed that Pacific islanders would “continue to survive because many of their workers come here and pick our fruit”, thereby managing in a single sentence to dismiss Pacific islanders’ concerns for their future and simultaneously invoke Australia’s horrific blackbirding past that saw 19th century Pacific islanders kidnapped and coerced into semi-slavery working on Australian sugar cane plantations.
And when next it is our homes that vanish in an unprecedented mega-fire, or flood, or cyclone, or under a rising sea, what patronising cant might our Marie Antoinettish leaders offer up for our future? Help in the kitchen of a coal company executive? Work in the garden of a National party grandee?
Like so many Australians, I have felt powerless watching the climate crisis unfold in our country. Last week’s events brought home to me how the most powerful in our country seemed to be those that would ensure the very worst future eventuates in their craven service to the fossil fuel industry and its propagandists, thereby ensuring we exacerbate the climate emergency rather than seek to limit its damage.
The question of the age is how. In the face of a human-induced change that threatens the future of our species how to act? How to live? How to be?
In seeking the answer we find ourselves alone in the universe without illusions. There are no leaders, no parties, no nation, no gods that will save us. We discover at this terrible moment a shocking truth: we only have ourselves. And each of us finds within ourselves only failure, cowardice, timidity, in short, a despair at our general weakness.This sense of futility haunts us all.
And yet within that failure is hope. Having only ourselves we finally discover bedrock: ourselves.
Everywhere – in every party, organisation, workplace, club, gym, street, café and pub – are to be found those who do not agree with where power is taking our country.
And at the moment, we can still keep climate change within the 1.5C change. It is difficult. But it remains possible. And science tells us that at 1.5C we can still exercise control over our future.
But if we choose not to act now within a decade we will be looking at between 2C and 6C of warming by 2100. And at that point science tells us that we can no longer control anything.
It won’t matter whether we fight or not, because the fight will be lost. The changes will not be able to be contained and we will be living on a planet increasingly hostile to human existence.
And so the situation is not yet terminal. It remains in our control if we wish to take control. There is hope if we dare hope. There is a better future if we are willing to express it and demand it.
And it is clear that the concerns that so many of us have dwarf the differences of groups and parties. I thought on the things that we could unite around as Australians, that we could use to go forward, that would make our country, as it has been in the past, a global leader, and a proud country once more.
Words only have the power others grant to them. If we do nothing we are endorsing Michael McCormack’s words and Scott Morrison’s actions in Tuvalu.
Or we can use other words.
And so I sought to distill into as few words as possible what could be done by us as a people. What was feasible, what was achievable. None are new ideas, all are founded in science, and all are being fought for in various ways. But everywhere we see them dismissed and attacked as impossible, ludicrous and unworkable.
Yet when reduced to their essence how reasonable they are. When conceived as a mutual and national endeavour how possible they become. And writing them I felt my despair lift. I realised that there can be a positive vision for our future, a future that brings us together rather than divides us, that makes us a better, stronger country.
And in six sentences I saw hope is possible.

1. We believe Australia can be an affirming light in a time of despair, a global leader in transitioning to a carbon-free and socially just society, and that is why we wish our government to –
2. Work with Australian land managers to stop land clearing, protect existing forests and grow new forests to absorb existing carbon pollution.
3. Work with Australian farmers and graziers to make farming carbon neutral.
4. Work with Australian miners to ensure a transition into 21st century minerals (nickel, rare earth) and end thermal coalmining and gas fracking in Australia.
5. Work with Australian regulators to make all Australian ground transport powered by renewable energy by 2030.
6. Work with Australian industry to make Australia a renewable energy giant and carbon-neutral economy by 2050, funded by progressive pollution tariffs on global heaters.
7. That neither the government nor Labor party would at present even contemplate such things is beside the point. That we must compel them is.

At the end of the Pacific Islands Forum, Enele Sopoaga asked the world to not forget his people: “We ask, please, understand this: our people are dying.”
I don’t doubt that there are far better words than my six sentences to be had and which will and should appear.
But we need to act now for if we don’t the fate of the Tuvalese may soon be ours also.
It’s time to take our future back. It’s time to stand and fight.
And though these final words seem strange as I write them, I feel them to be true: we will discover the language of hope in the quality of our courage.

Links

• An Urgent Call To Protect The World's "Third Pole"
• The Next Step In Fighting Climate Change
• Why Science Needs The Humanities To Solve Climate Change
• Want To Do Something About Global Warming? Talk About It With Your Family And Friends
• We Went To The Moon. Why Can’t We Solve Climate Change?
• The Counter-Intuitive Solution To Getting People To Care About Climate Change
• The One Viable Solution To Climate Change
• When it comes to coal, Australia has transitioned away from economics and common sense
• Picking fruit is work, not benevolence, and doesn't absolve Australia of climate responsibility

West Antarctica Is Melting—And It’s Our Fault

National Geographic - Alejandra Borunda

The fingerprints of human-caused climate change have made it to Antarctica, a new study shows

Pine Island Glacier, in West Antarctica, is retreating quickly. In 2014, this iceberg, 20 miles wide, broke off the tongue of the glacier and floated away. Other chunks of ice continue to shear off the glacier. Photograph by Jeff Schmaltz, NASA/GSFC/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team

The towering glaciers of West Antarctica hold the fate of the world’s coasts in their flanks. Their collapse could send sea levels up by at least a foot by 2100—and potentially much more.
For years, scientists have watched and learned that those glaciers are crumbling and melting, the rate speeding up over the decades and imperiling the stability of the entire ice sheet. But while the science was clear that human influences on climate would affect the ice down the line, it has been hard to tell whether human-driven global warming has affected the melting already underway.
Now, a team has unraveled evidence of that human influence. In a study published Monday in Nature Geoscience, a team of scientists showed that over the past century, human-driven global warming has changed the character of the winds that blow over the ocean near some of the most fragile glaciers in West Antarctica. Sometimes, those winds have weakened or reversed, which in turn causes changes in the ocean water that laps up against the ice in a way that caused the glaciers to melt.
“We now have evidence to support that human activities have influenced the sea level rise we’ve seen from West Antarctica,” says lead author Paul Holland, a polar scientist at the British Antarctic Survey.

The ocean eats the ice
The massive West Antarctic ice sheet holds something like 6 percent of the world’s fresh water frozen in its guts. If it all melted away, global sea levels would rise by about 10 feet or more. That’s not likely to happen anytime particularly soon, scientists think, but some parts of the ice sheet are particularly vulnerable, in danger of crossing a crucial “tipping point” if they retreat too far. (Read about the "tipping point" here).
In the past decades, some glaciers in the region have been retreating shockingly quickly. Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glaciers, for example, are losing about 100 billion tons of ice each year, and more in bad years. (See what a 10 billion ton chunk of ice looks like in this video).
The glaciers have been receding because their snouts spill over the edge of the continent into the surrounding ocean, which is warmer than the ice. The warm water melts away the ice.
Just how warm the ocean is, though, matters a lot. Over decades, the temperature of the water has waxed and waned, driven in part by natural climate cycles that send different water masses close to the edge of the ice sheet at different times, cycling through from cold to a little less cold every five years or so.

See the crack splitting an Antarctic ice shelf in two

Stunning drone footage shows how an iceberg the size of Houston, Texas is holding on by a thread.

Jaskiran Nagi

The main thing that controls whether warm water makes it to the edge of the ice sheet, it turns out, is the strength of the winds a little bit farther offshore, in the heart of the icy, bitter Amundsen Sea. Sometimes, those winds—cousins of the famous raging band of Southern Ocean winds known as the Roaring 40s—slacken or even reverse. When they do, more warm water ends up near the edge of the ice sheet, which means more ice melts away. (See what the world would look like if all the ice melted away).
“In the 1920s, the winds were pretty much consistently blowing toward the west,” says Holland. “So in the old days, it was cold all the time—it flopped between cold and very cold.”
But now, because of the slow warming of the planet, the whole baseline has moved up. Instead of the cycle flipping between cold and very cold, the flip is between warm and cold.
Scientists knew that the strength of the winds in this region of the Amundsen Sea affected the water temperature. Records of wind strength and direction only went back until 1979. But the patterns in this region match up nearly perfectly with conditions far away, in the tropical Pacific Ocean, where much better, longer-term records exist—so the team could extrapolate how the polar-region winds have changed over the last century.
They used a suite of climate models to look at how the wind patterns would have evolved over the last 100 years if human-caused global warming weren’t in play, and compared that with what the winds actually did. Today’s pattern—with about equal west-flowing and east-flowing winds—means the whole region ends up quite a bit warmer than it was 100 years ago, when the wind flowed toward the west most of the time.

Ice out of Balance
In the past, and even up to the early part of the record the scientists looked at in the 1920s, ice melted during warm phases and grew back during cold phases. But over the last century, that balance has come undone. The shifting winds and warm ocean phases have eaten away at the ice more quickly than it’s being replaced.
Several particularly notable moments of wind-flipping, like in the 1970s, matched up closely with major retreats of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers.
Those glaciers are particularly sensitive to melting at their snouts. The ground underneath them, it turns out, is concave, like a bowl. The glacier ice is attached the “rim” of the bowl, but if it melts back past that edge, warm ocean water can spill underneath it and melt it even more quickly from the bottom.
In 1974, one of these strong moments of melting pushed the glaciers past one of these “rims,” and since then the glacier has melted much more quickly than it did before—at least 50 percent more melt after that un-groundig than before, said Eric Steig, an atmospheic and ice core scientist at the University of Washington and an author of the paper.

The suspect has been identified—and it’s us
The ultimate cause of the wind patterns, they found, is human-caused climate change. The extra greenhouse gases humans have pumped into the atmosphere over the past few hundred years have changed the way heat moves around the planet so thoroughly that they’ve changed the shape of the basic wind patterns at the poles.
The Antarctic ice sheet sat more or less stable in shape and size for many thousands of years. But about a century ago, pieces of it started to retreat in measurable ways. That’s well within the time frame when carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases had started to accumulate thickly in the atmosphere, so it seemed logical to think that human influence was affecting the ice. But Antarctica is a complicated place that changes a lot because of natural variability, so it has been challenging to pinpoint the extent of human influence on the changes.
“It was very hard to imagine that the ice sat around happily for millennia and then decided to retreat naturally just as humans started perturbing the system, but the evidence for forcing by natural variability was strong,” writes Richard Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, in an email.
But a warming planet has very clearly changed the way winds move around Antarctica—and that change is likely to continue, unless something drastic happens to slow or reverse the warming process.
“If we carry this pattern forward, we may move to a situation where we’re flipping between warm and very warm,” says Holland. And that could be devastating for the ice.
But the future isn’t yet written, Steig stressed. Keeping future greenhouse gas emissions in check would go a long way toward keeping those crucial winds from weakening further, the water under the edge of the ice chilly, and the ice frozen.
“[West Antarctic Ice Sheet] melting will affect everyone,” says Steig. “The effects will be global, because sea level will rise globally.”

Links

• What Climate Tipping Points Should We Be Looking Out For?
• Glacial Melting In Antarctica May Become Irreversible
• Journey To Antarctica: What Scientists Think Of Trump’s Latest Climate Tweet
• Antarctic Sea Ice Declining ‘Precipitously’ Since 2014, Study Finds
• NASA: Antarctica's Effect On Sea Level Rise In Coming Centuries
• Antarctica Is Losing Ice At An Accelerating Rate. How Much Will Sea Levels Rise?
• Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting To Melt
• Journey to Antarctica: Is This What a Climate Catastrophe Looks Like in Real Time?
• Alaskan glaciers melting 100 times faster than previously thought
• Himalayan glaciers melting at alarming rate, spy satellites show

Global Ocean Circulation Appears To Be Collapsing Due To A Warming Planet

Forbes - Trevor Nace

Global ocean circulation appears to be slowing

NASA

 Scientists have long known about the anomalous "warming hole" in the North Atlantic Ocean, an area immune to warming of Earth's oceans. This cool zone in the North Atlantic Ocean appears to be associated with a slowdown in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), one of the key drivers in global ocean circulation.
A recent study published in Nature outlines research by a team of Yale University and University of Southhampton scientists. The team found evidence that Arctic ice loss is potentially negatively impacting the planet's largest ocean circulation system. While scientists do have some analogs as to how this may impact the world, we will be largely in uncharted territory.
AMOC is one of the largest current systems in the Atlantic Ocean and the world. Generally speaking, it transports warm and salty water northward from the tropics to South and East of Greenland. This warm water cools to ambient water temperature then sinks as it is saltier and thus denser than the relatively more fresh surrounding water. The dense mass of water sinks to the base of the North Atlantic Ocean and is pushed south along the abyss of the Atlantic Ocean.

Schematic of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

Wikipedia

This process whereby water is transported into the Northern Atlantic Ocean acts to distribute ocean water globally. What's more important, and the basis for concern of many scientists is this mechanism is one of the most efficient ways Earth transports heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes. The warm water transported from the tropics to the North Atlantic releases heat to the atmosphere, playing a key role in warming of western Europe. You likely have heard of one of the more popular components of the AMOC, the Gulf Stream which brings warm tropical water to the western coasts of Europe.
Evidence is growing that the comparatively cold zone within the Northern Atlantic could be due to a slowdown of this global ocean water circulation. Hence, a slowdown in the planet's ability to transfer heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes. The cold zone could be due to melting of ice in the Arctic and Greenland. This would cause a cold fresh water cap over the North Atlantic, inhibiting sinking of salty tropical waters. This would in effect slow down the global circulation and hinder the transport of warm tropical waters north.

Measured trend in temperature variations from 1900 to 2012.
NOAA

Melting of the Arctic sea ice has rapidly increased in the recent decades. Satellite image records indicate that September Arctic sea ice is 30% less today than it was in 1979. This trend of increased sea ice melting during summer months does not appear to be slowing. Hence, indications are that we will see a continued weakening of the global ocean circulation system.
This scenario of a collapse in AMOC and global ocean circulation is the premise for the movie "The Day After Tomorrow." As a disclaimer, the plot line in which much of New England and Western Europe gets plunged into an ice age is significantly over exaggerated and unrealistic on human time scales.
While geologists have studied events in the past similar to what appears to be happening today, scientists are largely unsure of what lies ahead.

Links

• The Real Reason They Behave Hypocritically On Climate Change Is Because They Want To
• Is Carbon Sequestration An Effective Way To Combat Climate Change?
• How Can We Address Climate Change Through Agriculture?
• Can't Take The Heat? Get Out And Teach Kids About Climate Change
• Smarter Land Use Could Combat Climate Change
• Making One Billion People Resilient To Climate Change By 2030
• Dead Microbes Lock Away Carbon—What This Means For Climate Change
• Climate Change: 18 Months To Save The World
• 6 Hidden Costs Of Government Inaction On Climate Change
• The Vital Next Step In Fighting Climate Change
• What Role Should Carbon Pricing Play In Addressing Climate Change?
• Implementing The One Viable Solution To Climate Change

Climate Change May Change The Way Ocean Waves Impact 50% Of The World’s Coastlines

The Conversation* - Mark Hemer | Ian Young | Joao Morim Nascimento | Nobuhito Mori

Waves in Australia’s southern coasts are likely to get bigger and faster under a warming climate. AAP Image/City of Gold Coast

The rise in sea levels is not the only way climate change will affect the coasts. Our research, published today in Nature Climate Change, found a warming planet will also alter ocean waves along more than 50% of the world’s coastlines.
If the climate warms by more than 2℃ beyond pre-industrial levels, southern Australia is likely to see longer, more southerly waves that could alter the stability of the coastline.
Scientists look at the way waves have shaped our coasts – forming beaches, spits, lagoons and sea caves – to work out how the coast looked in the past. This is our guide to understanding past sea levels.
But often this research assumes that while sea levels might change, wave conditions have stayed the same. This same assumption is used when considering how climate change will influence future coastlines – future sea-level rise is considered, but the effect of future change on waves, which shape the coastline, is overlooked.

Changing waves
Waves are generated by surface winds. Our changing climate will drive changes in wind patterns around the globe (and in turn alter rain patterns, for example by changing El Niño and La Niña patterns). Similarly, these changes in winds will alter global ocean wave conditions.
Further to these “weather-driven” changes in waves, sea level rise can change how waves travel from deep to shallow water, as can other changes in coastal depths, such as affected reef systems.
Recent research analysed 33 years of wind and wave records from satellite measurements, and found average wind speeds have risen by 1.5 metres per second, and wave heights are up by 30cm – an 8% and 5% increase, respectively, over this relatively short historical record.
These changes were most pronounced in the Southern Ocean, which is important as waves generated in the Southern Ocean travel into all ocean basins as long swells, as far north as the latitude of San Francisco.

Sea level rise is only half the story
Given these historical changes in ocean wave conditions, we were interested in how projected future changes in atmospheric circulation, in a warmer climate, would alter wave conditions around the world.
As part of the Coordinated Ocean Wave Climate Project, ten research organisations combined to look at a range of different global wave models in a variety of future climate scenarios, to determine how waves might change in the future.
While we identified some differences between different studies, we found if the 2℃ Paris agreement target is kept, changes in wave patterns are likely to stay inside natural climate variability.
However in a business-as-usual climate, where warming continues in line with current trends, the models agreed we’re likely to see significant changes in wave conditions along 50% of the world’s coasts. These changes varied by region.
Less than 5% of the global coastline is at risk of seeing increasing wave heights. These include the southern coasts of Australia, and segments of the Pacific coast of South and Central America.
On the other hand decreases in wave heights, forecast for about 15% of the world’s coasts, can also alter coastal systems.
But describing waves by height only is the equivalent of describing an orchestra simply by the volume at which it plays.
Some areas will see the height of waves remain the same, but their length or frequency change. This can result in more force exerted on the coast (or coastal infrastructure), perhaps seeing waves run further up a beach and increasing wave-driven flooding.
Similarly, waves travelling from a slightly altered direction (suggested to occur over 20% of global coasts) can change how much sand they shunt along the coast – important considerations for how the coast might respond. Infrastructure built on the coast, or offshore, is sensitive to these many characteristics of waves.
While each of these wave characteristics is important on its own, our research identified that about 40% of the world’s coastlines are likely to see changes in wave height, period and direction happening simultaneously.
While some readers may see intense waves offering some benefit to their next surf holiday, there are much greater implications for our coastal and offshore environments. Flooding from rising sea levels could cost US$14 trillion worldwide annually by 2100 if we miss the target of 2℃ warming.
How coastlines respond to future climate change will be a response to a complex interplay of many processes, many of which respond to variable and changing climate. To focus on sea level rise alone, and overlooking the role waves play in shaping our coasts, is a simplification which has great potential to be costly.

*The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Xiaolan Wang, Senior Research Scientist at Environment and Climate Change, Canada, to this article.

Links

• Rising seas threaten Australia's major airports – and it may be happening faster than we think
• Curious Kids: why are there waves?
• Droughts and flooding rains already more likely as climate change plays havoc with Pacific weather
• Ocean warming has fisheries on the move, helping some but hurting more
• Fossil fuel extraction could be contributing to climate change by heating Earth from within
• Myths about disaster survivors stall the global response to climate change
• Still sneezing? Climate change may prolong allergy season

Climate Policy Vacuum Boosting Investor Focus On Low-Carbon Assets

RenewEconomy - Sophie Vorrath

Key points 90% of the investors surveyed are implementing low carbon strategies. 50-80% of investors surveyed are undertaking or are actively considering low carbon investment across most asset classes More than 70% of investors have or are considering climate-aligned targets for their portfolios. Many are also doing the same across a range of asset classes. When faced with policy uncertainty, more than 40% of investors redirect investments to jurisdictions, sectors or markets with less uncertainty, and nearly 60% increase company engagement to manage climate-risks across their portfolios. Over 80% of investors are actively considering reporting under the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

Lumps of coal in federal parliament and dodgy emissions accounting have done little to dampen investor appetite for low-carbon opportunities in Australia, a new report from Investor Group on Climate Change has found.
Instead, Australia’s perpetual federal climate policy vacuum appears to be having the perverse effect of focusing investor interest in what companies, themselves, are doing to shield their business and their shareholders from climate risk.
The report, based on a survey of institutional Australia and New Zealand investors managing more than $1.3 trillion in assets, found between 50-80 per cent were undertaking or actively considering low carbon investment across most asset classes.
More than 70 per cent of investors said that had or were considering climate-aligned targets for their portfolios, while 90 per cent said they were implementing low carbon strategies.
“Despite recent political upheavals, investors in Australia and New Zealand are focused on finding low carbon opportunities and getting deals done”, said IGCC CEO Emma Herd in a statement accompanying the report on Tuesday.
“Climate-aligned investment is continuing to accelerate. Investors are actively looking for opportunities to support climate solutions and embed climate change into whole of portfolio management.”
But the federal government’s ongoing failure to take climate action seriously, or to look beyond the energy status quo, is having an investment impact – of sorts.
According to the survey, when faced with policy uncertainty, more than 40 per cent of investors chose to redirect investments to jurisdictions, sectors or markets with less uncertainty.
And nearly 60 per cent of those surveyed said that would increase company engagement to manage climate-risks across their portfolios.
Another 80-plus per cent said they were actively considering reporting under the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.
It’s an outcome that’s analogous to Australia’s rooftop solar boom, where consumers have responded to consistently escalating power prices by taking matters into their own hands.

How institutional investors are thinking about climate change investment opportunities and challenges

In Australia, this “pro-sumer” driven shift has been so widespread and so fast, it has forced governments and the incumbent industry to face up to the changing grid.
“When faced with increased policy or regulatory uncertainty in key markets, investors go offshore to find climate investment opportunities, and they ratchet up active engagement with companies they own,” Herd notes in the IGCC report.
“Recent company engagement by investors with companies, such as Glencore, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Shell and BP, are beginning to build the resilience to companies and the investors who own them have to growing climate-related risks.
“In the absence of clear policies to achieve net zero emissions in line with the Paris Agreement investors are likely to increase company engagement to reduce their exposure to an uncoordinated and ad hoc policy response,” Herd says.
And the industry agrees.
“The (IGCC’s) Accelerating Change report documents, on an industry-wide scale, what we’re hearing from our own investors, and seeing in our communities,” said  the head of renewable infrastructure at  Impact Investment Group, Lane Crockett.
“There is a demand for investments that integrate a response to climate science, contribute to climate action and find the opportunities for financial returns in the transition to a zero-carbon economy.”

“We’re proud to be one of the fund managers offering investments, like the IIG Solar Asset Fund, that meet all those goals, and we’re deeply grateful to the IGCC for helping the investment community to understand the risks and opportunities,” Crockett said.

Links

• Investor survey: Appetite for climate investment accelerating, diversifying and driving engagement with companies
• Report - Accelerating Change: Capital Growth In Climate Solutions (pdf)
• The EV charger guidelines that could light the way for Australian city dwellers
• Amazing Electricity Comparison Site Shocks Aussies
• Finally, Australia is about to have a plan to de-carbonise the grid
• EnergyAustralia slams energy regulator for blackout “blame game”
• The wheels turn as consumer interest in electric vehicles doubles
• Ageing coal plants put Australia on map of global air pollution hotspots

Esperance Logs First Verified Sea Snake Sighting, But Expert Says Warming Oceans May Bring More

ABC News - Emily JB Smith

Christopher Dornan saw the yellow-bellied sea snake at Alexander Bay. (Supplied: Christopher Dornan)

Key points A tropical sea snake has been spotted at the bottom of WA near the town of Esperance One expert suggests warming ocean temperatures may cause sea snake distributions to expand globally The yellow-bellied sea snake has also been found in the chilly waters of Tasmania and in the Atlantic Ocean

Tropical sea creatures are a rarity at Christopher Dornan's local beach, given it is more than 1,500 kilometres from anywhere remotely tropical.
Yet an expert has confirmed the reptile spotted by the Esperance teacher on the chilly shores of Alexander Bay was indeed a yellow-bellied sea snake — marking the first verified record of a living sea snake in the area.
While reptile enthusiast Brian Bush — a man with no formal qualifications, but whose passion for reptiles has seen several snakes named in his honour — said he saw three sea snakes washed ashore during the decade he spent in the region, all of them were dead.
But sea snake research scientist, Blanche D'Anastasi of James Cook University, said it could be a sign of things to come, as warming ocean temperatures advance sea snake distributions globally.

Map: The sea snake was at Alexander Bay, about 100 kilometres east of Esperance ©Mapbox 

Mr Dornan ventured to Alexander Bay, about 100km east of Esperance on Western Australia's southern coast, earlier this month with his wife and a friend, who quickly spotted the sea snake.
While they initially thought it was a moray eel, he said the tail looked decidedly like a sea snake.
"We didn't know whether it was cold and had come out of the water to get warm or was stuck up on the high tide mark," Mr Dornan said.

"We poked it a little bit to see if it was okay, and it sort of slithered a bit, but it didn't seem able to move towards the ocean."

While he said they debated over moving it back into the sea, they were wary of its famously venomous bite.

The sea snake was spotted at Alexander Bay, about 100km east of Esperance. (Supplied: Christopher Dornan)

Last year an English traveller working on a trawler boat in the Gulf of Carpentaria was killed after being bitten by a sea snake.
Mr Dornan said he was also surprised to see the creature near such temperate waters, with oceans in the region dropping as low as 13 degrees Celsius at this time of year.

"I'd never heard of a sea snake being down here before. It's very odd," he said.

"Both my wife and my friend, we've lived up north and they grew up there in the Pilbara and the Kimberley.
"They were used to seeing sea snakes in the water and a couple of times on the beach and they always looked pretty feisty.
"But this one looked a little bit more sedate; it didn't look quite as happy."

Surfing its way down the WA coastline
Ms D'Anastasi said she had never heard of a sea snake sighting near Esperance before, even though WA was a global hotspot for sea snake diversity, with nine endemic species.
She said the most similar incident on record was of an olive sea snake sighting 580km away at Albany in 2013.

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The weird, wonderful, worrying
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For a long time, sea snakes have slipped through the cracks of conservation. Now, scientists are trying to understand why they're mysteriously disappearing from some reefs.

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"I don't have any records of sea snakes in Esperance," she said.
"For a little sea snake to make it all the way down the south coast and then trek along the line to Esperance is really interesting."
Mr Bush said he had never encountered a sea snake that made it to the area alive.
"I was on the Esperance sand plains for 10 years and probably in that time three [dead ones] turned up," he said.
Ms D'Anastasi believes the creature had surfed the Leeuwin current down the coast of WA, but was most likely in poor condition when it washed ashore.

"Occasionally if they're unwell they'll strand themselves because they're afraid of drowning," she said.

"It's possible that this little snake floated down in a current and then has been unwell and has stranded in Esperance."
Ms D'Anastasi said once ashore, sea snakes were at greatest risk of predation from birds and dehydration.
She recommended that anyone who came across a stranded sea snake should place a bowl of fresh water nearby to ward off the latter.
But given the animals are highly venomous, she urged the public to be cautious and call a wildlife carer as soon as possible.

Sea snake sighting in Tasmania
Ms D'Anastasi's tips could be worth jotting down as warming oceans are set to expand the distribution of the world's 70 species of sea snakes.
She said the yellow-bellied sea snake had the largest distribution of any sea snake and was notorious for surfing the world's oceanic currents, with one even found alive in Tasmania.
During the recent El Nino weather conditions Ms D'Anastasi said sea snakes were spotted in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in 20–30 years.
She urged anyone who found a sea snake in Australia to record it on the Australian Sea Snakes Facebook page, where the information would be submitted to national records databases and become publicly available.
"As the climate warms we will see sea snakes spread further south," Ms D'Anastasi said.
"There is some early evidence that sea snakes are occurring in cold, temperate waters with increasing frequency."
Although that could see the deadly creature in Esperance waters more often, Mr Dornan said it would be unlikely to deter the locals.
"A few of the guys at school surf, and they were just laughing saying it's another reason to stay out of the water," he said.
"But none of them seem to — they're all back in there!"

Links

• Six animal species and how they are affected by climate change
• Some animals can adapt to climate change—just not fast enough
• Climate is changing faster than animal adaptation
• The Effects of Climate Change Might Make Spiders Angry, According to New Study
• A growing need for species to adapt to a changing world

Queensland Police To Get New Powers To Search Climate Change Protesters

The Guardian - Ben Smee

Crackdown includes new laws that make it illegal to possess a device used for locking on, and comes as Extinction Rebellion ramps up activities

Police are seen trying to stop Extinction Rebellion protesters from marching in Brisbane’s CBD on 6 August. Queensland police will have new powers to search suspected climate change protesters. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

Queensland police will be given new powers to search suspected climate change protesters, as the state government attempts to crack down on an escalating campaign of civil disobedience.

Extinction Rebellion protesters have regularly disrupted traffic in the Brisbane CBD. They have indicated those stoppages would escalate in the coming months. Other groups have attempted to stop the operations of mining companies, contractors and coal freight networks across the state.
In state parliament on Tuesday the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, announced stronger penalties and expanded police powers that would apply to climate demonstrations and vegan protests at agricultural properties.

Everyone has the right to conduct a peaceful protest but the activities of some are not. Blocking roads is dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, selfish and stupid. The sinister tactics some protesters are using are dangerous and designed to harm. pic.twitter.com/y7Izir3SuD

— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) August 19, 2019

In outlining the new laws, which were agreed to by the state cabinet on Monday, Palaszczuk said she had been persuaded by the state’s police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, who had shown her “evidence of locking devices laced with traps that are dangerous”.
Protesters regularly use devices or other means to “lock on”, effectively making it difficult or unsafe for them to be removed from a location.
Palaszczuk claimed in parliament that protesters had used “sinister tactics” – cylinders containing glass fragments and gas containers “so that anyone trying to cut a protester free will be injured or worse.
“Police will have the power to search those they reasonably suspect ... of having those devices. They will be illegal.
“Every single minute our [emergency services] spend dealing with these types of protesters, is a minute they are spending not helping others. It will not be allowed to continue.”
The most recent stoppage on Monday caused the closure of the William Jolly Bridge across the Brisbane River and associated traffic delays along the Riverside Expressway, a crowded commuter route.

An Extinction Rebellion protestor is removed by police after abseiling off William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane on Monday. Photograph: Darren England/EPA

Brisbane has been particularly susceptible to Extinction Rebellion protests because of the way traffic chokes at the city’s river crossings. Protesters appear to be hitting a nerve in Queensland, where coal provides significant royalties income for the state, and where the Adani Carmichael mine, the world’s most controversial coal project, is under construction.
Before the new laws were announced, police actions appeared to become more heavy-handed. Officers were accused of acting to shield corporate interests.
Protesters have complained that they already face court-imposed fines up to $61,000, while the state punishes “major” breaches of environmental law by mining companies with minor penalties.
The Queensland police minister, Mark Ryan, described climate protesters as “extremists”. He said the laws would introduce a new offence, making it illegal to possess a device used for locking on at a protest.
“This government will bring in measures who believe their rights can ride roughshod over the rights of others,” Ryan said.
“This new offence will make it illegal to possess these devices. Police will have the power to search a person or vehicle suspected of possessing these devices.
“Anyone who uses one of these devices during a protest will be subject to a new category of offence, with penalties.
“If anyone believes passionately in something, they should argue their case on the merits.”
The government also announced that protesters who trespass on farmland and cause a “biosecurity risk” can be punished with up to a year in prison.

Links

• Extinction Rebellion: hitting a nerve at Australia's climate flashpoint
• Queensland police arrest 56 climate change protesters in Brisbane
• Queensland approval of Adani plan ‘unlawful’, say environment groups
• Climate protesters stage 'die-in' at Queensland Museum's dinosaur exhibit
• Extinction Rebellion activists stop coal train in Brisbane
• Queensland accused of breaking ‘no public funds for Adani’ promise
• Farmers join fight against Adani coalmine over environmental concerns
• Indigenous owners threaten legal action unless Adani abandons land access deal