As mentioned
above, Australia ranks 53
rd in the world in population, but sixth in the world in the CO
2 produced by its electricity industry; it has
0.3% of the world's population, but produces
1.2% of the world's greenhouse gasses; it is well up among the worst greenhouse polluters on the planet.
This gives Australians an
ethical responsibility to reduce the harm we are doing to the planet.
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Those Australian politicians who oppose action on climate change often refer to China and say things like "China burns a huge amount of coal and has far higher emissions than Australia".
What you never hear them say is that Australia's per-capita greenhouse emissions are more than twice those of China (16.92 tonnes per annum against 7.05 tonnes).
And this does not take into account all the coal that Australia exports to be burned elsewhere. If this was taken into account the emissions that Australia was responsible for would more than treble.
Yes China should act with urgency to minimise its emissions, but by any logical or ethical argument Australia has a far higher obligation to act.
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Many of Australia's federal politicians, and Australia's recent governments, ignore ethical standards in their arguments in favour of fossil fuels. It should not need to be said that an
unethical government is never a good government.
But on top of this Australia and Australians must take responsibility for the fossil fuels that they export to be burned elsewhere.
Coal exports
According to
Wikipedia Australia exported 389 million tonnes of coal in 2016 (at the time of writing the most recent year in the Wikipedia article).
Australia was at the time the biggest exporter of coal in the world.
The carbon content of coal varies widely but when burned this 389 million tonnes of coal would result in well above 500 million tonnes, possibly as high as a billion tonnes, of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere each year.
The air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal,
kills millions of people world-wide each year.
Gas exports
In November 2018 Australia overtook Qatar as
the world's biggest liquified natural gas (LNG) exporter, sending off 6.5 million tonnes against Qatar's 6.2 million tonnes.
I've calculated
elsewhere that burning 1 kg of natural gas results in 2.8 kg of CO2 going into the atmosphere.
So when the 6.5 million tonnes of natural gas that Australia exports each year is burned it results in the release of 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
So, adding it all up – the bigger, and blacker, picture
Annual average per-capita carbon emissions for each person in the world is
4 tonnes.
Annual average per-capita carbon emissions within Australia is
18 tonnes
(
Wikipedia).
Taking into consideration the amount of carbon Australia exports Australia's per-capita emissions become
39 tonnes each year, about ten times the global average.
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Image source: German Watch: The Climate Change Performance Index: Results 2015
Note Australia's position; second last of 61 nations.
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In the above report, the comment about Australia in the Climate Policy section
is:
"Since joining the "very poor" group last year, Australia has lost even
more ground and now comes in last together with Canada and Turkey."
Nice words
A quote from the Minister for Environment and Heritage,
Senator Ian Campbell, Liberal, WA, (speaking about climate change, 2005/07/26):
"It is an incredibly important issue and there are incredibly strong reasons
for taking comprehensive, effective global action to reduce carbon and other
greenhouse gas emissions."
In 2016 we are not even hearing 'nice words' from the Coalition any more, let
alone credible action.
The specious greenhouse
argument:
"Too small to make a difference".
It doesn't stand up to even a little thought and examination.
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This argument is looked at in a different way in
The great fallacy
Professor Matt McDonald wrote a strong rebuttal of the 'too small to make a difference' argument on The Conversation on 2019/06/18. He pointed out that the argument fails on three counts, the per-capita argument, the fact that Austraia's coal exports should be taken into account, and the fact that Australia has a huge capacity to act while many poorer nations have a far smaller capacity.
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One argument for doing very little that pops up periodically is the
'Australia is too small to make any difference' one.
It goes something like this:
"Australia only produces about 1.5% of the world's greenhouse gasses.
If we were to cut our emissions to nothing tomorrow it would make very little
difference to the world.
Therefore we would be foolish to risk crippling our economy by taking strong
action."
The fallacy in this argument can best be demonstrated by taking it even
further.
"South Australia produces well under one percent of the world's greenhouse
gasses; South Australians can't be any part of the problem!"
and further:
"The people in my home town of Crystal Brook produce a tiny proportion of
the world's greenhouse gasses, plainly we don't need to bother reducing our
production."
and further:
"I produce maybe only a billionth of the world's greenhouse gasses, there's
no point in me changing my ways."
Australia is a part of the world; we must do our bit.
On a per-capita basis Australians are responsible about five times as much
greenhouse gasses as the average world citizen.
We have a larger moral responsibility to reduce our emissions than most
other nations and most other people.
Would it be justifiable for me to say "No, I will not stop throwing rubbish out of my car windows.
To do that would cause me some inconvenience and it would make a negligible difference to the amount of rubbish on the roadsides"?
No?
Then neither is it justifiable to say, as has been said many times, "If Australia was to reduced its emissions it would impact our economy but would not solve the climate change problem".
I suspect that most of the people who use this argument know that it is not valid, but they hope that some people will accept it as valid.
And the more often it is said without immediately being refuted the more likely it is to be accepted.
I have listed a number of the actions that the Australian government
could take to reduce Australia's greenhouse impact on
What should be done?.
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Northern hemisphere temperatures – credit: Aust. Bureau of
Meteorology
This image is compressed for faster loading
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Reconstruction of northern hemisphere temperatures over the past 1000 years
based on instrumental and proxy data records.
The steep rise in temperatures starting in the early twentieth century is
obvious.
The graph on the right shows the change in average annual temperatures from 1910 to 2018.
For each year it shows how the average temperature for that year compares
to the average temperature for the base period, 1961-1990.
Years below that average are represented by blue bars going downward and years
above average temperature are represented by red bars going upward.
The length of the bars show how far the temperature of that year deviated
from the average.
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Australian Climate Extremes; Trend in number of cold days
– credit: Aust. Bureau of Meteorology, 2010
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The figure on the right shows the trend in the number of cold days in
Australia.
Note that the largest declines in the numbers of cold days are in the
south of the continent.
(The number of hot days are increasing in Australia too, but the increases
are greater in the centre and north of the continent.
See
BoM.)
I worked in the field of hydrogeology (underground water) in the Mid North
region of South Australia for about 30 years.
Surface water in creeks, especially in the drier half of the year depends
greatly on groundwater; groundwater can move into creeks (via springs) and
water in creeks can seep underground and recharge local aquifers (underground
formations that can store and transmit water).
As a part of my work I monitored some of the local creeks and rivers.
Over the period that I did this monitoring, mainly around 1990 to 2003,
I recorded a long-term decline in flows.
As there was little human extraction of groundwater from at least some of
these catchments it is most likely that the decline in flows is related to
climate change.
The Crystal Brook is close to my home.
I have personally noticed a great reduction in the frequency and volumes of flow in this stream over the period during which I have lived in the township of Crystal Brook; around 1976 to 2022.
The red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) along the Crystal Brook have suffered badly from the decreased flow.
A redgum on the Crystal Brook
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| April 2008
| January 2014
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The tree above has, together with all the other red gums along the lower Crystal Brook, suffered from climate change trends.
Note that in the image on the right the tree has far less foliage than in the earlier image.
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The blue diamonds are long-term average temperatures for Clare.
Pink squares are average temperatures measured in particular months.
Note that, in most cases, the temperatures measured in recent months have been higher than those for average months (pink plots are above blue plots) – evidence that the climate is warming in the Clare Valley.
For the whole of this period temperatures were 0.79° warmer than
the long-term average.
These data are from Bureau of Meteorology records available on the Net.
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Much of my time is spent in the Clare Valley of 'Mid-North' South Australia
(about 75km from Crystal Brook).
Temperatures at Clare, like most other parts of Australia, have increased
in recent years.
The graph at right shows
long-term average monthly temperatures and the average temperatures of
recent months.
The important point in this context is that most of the recent
months were warmer than average months.
Higher temperatures cause greater need of water by native vegetation;
however, we are not getting any more rain; in fact recent years have
generally been drier than average.
Early 2008 was particularly dry and in March 2008 there was a heat wave
of such length that it went well beyond the previous record.
This placed the native trees in the Clare Valley under such stress that
by May thousands of them were dead.
Many years ago a conservation park was established at Spring Gully near
Clare to protect a pocket of red stringybark
(Eucalyptus macrorhyncha) trees that had, thousands of
years ago, become separated from the remainder of the species.
These have proven particularly vulnerable to the drought and heat;
in May 2008 it appears that many of these trees have died.
It is more a guess than an estimate, but it seems to me that
a third to a half of the stringybarks in the Clare Valley are dead.
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Note the decline in rainfall in recent years
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An observation
I had a dam built on my property four kilometres from Clare about 1995. I sold the property in 2022. In the early years the dam would fill about every second year. It didn't fill at all in about the last five years.
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The graph at the right is made up of Bureau of Meteorology data taken from Clare Post office (1863 to 1994) and Clare High School (from 1995 onward). (The high school is a kilometre or so from the post office. This introduces a doubt in the validity of concatenating the two records.)
The average annual rainfall from 1863 to 1990 was 632mm, from 1991 to 2008 it was 557mm, 75mm lower.
In the period from 1994 to 2008 the average was 525mm, 107mm lower than the 1863 to 1990 average.
The curved line was calculated as a line of best fit to the data.
The steepness and persistence of the decline in rainfalls since about 1970 seems to be unprecedented in the data.
Plainly the declining rainfalls, combined with higher temperatures, will stress perennial plants.
Worryingly, the decline in rainfall seems to be becoming steeper, there is no reason to think that the bottom has been reached.
See also Climate Change hits the Clare Valley.
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Red stringybark ( Eucalyptus macrorhyncha) trees, Spring Gully Conservation Park, South Australia.
Many in this photo died.
The photo was taken on 11th May, 2008;
More information on another page on this site.
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Are temperatures related to greenhouse gasses?
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
of Australia has interesting data on this point.
The pair of graphs on the left shows that, over the past 400 000 years,
atmospheric
carbon-dioxide levels have been very closely linked to temperatures.
Are our activities significant?
Is our civilization really having any significant impact on
atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels?
This CSIRO graph shows that CO2
levels have increased steeply since
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) Technical Paper IV, 2007, on climate change and water
stated that:
"The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and
CH4 in 2005 exceed by far the natural range over the last
650 000 years.
Global increases in CO2 concentrations are due primarily
to fossil fuel use, with land-use change providing
another significant but smaller contribution. It is very likely
that the observed increase in CH4 concentration is predominantly
due to agriculture and fossil fuel use."
(The IPCC report is no longer available from the Net.)
To claim that the atmospheric changes are coincidental is to hide one's head
in the sand.
The importance of electricity consumption
A study called 'A Clean Energy Future for Australia' for the Clean
Energy Futures Group wrote the following:
"In 2001 energy which users obtained by direct combustion of fuels
and collection of
solar heat provided 69% of the energy supplied to users (including
use in the production
and processing of fuels other than electricity), but accounted for
only 31% of greenhouse
gas emissions from stationary energy. Electricity generation
accounted for the other 69% of emissions."
Put simply, while less than one third of Australia's energy comes
from electricity, more than two thirds of Australia's greenhouse
gasses, from the energy sector, are produced by our electricity generators.
So if Australia
is to reduce its greenhouse gas production rate, the electricity
generation industry is a good place to start.
Some people still believe that the man-made greenhouse effect is imaginary.
This section lists several of the objections that have come my way, and answers them.
Question/objection
| Answer
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Temperature records are not sufficiently accurate
and/or not sufficiently long for us to be sure that temperatures have really risen.
| Not only are there records of directly measured temperatures,
but past ocean temperatures can be inferred by measuring oxygen
isotope ratios in oceanic fossils of known ages.
Encyclopaedia Britannica...
"The record is relatively consistent from one core
sample to the next and can be correlated throughout the oceans."
Also see
BOM temperature graph (on this page).
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Thickness of some polar ice sheets is increasing; does this make sense if the world is becoming warmer?
| Temperature is not the only variable involved (and in any case while average global temperatures are rising, not all local temperatures are necessarily doing the same).
A quote from the USA EPA:
"Precipitation has increased by about 1 percent over the world's continents in the last century. High latitude areas are tending to see more significant increases in rainfall, while precipitation has actually declined in many tropical areas."
An increase in winter snowfall would cause thickening of some ice sheets.
Antarctic sea ice extent hits a third low in a row, 2024/02/28.
Also, it should be noted that the Greenland ice sheet is melting at record rates and the Arctic Ocean ice cover is thinning. |
The amount of greenhouse gasses produced from natural processes is much greater than is being produced by Man, so doesn't than mean that our effect is negligible?
| The short answer is no. A quote from World Book Encyclopaedia on CD ROM, 2000.
"Without the natural greenhouse effect, the average temperature of the earth's surface would be about 33oC cooler than it is now."
We need this much greenhouse warming, but significantly more could be disastrous.
Note that if we add only 10% to the natural effect, that's another 3 degrees C.
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Isn't the warming of the past century just a natural rebound from the little ice age?
| The little ice age was mainly confined to Europe (it peaked from 1650-1750), and any rebound from that would have been largely completed by the 20th century. Indeed, the natural long-term climate trend today would be toward a cooler climate were it not for human activities. (Thanks, in part, to Scientific American)
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The surface warming that is claimed to be evidence of global warming is mainly urban 'heat island' effects near weather stations.
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Not so. As predicted, the greatest warming is found in remote regions such as central Asia, the Antarctic Peninsula and Alaska.
The largest areas of surface warming are over the ocean, far from urban locations. (Thanks, in part, to Scientific American)
Also see Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
Surface temperature analysis. |
Quotes from authoritative sources
Encyclopedia Britannica (1999 CD ROM)
"Should present trends in the emission of greenhouse gases,
particularly of CO2,
continue beyond another 100 years, climatic
changes larger than any ever experienced during recent geologic
periods can be expected. This could substantially alter natural and
agricultural ecosystems, human and animal health, and the
distribution of climatic resources."
United States Environmental Protection Agency Website
"Rising global temperatures are expected to raise sea level, and change
precipitation and other local climate conditions. Changing regional climate
could alter forests, crop yields, and water supplies. It could also affect
human health, animals, and many types of ecosystems. Deserts may expand
into existing rangelands, and features of some of our National Parks may
be permanently altered."
New Scientist Journal Website
"Burning fossil fuels and using the atmosphere as an open sewer has turned out
to be a recipe for disaster. The Earth is warming and the pace is
quickening."
I wonder about the psychology of climate change denial.
Unconvinced
There are, no doubt, a number of people who are unconvinced.
Considering what is printed in the popular
press this is understandable if not excusable.
One need only glance occasionally at the scientific press, such journals as
the Scientific American or the New Scientist, or listen to or watch science
programs on ABC radio or TV, to see that the experts are convinced.
But it seems there will always be a lot of ignorance in this world.
Is there a group who find the predictions of climatologists, demographers
and others who are warning about the probable effects of climate change
too horrible to accept?
Is it like a suppressed memory of childhood abuse that is locked away
because facing it is too painful?
Sticking to their guns
Then there is the group who has been saying for years that climate change
is not happening, or that it is nothing to do with Man's activities.
If you have been insisting on something for years it is very difficult to
accept that you were wrong and change your stance.
The evidence piles up bit by bit, but these people find reasons why
they shouldn't believe it, bit by bit; they go on and on this way even
after the evidence has gone well past the point of convincing any with
an open mind.
This is where prominent climate change denier
Ian Plimer finds himself; with many others.
Apathetic
How many just don't care?
Or do they think the problem is too big for them to do anything about?
Or do they feel that climate change is going to happen some time in the
distant future and they will worry about it when it happens?
(There is, of course, ample evidence that it is already having some
pretty terrible effects.)
I read recently that people tend to deal with small problems that affect
a few people, they are less likely to try to take on a larger problem
that affects more people; the biggest problems that affect a great many
people are the least likely to be tackled.
Convinced, but do nothing anyway
Australian governments, local, state and federal, all know that climate change is happening and most would be aware that humanity is the cause.
Yet they choose to do very little because lobbyists of the financially powerful mining and fossil fuel industries, who make huge donations to all the big political parties, don't want anything done.
Our governments are playing with band-aids while what is needed is major surgery; they are fiddling while Rome burns.
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This section added
2021/10/20
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Gabi Mocatta wrote an
article for The Conversation on 2021/10/18 titled "What’s behind News Corp’s new spin on climate change?"
Quoting from Ms Mocatta's article:
"The change has surprised Australian media observers and, no doubt, media consumers given News Corp’s long-held climate denialist stance, which is well documented in public commentary and research."
and
"[The Murdoch media has] moved from calling decarbonisation too expensive and bad for jobs (it tagged the cost at A$600 billion in 2015), to describing it now as a potential $2.1 trillion economic “windfall”, offering opportunities for 672,000 new jobs."
I'd have to wonder what the consumers of the Murdoch media would think of this?
Surely anyone with any intelligence would have to see this as showing that the Murdoch media has very little credibility.
I have referred to the climate denialism of the Murdoch media in many places on these pages for more than ten years. On the face of it this seems to be one of the great 'road to Damascus' moments of recent history.
(But having changed his colours once I wouldn't be surprised to see Rupert change again. He and his empire are driven by power and profits, certainly ethical standards rate very low on Mr Murdoch's list of priorities.)
Gabi Mocatta is Research Fellow in Climate Change Communication, Climate Futures Program, University of Tasmania, and Lecturer in Communication - Journalism, Deakin University.
Peter D. Ward wrote an
article in Scientific American of October 2006
describing a theory that several major extinctions in the geological
past have been caused by the oceans becoming anoxic (without oxygen)
with consequent proliferation of hydrogen sulphide (H
2S) producing
bacteria.
H
2S is itself toxic, but even worse for life on Earth, it can
destroy the ozone layer.
Ward's theory, supported by convincing evidence, was that the combination
of the H
2S in the air and the ultra-violet radiation due to the
loss of the ozone layer killed most life on Earth.
Ward continued to propose that a similar disaster could be caused by the
current rise in atmospheric CO2.
As CO2 increases the oceans warm and as they warm oxygen becomes
less soluble in them; that is, they move toward anoxia.
If they become sufficiently anoxic the H2S producing bacteria
could establish and trigger another global extinction.
Ward suggests that the geological data indicates that this could happen
at an atmospheric CO2 level of around 900 parts per million.
This is a very short interpretation of Ward's article.
I suggest that readers consult the original in Scientific American.
Wikipedia records that anoxic basins exist in a number of places at present. It also has an article about anoxic events.
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This road in northern Yorke Peninsula has been cut through fossil sand dunes that have not been active in the recent past.
However, farmers must take care to not allow them to become bare of vegetation.
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In the geological record there is an enormous amount of evidence that the Earth's climate has changed markedly many times in the past.
This Internet site has been written in the Mid North of South Australia, and there is abundant evidence to be seen in this area for a much drier period in the not too distant past: only a matter of several thousand years. Fossil sand dunes are to be seen, not only in the Mid North, but on Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas, and the far north of the state.
Perhaps those who are neither farmers nor geologists would not necessarily recognize them. They are typically low rounded hills, well covered with grass, shrubs, or trees; quite probably they are in agricultural land and may have crops growing on them. They are most often to be seen on otherwise flat land. In a past, drier period, these little hills were moving sand dunes such as can be seen in many of the world's deserts.
What happened in the past may well happen again, especially with anthropogenic climate change.
The planet Venus is physically very similar in size and mass to the Earth; it is much bigger than Mars and Mercury and just a little smaller than the Earth.
It is closer to the Sun than is the Earth and for this reason alone one would expect it to be a bit hotter than the Earth; but it is not just a bit hotter, it is enormously hotter.
This is because of what has been called a run-away greenhouse effect.
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Fifth IPCC Assessment
This report, released on 2013/09/27, states that there is likely to be a shocking 9 degrees of warming by 2200.
This would make large areas of the planet uninhabitable.
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Warming of the Earth due to the gasses that people have caused to be added to the atmosphere is causing what are called positive feedbacks.
That is, a relatively small warming can cause changes that then cause more warming.
Some positive feedbacks that are happening are:
- The release of the methane currently locked up in permafrost in the
arctic;
- Higher temperatures cause more evaporation from the oceans; water vapour
is a strong greenhouse gas;
- The summer ice sheet over the Arctic ocean is getting smaller.
Open ocean absorbs more energy from sunlight than does ice or snow;
- Similarly, sea-ice fields in the Antarctic are getting smaller or
breaking up in response to global warming and areas covered by mountain
snow-fields are getting smaller.
These also cause increased absorption of solar energy in summer;
Another possible, and very large, positive feedback is the release of the
methane clathrate (hydrate) from the ocean floors into the atmosphere.
This will happen if the temperatures of the oceans rise sufficiently.
It is thought to have been involved in some global warmings in the
geologically distant past.
There have been unusually warm periods in the Earths distant past, but they
have not lead to catastrophic feed-back; why should this time be any
different?
Astronomers have long studied the evolution of stars and the subject is
now well understood.
They can say with a high degree of confidence how the Sun formed, how it
evolved to become what it is now, and how it will change in the future
before 'burning out' in about five billion years.
The Sun is at present in a long and stable 'middle-age' in which it changes
only very slowly.
The main change is a very gradual increase in the amount of heat it produces.
About 66 million years ago there was a series of massive volcanic eruptions
in southern India known as the Deccan Traps.
It is possible that the release of carbon dioxide associated with these
eruptions caused a warming that might have been involved in the extinction
of the Dinosaurs.
Whether or not the Deccan Traps caused a warming, geologist are quite sure
that there were warmings in the distant past.
So, while a burst of greater than usual warmth due to some event such as
the Deccan Traps in the distant past might not have quite been enough to
'tip the
Earth over the edge' and make it into another Venus, it is just possible now
that the Sun is a little hotter that another warming might reach that point.
A similar run-away greenhouse effect to that on Venus, while unlikely,
would quite probably destroy all life on Earth.
AMP, in its 'Working towards a sustainable future' newsletter, published the following:
"The fossil-fuel industry may be potentially liable for the impacts
of global warming.
The question here is – when will the link between greenhouse gases
and climate change become a 'scientific certainty', so that down
the track companies cannot dispute it?
Most scientists would argue that such evidence exists today.
So where does this leave companies which are fundamentally
involved in fossil fuels?
At a strategic level, it may require them to rethink their business,
as shown by BP's move to 'Beyond Petroleum' – renewing their
commitment to the environment and solar power.
However, such a strategic change takes time. In the meantime,
companies can balance the potential liability of their fossil-fuel
products, e.g. coal or gas, with climate change initiatives in other
parts of their business which produce 'carbon credits'.
Climate change product liability may affect related industries
sooner rather than later, as shown by the recent case of a number
of US States taking power generation companies to court over
climate change."
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So, will companies, and perhaps governments, involved in polluting
the earth's atmosphere with greenhouse gasses, be forced to mend
their ways if they want a future for themselves? Will Australia,
and Australians, have to financially compensate other nations for
the damage that our present government's short-sighted policies
are causing?
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Criminals in government
As of early 2021 the Morrison Australian government is one of the worst in the world in its refusal to act on reducing the emissions that are the cause of this damage and so is criminally complicit in the destruction of the world's coral reefs.
The Great Barrier Reef is one of Australia's top tourist attractions, so its loss will be a great economic blow to Australia, as well as an environmental blow to the whole world. Australia's own governments, at least since the Abbott Government, that have been amongst the greatest supporters of fossil fuels in the world must be allocated a greater share of the blame than most others around the world.
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As global temperatures rise so does the temperature of the oceans and this is causing the bleaching of coral reefs. Reef building corals are a symbiotic union of a coral organism and an algae.
When water temperatures rise beyond around 30 degrees Celsius the algae is expelled, causing the coral to lose its colour. The remaining coral organism cannot, and does not, long survive without the algae.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef on the eastern coast of the country and reefs on the western coast too have suffered from bleaching events, significant part of some reefs have been permanently killed.
Reef bleaching is expected to worsen as global warming progresses.
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This section added
2021/04/09
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The oceans at the equator are becoming so hot that marine life is moving away. See the article in
The Conversation: "Marine life is fleeing the equator to cooler waters. History tells us this could trigger a mass extinction event." Published 2021/04/08.
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This section added
2020/02/05
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The horror bushfire season of late 2019, early 2020 was warned about in the Garnaut Climate Change Review in 2008.
An article for
SBS News, was written by Nick Baker on the subject, 2020/01/06.
Baker wrote:
The Garnaut Climate Change Review's final report said projections of fire weather "suggest that fire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later, and generally be more intense".
"This effect increases over time, but should be directly observable by 2020."
The report said there could be a 300 per cent increase in the number of days with extreme fire weather by 2067.
"It's in the interest of the whole of humanity that we move promptly towards zero net emissions," he said.
And yet Liberal Senator
Jim Molan said on ABC's Q and A on 2020/02/03 that climate scientists had not warned the Australian government about the bushfire risks associated with unabated climate change!
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A bushfire scientist explains what the Hawaii tragedy means for our flammable continent. Written 2023/08/10 by David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania.
Quoting from Professor Bowman's article:
"Let’s look at the two decades to 2001, compared to the two decades afterwards. In Australian forests, the average annual burned area in the second period was 350% greater than in the first. If we include 2019 – the year the Black Summer fires began – the increase rises to 800%."
Published in The Conversation.
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Scientific American popular science journal, 2011
From an article in Scientific American, June 2011.
"If climate change drives temperature up a degree or two," goes the common
dismissal, "how bad could that be?"
Here's an example: Higher temperatures draw moisture out of live and dead
trees and brush, making them more flammable.
The heat also can alter precipitation ... lengthening the fire season.
A one degree Celsius climb in average global temperature could cause the
median area burned annually by wildfires in parts of the American West to
increase up to sixfold.
A one degree rise in temperatures could occur well before 2050.
If global warming will make the US forests more flammable, it will do the
same thing in Australia.
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| Sediment in Crystal Brook following the
Bangor fire
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| The Bangor fire was finally extinguished by 60 mm of rain.
At Crystal Brook, where this photo was taken, many kilometres downstream of the burned land, the ash and silt (grey in this photo) was conspicuous.
Photo 2014/02/15
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Bangor fire, South Australia, 2014
The Bangor fire, near my home in Crystal Brook, burned largely in steep inaccessible country for a month before being extinguished by heavy rains.
The rain on the soil left totally bare by the fires caused terrible erosion.
The photo on the right is of debris including soil and ash left in the Crystal Brook in the town of the same name.
The upper parts of the Crystal Brook catchment were burned in the Bangor fire.
The native vegetation will recover to a large extent in a few years following a fire like this, but the soil will take thousands of years to be replaced.
Increased frequency and ferocity of fires will be disastrous for Australia's fragile soils.
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This section added
2020/01/02
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Smoke plume between Australia and New Zealand
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| The brown area to the southeast of Australia is a smoke plume being blown across the Tasman sea from the exceptional fires in New South Wales.
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There were unprecedented bushfires in Australia and by 2020/01/02 more than 1200 houses had been burned in New South Wales alone.
The fires were probably worst in NSW, but were also bad in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.
(The Eyre Highway had been closed due to fires in the Western Australian gold-fields region and, at the time of writing, were expected to remain closed for at least another five days.)
While the fires were not directly caused by climate change the conditions that lead to the fires were certainly made far more likely due to climate change.
Australia had been suffering from drought for several years; this, like the fires, was likely linked to climate change.
The drought also made the fires worse than they would otherwise have been because the land being burned was exceptionally dry.
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Smoke remained in stratosphere for months
An
article in The Guardian, 2020/11/03, written by Lisa Cox stated that the "Cloud measured 1,000km across, travelled 66,000km and was on par with ‘strongest volcanic eruptions in the past 25 years’, scientists say".
I believe that it reduced the temperatures for the remainder of the southern summer.
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Smoke levels in Sydney in particular were high enough to be hazardous to health; they were also high in Melbourne and Canberra for weeks.
As can be seen in the satellite photo on the right the smoke plume was blowing right across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand; smoke from Australia's bushfires was also reported in South America.
Luke Henriques-Gomes wrote an article about the fires in
The Guardian dated 2019/12/31.
Many others were available on the Internet.
I have also written about these fires, in the context of them being a symptom of climate change rather than an isolated problem
elsewhere on these pages.
Dust too
Together with the smoke that was blowing across the Tasman Sea was enough dust to colour New Zealand's glaciers as
reported for the ABC by Stefanie Garber on 2019/12/06.
This was perhaps more as a result of the drought than the fires, but of course both drought and fires were made much more likely by climate change.
The view from 2011
An Australian could be excused for thinking that the greenhouse situation
is without hope.
The Gillard federal government, while being much more pro-renewables than
the old Howard government, was still supporting the fossil fuel industries
with
massive subsidies. Climate
change predictions continue to be dire, ocean acidification continues to increase, the Great Barrier Reef continues to suffer bleaching events, and the USA continues to take far more than its share of the world's resources.
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One of the turbines of the Canunda wind farm, Millicent
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But there were signs of hope...
Here in South Australia there was more than 1200MW of wind farm generation capacity (as of October 2011).
A number of companies were exploring for hot rocks to use for the generation of geothermal energy, which will help replace coal fired power station electricity .
The state government had set a target of 33% renewably generated electricity
by 2020.
Update: the situation in early 2024
Unfortunately extracting energy from deeply buried hot rock had proven to be beyond the available technologies by about 2016. Wave energy too was not proving economically competitive to wind and solar (there was a 5MW
wave energy unit apparently operating off Garden Island in WA).
On the positive side, combined renewable energy generation in Australia's main grids (the NEM and the SWIS) in the year to April 2024 averaged 10GW (10,000MW). This was made up of 3.2GW of solar rooftop, 1.8GW of utility solar, 3.6GW of wind power and 1.7GW of hydro.
SA continued to be the stand-out in its percentage of renewable energy development. The state's target of 33% renewable energy by 2020 was greatly exceeded, Open NEM showed 59% renewable energy for the year in 2020.
In early 2003 SA had virtually no renewably generated electricity and much of its power was generated by burning low quality coal.
In 2020 13.2% of SA's electricity was generated by rooftop solar, more than double the figure of four years earlier. Utility scale solar generated more than 4% of SA's power in 2020, just two years earlier the figure was less than 1%. By 2024 more than 70% of SA's power was being generated renewably; 21% by rooftop solar, 6% by utility solar and 44% by wind turbines.
South Australia's great success in its move from fossil fuels between 2003 and 2024 was truly a remarkable achievement.
While the solar power proportion for the whole of the National Electricity Market (NEM) was behind that of SA, the amount of solar power had doubled in the two years up to the end of 2020. Wind generation on the NEM had increased by 43% over the previous three years. By 2024 the figure for total renewable energy generation on the NEM was 39%; of which hydro made up 7%, rooftop solar 11%, utility solar 7% and wind power 13%. (When WA was included the total figures remained much the same.)
There is some reason to hope for a brighter and more rational future.
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| | Pit & Sherry
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| | Pit & Sherry
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The two graphs on the right are from
Business Specator.
The first shows how emissions from electricity generation in Australia were
decreasing, and decreasing especially steeply while the carbon tax was in
place, and have increased since.
The carbon tax was in place for the period between the two vertical lines.
The fact that emissions have steeply increased since the
Abbott Government removed the carbon tax shows
the damage that they have done to total world greenhouse emissions and
suggest the damage that they have done to Australia's reputation as a
responsible participant in the world.
The second graph shows, among other things, how brown coal emissions in
particular have increased since the removal of the carbon tax.
Brown coal is the most polluting form of generation in Australia.
It is also one of the cheapest; cheap and dirty.
The fall in black coal generation is thought to be due to the general
decline in power consumption in NSW combined with the rise in wind generation,
especially in SA and Victoria.
Black coal generation is more expensive than brown, although slightly less
polluting.
Also see Related pages
| Arguments
| Grist: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming
|
| Australia, Climate change in
| Updated
climate change information for Australia
|
| Australian Academy of Science
| booklet "The science of climate change", February 2015.
|
| Bioenergy Australia
| Bioenergy Australia
(see below)
|
| BuzzFeed
| 18 Scientists On What They Actually
Think About Climate Change by Joe Duggan and Kelly Oakes
|
| Climate Action Network Australia
| CANA
|
| Climate Debate Daily
|
A new way to understand disputes about global warming
|
| Climate Science Watch
| Climate Science
Watch (see below)
|
| The Conversation
|
Climate policy needs a new lens Fiona Armstrong and Peter C. Doherty, 2016/07/21,
discussed the threat that climate change was posing to health.
|
| Australia's 'deadliest natural hazard': what's your heatwave plan?, 2018/01/18, Andrew Gissing and Lucinda Coates.
|
| An update on the weather Australia has been getting, 2020/03/03. A number of temperature records set.
|
| German Watch
| The Climate Change
Performance Index: Results 2015
|
| Global Environment Report
|
UK; New Scientist
|
| Global Warming Clearinghouse
| A single
source for contemporary key reports, articles,
papers, and Blogs referencing the latest information available on Global
Warming
|
| Global Warming Debate
|
A Layman's
Guide to the Science and Controversy
|
| Global warming information
|
USA; Environmental Protection Agency
|
| Goddard Institute for Space Studies
|
Surface temperature analysis – a very informative site
|
| Google Scholar
| There are a huge number of scientific papers dealing with climate change
and greenhouse, far too many for me to cite here, see
Google Scholar or
Google Scholar, Australia.
|
| European Commission
| A list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions is given at
World Carbon Emissions from Fossil Fuels; data from the European
Commission Joint Research Centre:
Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research.
|
| Lancet
|
University College London and The Lancet
report:
climate change the biggest global-health threat of the 21st century.
|
| Manne, Robert
| How can climate denialism be
explained? Manne is professor of politics at Melbourne's Latrobe
University
|
| McMichael, Professor Anthony
| The Conversation; the
impact that climate change is likely to have in Australia
|
| Ocean acidification
| Royal Society,
Paper "Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide"
|
| Oceans are going quiet
| The silencing of the seas, Uni.
Adelaide research, Sept. 2016, Nagelkerken, Connell, Rossi; due to pollution
and acidification
|
| One Person Can
| This project is showing, not only that
one person can have an impact,
but that many people are doing a lot already.
|
| Real Climate: Climate science from climate scientists
| RealClimate – science rather than journalistic
"debate"
|
| Renewable Energy Generators of Australia (REGA)
| REGA (see below)
|
| Skeptical Science
|
Examining the science of global warming skepticism and more specifically
Skeptic Arguments
and What the Science Says.
|
| State of the climate
| State of the Climate 2018: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO: fifth biennial State of the Climate report
|
| Sunrise Project
| The Sunrise Project aims at
helping people combat climate change. Provides funding.
|
More information on some links
- AEPCA
- The Australasian Energy Performance Contracting Association.
Its members are formed from energy service companies, state government
departments and private companies interested in the performance contracting
process. Energy performance contracting is a smart, affordable and increasingly
common way to make building improvements that save energy and money. Its
mission is to act as the Peak Body to support the commercial growth of
members and their market through education, industry promotion, self-regulation
and industry standards.
- Climate Science Watch
- A nonprofit public interest education and advocacy
project dedicated to holding public officials accountable for the integrity
and effectiveness with which they use climate science and related research
in government policymaking, toward the goal of enabling society to respond
effectively to the challenges posed by global warming and climate change.
- The Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE)
- Represents
the interests of the broader sustainable energy industry including, renewables
energy, cogeneration, gas-fired generation, waste-to-energy and energy
efficiency industry. It has more than 250 organisations as members. It formed
in September 2002 through the merger of the Australian EcoGeneration
Association and the Sustainable Energy Industry Association.
- Bioenergy Australia
- Established in 1997 as a government-industry forum to foster and
facilitate the development of biomass for energy, liquid fuels, and
other value added bio-based products. Bioenergy Australia is concerned with
all aspects of biomass and bioenergy, from production through to utilisation,
and its work embraces technical, commercial, economic, societal,
environmental, policy and market issues.
- The Renewable Energy Generators of Australia (REGA)
- Formed in
1999 as an industry association with a common purpose of supporting the
development of generation of electricity from truly renewable resources. REGA
represents all sectors of the renewable energy industry; members represent 95%
of the existing renewable energy generation capacity, and include equipment
suppliers, developers and industry specialists.
Fossil fuelled power stations dump their toxic wastes directly into
the atmosphere at no cost to themselves but at huge cost to the environment
(there can be no doubt that the excessive amounts of carbon dioxide are
damaging the atmosphere and the oceans or that the
emissions from coal burning
kill millions of people each year).
Most nations have long banned similarly polluting activities from other
industries.
Some similarly polluting activities for comparison...
- Sewage
- In the past sewage has been dumped directly into rivers or the
sea. Most people in the twenty-first century would consider this
to be a very crude and quite unacceptable practice.
- Hard rubbish
- Once just dumped in heaps; most nations now try to recycle
as much as possible, burry the remainder, and rehabilitate the
land surface.
- Petrochemical waste
- Most nations would not even consider dumping this directly
into the environment.
- Paper pulping waste
- Dumping into the environment would not now be tolerated.
- Nuclear waste
- Disposal of radioactive waste has to be done very carefully
in most nations.
I could go on.
So why do the Australian and US governments think that dumping carbon dioxide
and other harmful emissions from power stations directly into the atmosphere
is acceptable?
There are two reasons:
- While pollution of land, a river or a coast affects mainly the nation
that owns that land, river or coast, the atmosphere is shared by the
whole earth, and the pollution is spread over the whole earth.
A nation with a government that is short-sighted can make all other
nations share its pollution; especially when that nation is the most
militaristic on the planet – the USA (or a puppet of such a nation
– Australia).
- The Australian and US governments are largely run by big business
rather than being true democracies.
The fossil fuel industries do not want anything done to reduce their
profitability.
Sequestration: carbon capture and storage
Also see
Geosequestration
Sequestration, as applied to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide
(CO2) (also called carbon capture and storage; CCS), is the
storage of carbon dioxide, or the carbon content of the carbon
dioxide, in a sink. The sink may be one or more of several alternatives
including: an underground aquifer, an exhausted oil field, a deep ocean
trench, and trees.
One of the flaws in the sequestration concept is in the question of how long
does it last?
Carbon sequestrated in trees may be back in the atmosphere
20 years later if the trees are converted to wood pulp, the pulp into
paper, and the paper burned or allowed to rot.
Sequestration of carbon dioxide in a geological formation is experimental,
in theory it seems like it should work, but what if the CO2
doesn't stay where it is put?
Sequestration takes carbon that has been locked away from the atmosphere
safely for hundreds of millions of years and places it where we hope it
will not get back into the atmosphere for decades or longer.
The other problem with CCS is that no-one has done it with the CO2
from a power station or similar large CO2-producing installation
successfully on a commercial scale.
(For example, see
The Norwegian CCS nightmare)
It seems pretty plain that it would be better to leave the carbon in
the rocks in the first place.
Carbon is one of the main constituents of vegetation; live wood is about a
quarter carbon, very dry wood is more nearly half carbon.
Vegetation absorbs
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it grows. Trees are among the largest
and longest lived forms of vegetation, so they are important in either
removing or keeping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
What seems to often be neglected by the proponents of growing trees (or bush
or forest) as a way of counteracting the build-up of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere is that trees do not live forever. When a tree dies it typically
rots and the carbon in it is returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Of course this may be delayed if the timber in the tree is used for
another construction purpose.
In some situations, generally in wetter situations than are at all common in
Australia, dead trees do not return all of their carbon to the atmosphere.
It can
be held in the soil beneath the forest as peat. This is, of course, the
beginning of the natural process that finishes in the formation of coal.
But usually, when the trees in an Australian plantation reach maturity,
that plantation no longer removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Referring to mallee trees planted in Western Australia, a document by Professor Syd Shea, University of Notre Dame, Aust. estimated the cost of carbon sequestration in mallees at significantly below US$15/tonne.
Compare this with the estimated
cost of geosequestration of carbon dioxide from coal fired power stations
of around US$50/tonne. The Australian Government under John Howard is
giving the Australian coal industry big money to research the latter!
These mallee trees would have other potential values:
- Combating rising saline groundwater;
- Producing eucalyptus oil, which has a number of uses;
- Producing activated carbon;
- An energy source via biomass combustion;
- A fuel source via fermentation to ethanol;
If natural carbonaceous materials are buried in damp soil,
and oxygen is present,
micro-organisms will slowly convert the materials to carbon dioxide, water,
and plant nutrients such as phosphate and nitrate.
In saturated soil where oxygen is absent, other micro-organisms
will slowly remove the hydrogen, as methane,
and increase the proportion of carbon
in the remaining material.
(Ironically, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than is carbon
dioxide, but it eventually oxidises to carbon dioxide and water and does
not remain in the environment anywhere near so long as CO2.)
This has happened to wood, leaves, moss, etc. for
millions of years. This process leads first to the development of peat;
if the material is later buried by being covered with sediments, carbonisation
can continue to produce lignite and eventually black coal.
This natural process could be put to use to slowly reduce the amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere. Trees could be grown, then cut and buried in
wet soil. The methane could be collected and used as an energy source.
Apart from the slowness of this reversal of the man-made greenhouse effect,
one other problem would be that plant nutrients would also be lost to the
biosphere with the carbonaceous material. They might be recoverable by
pumping leachates from the peat.
The pressure and temperature at the bottom of the oceans is such that carbon
dioxide will be in a liquid state. Therefore it is possible to dump it in
places such as deep ocean trenches. However, the question of its
solubility in sea water must be considered. And heat, such as in a volcanic
eruption, would return the carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Also see
sequestration and
cost of geosequestration.
Geosequestration is the deep underground storage of carbon dioxide
as an alternative to allowing it to enter the atmosphere and increase
the greenhouse effect. Similar to disposal of rubbish by land-fill,
it is not a sustainable technology, but it is a way of temporarily reducing
the harmful side effects of burning fossil fuels. Sooner or later the
carbon dioxide will again enter the atmosphere, however if the
particular form of geosequestration works correctly, most of the
CO2 will
be isolated from the atmosphere for thousands of years.
In Australia carbon dioxide could theoretically be sequestered in depleted oil
or gas fields (not expected to be sufficiently depleted until 2030), deep
underground unmineable coal seams, or deep saline aquifers.
There are risks in geosequestration
associated with the high vapour pressure of CO2 at the
temperatures found in geological formations and with the high solubility of
CO2 in groundwater.
In 1986 a large leakage of naturally sequestered carbon dioxide
occurred in
Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing around 1 700 people
and many thousands of animals.
When carbon dioxide is release in large quantities, it forms a suffocating
blanket close to ground level.
Is geosequestration economically
feasible?
Is geosequestration desirable?
How does geosequestration compare with other greenhouse abatement
methods?
While these questions have certainly not been answered in favour
of geosequestration, already the Australian Government is spending
hundreds of millions of dollars on
geosequestration research, while providing very little money for
renewable energy research. One can only suppose that they are
doing so because they have a commitment to support the fossil
fuel industry. See
Corporate political donations.
An informative discussion on geosequestration was aired on the ABC
Catalyst
program of 2004/09/09.
The graph at right is from Aust. Bureau of Statistics
and shows how many Australian use various modes of transport.
The option of not having a car is not realistic for many people, especially
Australians and in the USA. However, instead of having a car that is
large enough to take everything you might need to carry, you could
consider a small car with the occasional use of a trailer.
The Mazda 121 in the photo has only a 1300ml engine, at the time the
photo was taken it had done 140 000km and was still going strong.
Most modern cars, including this one, have plenty of power for towing a
trailer including a load of up to 500kg.
