UN wants the world to be more ambitious on Climate Change. #StopAdani

As US weighs climate pullout, UN wants world to be more ambitious

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday urged the world to raise its ambition in implementing the Paris climate agreement as the United States weighed pulling out of the landmark emissions-cutting deal.
Making his first address on climate since taking the UN helm five months ago, Guterres said it was “absolutely essential” that the world implements the 2015 agreement “with increased ambition.”

The United States is among the 147 countries and parties that have ratified the agreement but President Donald Trump has voiced concerns that the deal signed by the previous US administration could harm the US economy.
“We believe that it would be important for the US not to leave the Paris agreement,” Guterres said in response to a question following his address at New York University.
“But even if the government decides to leave the Paris agreement, it’s very important for US society as a whole — the cities, the states, the companies, the businesses — to remain engaged.”
“It is very clear that governments aren’t everything.”
At a summit meeting of the G7 group of leading economies over the weekend, Trump refused to join the other six leaders in pledging to implement the Paris accord and said he would announce the US position this week.

Guterres said the United Nations was engaged with the US administration and Congress to try to convince them to abide by the agreement.
His appeal suggested that if the United States, the world’s biggest carbon emitter after China, were to quit the deal, the onus would be on other key players like China, India and the European Union to do more to fight global warming.
The Paris agreement’s commitment to curb carbon emissions and limit temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees “do not nearly go far enough,” he said.
“So we must do our utmost to increase ambition and action until we can bend the emissions curve and slow down global warming,” he said.

– Betting on the green economy –
Describing the agreement as a “remarkable moment in the history of humankind,” the UN chief stressed that private corporations including oil and gas companies were not awaiting government policy and joining the green economy.
“Some may seek to portray the response to climate change as a fundamental threat to the economy,” said Guterres. 

“Yet what we are witnessing in these early years of a systemic response is the opposite.”
“Those who fail to bet on the green economy will be living in a grey future,” he warned.

“On the other hand, those who embrace green technologies will set the gold standard for economic leadership in the 21st century.”
Guterres pointed to growth in the clean energy sector, saying solar power grew 50 percent last year and that more new jobs were being created in renewable energy than in oil and gas.

He argued that climate action was a sound security policy, warning of mass displacement from natural disasters or from refugees whose lands become unlivable.
The UN chief vowed to mobilize governments, the energy industry, investors and civil society to “raise the bar on climate action.”
As a first step, Guterres said he would press for ratification of an agreement reached last year on phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Guterres announced plans for a summit in 2019 to review progress in implementing the Paris agreement.

Press link for more: UK News

US Senator John McCain urges #ClimateAction #StopAdani

John McCain urges action on Great Barrier Reef and Paris climate deal

A diver checking bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef – around half has now been bleached. 

The death of the Great Barrier Reef is one of the “great tragedies of our lives”, US senator John McCain has said, arguing America should uphold its commitment to the Paris climate agreement, or accede to it with minor modifications.
Speaking in Sydney on Tuesday night, the veteran politician and former Republican party presidential candidate said climate change was undeniably real and that it was incumbent upon world leaders to act now to halt and reverse global warming.

“I think that climate change is real. 

I think that one of the great tragedies of our lives is the Great Barrier Reef dying [and] the environmental consequences of that,” he said.
The position of the world’s second-largest carbon emitter on the Paris climate change agreement is uncertain and a subject of global speculation. 

US commitment to reducing emissions or otherwise could have significant ramifications for other countries upholding their promised reductions.
Donald Trump has said he will announce this week whether the US will uphold the Paris carbon reduction commitments it agreed to in 2015, under his predecessor Barack Obama.

How did the Great Barrier Reef reach ‘terminal stage’?

McCain said he wanted to see America remain in the Paris accord. “I would like to see us … either accept the agreements as were made by the Obama administration or suggest modifications which would make it palatable for us and acceptable to us to join.
“If we don’t address this issue, I am very much afraid about what the world is going to look like for our children and grandchildren.”

Climate change caused unprecedented back-to-back mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 on the Great Barrier Reef, killing almost half of its coral.
The federal and Queensland’s governments’ two-year-old plan to protect the reef until 2050 is reportedly already redundant because the impacts of climate change are far more severe than predicted.

Recent surveys have found bleaching is significantly worse than predicted, with more than 70% of shallow-water coral north of Port Douglas killed last year.
McCain was in Australia as a guest of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. 

In a wide-ranging speech he conceded that the Trump administration was mired in scandal, but urged America’s allies to stand by the US as it navigated troubled times.
He said America’s reputation had suffered in the early months of Trump’s presidency as scandals over ties to Russia, nepotism, FBI investigations and foundering relations with other world leaders have rocked the administration with crippling consistency.
 

John McCain: ‘Putin is world’s most important threat’ – video

“We are going through a rough period,” McCain said. “We really are, and for me to tell you that we aren’t, politically, is not fair. But we’ve gone through other troubled times. I can remember Watergate scandal and how it brought down a president. I’m not suggesting that’s going to happen to this president, but we are in a scandal, and every few drops another shoe drops from this centipede, and we’ve got to get through that.”
McCain said observers of the US must look beyond the president.
“Our foreign friends always tend to focus on the person in the White House. But America is far bigger than that. 

America is our courts of justice. 

America is our state and local governments. 

America is our Congress.”

Press link for more: The Guardian

Dire forecast if Trump pulls U.S. out of #climatechange pact. #Auspol

Scientists issue dire forecast if America pulls out of climate change pact
News
By Associated Press
May 29, 2017 | 10:19am

A plume of steam billows from the coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H. AP
WASHINGTON — Earth is likely to reach more dangerous levels of warming even sooner if the US retreats from its pledge to cut carbon dioxide pollution, scientists said. 

That’s because America contributes so much to rising temperatures.

President Donald Trump, who once proclaimed global warming a Chinese hoax, said in a tweet Saturday that he would make his “final decision” this coming week on whether the United States stays in or leaves the 2015 Paris climate change accord, in which nearly every nation agreed to curb its greenhouse gas emissions.
Leaders of seven wealthy democracies, at a summit in Sicily, urged Trump to commit his administration to the agreement, but said in their closing statement that the US, for now, “is not in a position to join the consensus.”
“I hope they decide in the right way,” said Italy’s prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni. 

More downbeat was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said the leaders’ talks were “very difficult, if not to say, very unsatisfactory.”
In an attempt to understand what could happen to the planet if the US pulls out of Paris, the Associated Press consulted with more than two dozen climate scientists and analyzed a special computer model scenario designed to calculate potential effects.

Scientists said it would worsen an already bad problem and make it far more difficult to prevent crossing a dangerous global temperature threshold.
Calculations suggest it could result in emissions of up to 3 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide in the air a year. 

When it adds up year after year, scientists said that is enough to melt ice sheets faster, raise seas higher and trigger more extreme weather.

“If we lag, the noose tightens,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change.
One expert group ran a worst-case computer simulation of what would happen if the US does not curb emissions but other nations do meet their targets. 

It found that America would add as much as half a degree of warming to the globe by the end of century.
Scientists are split on how reasonable and likely that scenario is.
Many said because of cheap natural gas that displaces coal and growing adoption of renewable energy sources, it is unlikely that the US would stop reducing its carbon pollution even if it abandoned the accord, so the effect would likely be smaller.
Others say it could be worse because other countries might follow a US exit, leading to more emissions from both the US and the rest.
Another computer simulation team put the effect of the US pulling out somewhere between 0.18 and 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit.
While scientists may disagree on the computer simulations, they overwhelmingly agreed that the warming the planet is undergoing now would be faster and more intense.
The world without US efforts would have a far more difficult time avoiding a dangerous threshold: keeping the planet from warming more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
The world has already warmed by just over half that amount — with about one-fifth of the past heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions coming from the United States, usually from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
So the efforts are really about preventing another 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit from now.

“Developed nations — particularly the US and Europe — are responsible for the lion’s share of past emissions, with China now playing a major role,” said Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis.

 “This means Americans have caused a large fraction of the warming.”
Even with the US doing what it promised under the Paris agreement, the world is likely to pass that 2 degree mark, many scientists said.
But the fractions of additional degrees that the US would contribute could mean passing the threshold faster, which could in turn mean “ecosystems being out of whack with the climate, trouble farming current crops and increasing shortages of food and water,” said the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Kevin Trenberth.
Climate Interactive, a team of scientists and computer modelers who track global emissions and pledges, simulated global emissions if every country but the US reaches their individualized goals to curb carbon pollution. Then they calculated what that would mean in global temperature, sea level rise and ocean acidification using scientifically accepted computer models.
By 2030, it would mean an extra 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the air a year, according to the Climate Interactive models, and by the end of the century, half a degree of warming.
“The US matters a great deal,” said Climate Interactive co-director Andrew Jones. 

“That amount could make the difference between meeting the Paris limit of two degrees and missing it.”
Climate Action Tracker, a competing computer simulation team, put the effect of the US pulling out somewhere between 0.18 and 0.36 Fahrenheit by 2100. It uses a scenario where US emissions flatten through the century, while Climate Interactive has them rising.
One of the few scientists who plays down the harm of the US possibly leaving the agreement is John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the scientist credited with coming up with the 2 degree goal.
“Ten years ago (a US exit) would have shocked the planet,” Schellnhuber said. 

“Today if the US really chooses to leave the Paris agreement, the world will move on with building a clean and secure future.”
Not so, said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe: “There will be ripple effects from the United States’ choices across the world.”

Press link for more: nypost.com

Most Australians agree #ClimateChange is a “Catastrophic Risk” #StopAdani

Three-quarters of Australians say climate warming “a catastrophic risk”, even as government turns a blind eye
 by David Spratt
Published at RenewEconomy on 29 May 2017 

Three in four Australians understand that climate warming poses a “catastrophic risk,” even as the Australian government turns a blind eye. 

That was the clear result from a new survey for the Global Challenges Forum (GCF), and the publication of its 2017 Global Catastrophic Risk report.
84% of 8000 people surveyed in eight countries for the GCF consider climate change a “global catastrophic risk”. The figure for the Australian sample was 75%.

Question were asked about a number of risks, including nuclear war, pandemics, biological weapons, climate change and environmental collapse.

 The climate question asked how much participants agreed or disagreed that “climate change, resulting in environmental damage, such as rising sea levels or melting of icecaps” could be considered as “a global catastrophic risk”? A global catastrophic risk was described as “a future event that has the potential to affect 10% of the global population”.

For Australia, the results were: 39% “strongly agree” and 36% “tend to agree” (for total agree of 75%); with “tend to disagree” at 15%, “strongly disagree” at 6% and 4% “don’t know”.
The 2017 Global Catastrophic Risk report summarises the the evidence for catastrophic climate change risk as:

Discussions of climate change usually focus on limiting temperature rises to 1-3˚C above pre-industrial levels.

 A rise of 3ºC would have major impacts, with most of Bangladesh and Florida under water, major coastal cities – Shanghai, Lagos, Mumbai – swamped, and potentially large flows of climate refugees. 

While the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change sought to keep global temperature rises below a threshold of 1.5–2ºC, national pledges have fallen short and set the world on a 3.6°C temperature rise track. 

There is also now scientific consensus that, when warming rises above a certain level, self-reinforcing feedback loops are likely to set in, triggered by the pushing of the Earth’s systems – ocean circulation, permafrost, ice sheets, rainforests and atmospheric circulation – across certain tipping points. 

The latest science shows that tipping points with potential to cause catastrophic climate change could be triggered at 2ºC global warming. 

These include the risk of losing all coral reef systems on Earth and irreversible melting of inland glaciers, Arctic sea ice and potentially the Greenland ice sheet. 

As well as the immediate risk to human societies, the fear is that crossing these tipping points would have major impacts on the pace of global warming itself. 

Although climate change action has now become part of mainstream economic and social strategies, too little emphasis is put on the risk of catastrophic climate change. 

The same survey found 81% of the 1000 Australian participants in the poll agreed with the proposition: “Do you think we should try to prevent climate catastrophes, which might not occur for several decades or centuries, even if it requires making considerable changes that impact on our current living standards?” The figure across the 8000 people polled in eight countries (Australia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, UK, Germany and USA) was 88%.
This shows a stronger level of support than several other polls for action that may impact on future living standards and have a personal material cost. 

This strong expression may, in part, be due to the framing of climate as a potentially catastrophic risk.
The GCF report found that many people now see climate change as a bigger threat than other issues such as epidemics, population growth, use of weapons of mass destruction and the rise of artificial intelligence threats. GCF vice-president Mats Andersson says “there’s certainly a huge gap between what people expect from politicians and what politicians are doing”. 
The report says that for the first time in human history:

We have reached a level of scientific knowledge that allows us to develop an enlightened relationship to risks of catastrophic magnitude. Not only can we foresee many of the challenges ahead, but we are in a position to identify what needs to be done in order to mitigate or even eliminate some of those risks. Our enlightened status, however, also requires that we consider our own role in creating those risks, and collectively commit to reducing them.

However, “the institutions we rely on to ensure peace, security, development and environmental integrity are woefully inadequate for the scale of the challenges at hand”.
The dissonance between what Australian’s understand and what government is doing is remarkable.

 Australia is failing in its responsibility to safeguard its people and protect their way of life. 

It is also failing as a world citizen, by downplaying the profound global impacts of climate change and shirking its responsibility to act.

Australia’s per capita greenhouse emissions are in the highest rank in the world, and its commitment to reduce emissions are rated as inadequate by Climate Action Tracker, which says that “Australia’s current policies will fall well short of meeting” its Paris Agreement target, that the Emissions Reduction Fund “does not set Australia on a path that would meet its targets” and “without accelerating climate action and additional policies, Australia will miss its 2030 target by a large margin”.
Australia’s biggest corporations are no better. 

The S&P/ASX All Australian 50 has the “highest embedded carbon” of any group in the S&P Global 1200, according to the S&P Dow Jones Carbon Scorecard report, which assesses global companies’ carbon footprint, fossil fuel reserve emissions, coal revenue exposure, energy transition and green-brown revenue strain. At the 2017 Santos annual general meeting, chairman Peter Coates asserted that it is “sensible” and “consistent with good value” to assume for planning purposes a 4°C-warmer world.
Former senior fossil fuel industry executive Ian Dunlop has recently noted that the most dangerous aspect of fossil-fuel investments made today is that their impacts do not manifest themselves for decades to come. If we wait for catastrophe to happen — as we are doing — it will be too late to act. 

Time is the most important commodity; to avoid catastrophic outcomes requires emergency action to force the pace of change. In these circumstances, opening up a major new coal province is nothing less than a crime against humanity.

Press link for more: 

Climate Code Red

No New Fossil Fuel Development! #StopAdani #auspol

The Sky’s Limit: No New Fossil Fuel Development
An open letter to world leaders:
One year ago in Paris, the world came together to finalize a new agreement to address the climate crisis.

 Together, countries committed to “[holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

Now, the Paris Agreement has entered into force and the time has come to fulfill the commitments made within it.
Climate impacts are already here today, as seen in the melting of the Arctic, coral bleaching in the Pacific, droughts in Africa, stronger and more frequent hurricanes and typhoons in our oceans, and new challenges day by day the world over. 


The commitment to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5˚C was an important new goal, especially for vulnerable countries and communities who are already bearing the brunt of these ever-growing impacts of the climate crisis. 

But with this necessary ambition comes responsibility and challenge.

Analysis has now shown that the carbon embedded in existing fossil fuel production, if allowed to run its course, would take us beyond the globally agreed goals of limiting warming to well below 2˚C and pursuing efforts to limit to 1.5˚C.
The global carbon budgets associated with either temperature limit will be exhausted with current fossil fuel projects, and in fact some currently-operating fossil fuel projects will need to be retired early in order to have appropriately high chances of staying below even the 2˚C limit, let alone 1.5˚C.

With this new understanding, the challenge has never been clearer.

 To live up to the goals set forth by the Paris Agreement and to safeguard our climate for this and future generations, fossil fuel production must enter a managed decline immediately, and renewable energy must be advanced to swiftly take its place in the context of a just transition.

Therefore, we, as over 400 civil society organizations from more than 60 countries, representing tens of millions around the world, call on world leaders to put an immediate halt to new fossil fuel development and pursue a just transition to renewable energy with a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry.

We can do this.

 With a managed decline to wind down fossil fuel production that ensures a smooth and just transition to a safer energy economy, we can protect workers, protect communities, bring energy access to the poor, and ramp up renewable energy as quickly as we put an end to fossil fuels.

Since rich countries have a greater historic responsibility to act, they should provide support to poorer countries to help expand non-carbon energy and drive economic development as part of their fair share of global action, with a focus on meeting the urgent priority of providing universal access to energy. 

The good news is that renewable energy can — as it must — fill in the gap and power a clean energy future.
The world can either start now in pursuing a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry and a just transition to renewable energy, or it can delay action and bring about economic upheaval and climate chaos. 

The choice is clear.
The first step in this effort is a simple one: Stop digging. 

No additional fossil fuel development, no exploration for new fossil fuels, no expansion of fossil fuel projects. 

We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Signed,

Press link for more: Keep it in the ground.org

Deep Trouble #auspol #Qldpol #StopAdani

Deep trouble How to improve the health of the ocean

The ocean sustains humanity. Humanity treats it with contempt
EARTH is poorly named.

 The ocean covers almost three-quarters of the planet.

 It is divided into five basins: the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, the Arctic and the Southern oceans. 

Were all the planet’s water placed over the United States, it would form a column of liquid 132km tall.

 The ocean provides 3bn people with almost a fifth of their protein (making fish a bigger source of the stuff than beef). Fishing and aquaculture assure the livelihoods of one in ten of the world’s people. 

Climate and weather systems depend on the temperature patterns of the ocean and its interactions with the atmosphere. If anything ought to be too big to fail, it is the ocean.

Humans have long assumed that the ocean’s size allowed them to put anything they wanted into it and to take anything they wanted out. 

Changing temperatures and chemistry, overfishing and pollution have stressed its ecosystems for decades. 

The ocean stores more than nine-tenths of the heat trapped on Earth by greenhouse-gas emissions. 

Coral reefs are suffering as a result; scientists expect almost all corals to be gone by 2050.

By the middle of the century the ocean could contain more plastic than fish by weight.

 Ground down into tiny pieces, it is eaten by fish and then by people, with uncertain effects on human health. 

Appetite for fish grows nevertheless: almost 90% of stocks are fished either at or beyond their sustainable limits (see Briefing). 

The ocean nurtures humanity. 

Humanity treats it with contempt.

Depths plumbed
Such self-destructive behaviour demands explanation. 

Three reasons for it stand out. 

One is geography. 

The bulk of the ocean is beyond the horizon and below the waterline. 

The damage being done to its health is visible in a few liminal places—the Great Barrier Reef, say, or the oyster farms of Washington state. 

But for the most part, the sea is out of sight and out of mind.

 It is telling that there is only a single fleeting reference to the ocean in the Paris agreement on climate change.

A second problem is governance. 

The ocean is subject to a patchwork of laws and agreements. 

Enforcement is hard and incentives are often misaligned. 

Waters outside national jurisdictions—the high seas—are a global commons. 

Without defined property rights or a community invested in their upkeep, the interests of individual actors in exploiting such areas win out over the collective interest in husbanding them. 

Fish are particularly tricky because they move.

 Why observe quotas if you think your neighbour can haul in catches with impunity?
Third, the ocean is a victim of other, bigger processes. 

The emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is changing the marine environment along with the rest of the planet. 

The ocean has warmed by 0.7°C since the 19th century, damaging corals and encouraging organisms to migrate towards the poles in search of cooler waters. 

Greater concentrations of carbon dioxide in the water are making it more acidic. 

That tends to harm creatures such as crabs and oysters, whose calcium carbonate shells suffer as marine chemistry alters.

Some of these problems are easier to deal with than others.

 “Ocean blindness” can be cured by access to information. 

And indeed, improvements in computing power, satellite imaging and drones are bringing the ocean into better view than ever before. 

Work is under way to map the sea floor in detail using sonar technology. 

On the surface, aquatic drones can get to remote, stormy places at a far smaller cost than manned vessels. 

From above, ocean-colour radiometry is improving understanding of how phytoplankton, simple organisms that support marine food chains, move and thrive. 

Tiny satellites, weighing 1-10kg, are enhancing scrutiny of fishing vessels.
Transparency can also mitigate the second difficulty, of ocean governance. 

More scientific data ought to improve the oversight of nascent industries.

 As sea-floor soundings proliferate, the supervision of deep-sea mining, which is overseen by the International Seabed Authority in areas beyond national jurisdiction, should get better.

 More data and analysis also make it easier to police existing agreements. 

Satellite monitoring can provide clues to illegal fishing activity: craft that switch off their tracking devices when they approach a marine protected area excite suspicion, for example. 

Such data make it easier to enforce codes like the Port State Measures Agreement, which requires foreign vessels to submit to inspections at any port of call and requires port states to share information on any suspected wrongdoing they find.
Clearer information may also help align incentives and allow private capital to reward good behaviour.

 Insurance firms, for instance, have an incentive to ask for more data on fishing vessels; if ships switch off their tracking systems, the chances of collisions rise, and so do premiums. Greater traceability gives consumers who are concerned about fish a way to press seafood firms into behaving responsibly.
Sunk costs
Thanks to technology, the ocean’s expanse and remoteness are becoming less formidable—and less of an excuse for inaction. A UN meeting on the ocean next month in New York is a sign that policymakers are paying more attention to the state of the marine realm. But superior information does not solve the fundamental problem of allocating and enforcing property rights and responsibilities for the high seas. And the effectiveness of incentives to take care of the ocean varies. Commercial pay-offs from giving fish stocks time to recover, for example, are large and well-documented; but the rewards that accrue from removing plastic from the high seas are unclear.
Above all, better measurement of global warming’s effect on the ocean does not make a solution any easier. The Paris agreement is the single best hope for protecting the ocean and its resources. But America is not strongly committed to the deal; it may even pull out. And the limits agreed on in Paris will not prevent sea levels from rising and corals from bleaching. Indeed, unless they are drastically strengthened, both problems risk getting much worse. Mankind is increasingly able to see the damage it is doing to the ocean. Whether it can stop it is another question.

Press link for more: The Economist

The Day I Left My KeyBoard & Became A Climate Activist to #StopAdani

For years I having been using my keyboard to encourage politicians and anyone who would listen to take the threat of climate change seriously.

 In 2007 I supported Kevin Rudd’s words “Climate Change Is Our Greatest Moral Challenge” I joined Jim Turnour’s campaign driving around Cairns with a giant Kevin07 banner. Jim managed a 14 percent swing and joined Rudd in Canberra I thought the battle was won. At last politicians were listening to the scientists, Australia signed the Kyoto agreement & later the Paris agreement. Australia put a price on carbon, we seemed to be heading in the right direction. 

Then along came Tony Abbott shouting “Climate Change is crap!”

 Australia took several steps backwards. I couldn’t understand the fact that Australia was turning its back on science. I feared for the future we were leaving our children.

I completed several online climate courses with Exeter, McQuarie & James Cook universities. The science wasn’t in doubt, I lectured on climate change at U3A Mandurah and started this blog. I became a keyboard warrior encouraging all who would listen to act.

In 2016 & 2017 I watched as the Great Barrier Reef suffer back to back coral bleaching.

I knew my keyboard activities hadn’t changed much, I knew I had to step up & become more active. We were running out of time.

I moved back to Cairns earlier this year, determined to do all I could to make a difference. I joined Stop Adani Cairns & moved from my keyboard to real climate activism.

I over came my fear & attended a meeting where an action was being planned on the Commonwealth Bank in Cairns. I found the Stop Adani group were people just like me. Many protesting for the first time in their lives. I was impressed by their non violence ethic & their passion for change. 

I volunteered to be spokesman for the action, doing interviews with Star Fm, Cairns Post & Win News. We started with a thank you to Westpac for ruling out finance for Adani Coal. We moved to the Commonwealth Bank singing & gathering up bystanders who joined with us to demand Commonwealth Bank stop funding Adani Coal. It was exciting and fun, I had made the next step, gone from my keyboard to join the ranks of Joan Pankhurst, Ghandi & Martin Luther King in non violent action to change the world. 

If,like me you are frustrated and want to be part of real change join us find a Stop Adani Group near you. Leave the keyboard it’s time to take to the streets. Time isn’t on our side we need urgent action now! 
John Pratt

A call to join the fight! #StopAdani

It’s time to act! 

A call to join the fight. 

As a young sailor in the RAN in 1964 I was fortunate enough to be on a naval survey ship HMAS Gascoyne. The ship spent several months surveying the Great Barrier Reef. 

We travelled the entire reef from top to bottom and out to the continental shelf. 

The reef was in pristine condition, I was blown away with the beauty & the abundance of wildlife. 

I fell in love with the reef & Far North Queensland. My wife & I often flew to Cairns for holidays & in 2002 when I retired we moved to Cairns. I introduced my grandchildren to the charms of the reef by taking them on snorkelling trips to the reef.

In 2016 & 2017 the coral suffered back to back bleaching due to abnormally high sea temperatures. Climate change was killing the coral and putting much of the reef at risk. I was troubled by the thought that I would not be able to show my great grandchildren the wonders of the reef. The idea that in my lifetime I had witnessed a reef in pristine condition & the death of that same coral was soul destroying. 

For me it was a call to action, I didn’t want to face my great grandchildren to explain I had witnessed the death of the Great Barrier Reef and did nothing to protect this World Heritage Area. I studied the science and learnt that the continued use of fossil fuels would push the sea temperature above what the coral needed to survive. For the first time in my life I decided to take protest action and joined Stop Adani Cairns. I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to saving the reef from climate change. 

I call on all who have seen the best of the Great Barrier Reef and want to show their children and future generations to join the fight. 

Sea level rise threatens thousands of Melbourne homes. #StopAdani #auspol

By Adam Carey

How a possible two-metre sea level rise would flood thousands of Melbourne homes
Tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Melbourne face a bigger risk of tidal flooding by century’s end, and major roads, tram routes and industrial areas could disappear under water due to future sea level rises, new modelling shows.
The updated modelling of possible sea level rises caused by climate change predicts Victoria’s coastline could be hit by sea level rises of two metres or more by 2100, due to the rapid melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
Streets in Elwood after a flash flood in December.

Streets in Elwood after a flash flood in December. Photo: Wayne Taylor

A two-metre rise would flood several low-lying suburbs in Melbourne including South Melbourne, Albert Park, Port Melbourne, Southbank, Docklands, Altona, Williamstown, Elwood, St Kilda, Seaford, Carrum, Bonbeach and Aspendale.
Large areas in Geelong and the seaside towns of Barwon Heads, Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale would also be heavily inundated at high tide by century’s end, it is predicted.
Sections of major roads including CityLink, Flinders Street, Wurundjeri Way, Footscray Road, Clarendon Street and Queens Parade would go under water at high tide, as would several tram routes in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs.

The Mornington Peninsula Freeway near Frankston would face the same fate.
Industrial areas such as the Port of Melbourne, Fishermans Bend and Coode Island would also be inundated.
The modelling is based on new research by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), which this year released updated projections for sea level rises made in the landmark 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
That report said a 74-centimetre sea level rise by 2100 was a worst-case scenario.
Since then, ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland have been found to be melting more rapidly than thought and projections have been revised so that the 74cm “worst-case scenario” is considered probable, while a rise of two metres to 2.7 metres is now a “plausible worst-case global mean sea level rise scenario”, according to NOAA.

The effect this would have on Australia’s coastline has been mapped by NGIS, using local tidal data and Google mapping technology to overlay a possible two-metre sea level rise on the nation’s cities, towns and beaches.
Nathan Eaton is from NGIS and was co-creator of the Coastal Risk Australia website that shows the projected impacts of sea level rises in Australia.
Mr Eaton said that just as the rate at which the sea level has risen has accelerated in the past few decades, much of the potential rise of two metres would occur in the latter half of this century.
“Anyone can look at these maps and visualise exactly how sea-level rise, driven by climate change, will permanently alter our coastline and neighbourhoods,” Mr Eaton said. “We already knew this was going to be bad news for low-lying areas, but the latest science is telling us to brace for even worse.”
Central Melbourne is no stranger to flash flooding – this is Elizabeth Street in February, 1972. 

Central Melbourne is no stranger to flash flooding – this is Elizabeth Street in February, 1972. Photo: Neville Bowler
Alan Stokes, executive director of the Australian Coastal Councils Association, said the revised modelling was a wake-up call for governments.
“If the sea rises to that level it would be a national disaster,” Mr Stokes said.
He called on the federal government to reverse funding cuts it has made to research to support climate change adaptation.
An online tool for councils called Coast Adapt faces a heavy funding cut from July 1.
“Coastal councils are at the forefront of dealing with these projected impacts but they are really tackling this problem with one arm tied behind their backs because they just don’t have the resources to respond effectively,” Mr Stokes said.  

The global mean sea level has risen by 21 to 24 centimetres since 1880, with about eight centimetres of that rise happening since 1993.
“Scientists expect that [sea levels] will continue to rise throughout the 21st century and beyond, because of global warming that has already occurred and warming that is yet to occur due to the still uncertain level of future emissions,” the NOAA report says.

Press link for more: The Age.com

Low lying areas of Sydney at risk! #ClimateChange #StopAdani #auspol

‘The great unknown’: New climate change data lifts the sea-level threat

By Peter Hannam

The giant ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are melting faster than scientists previously estimated, raising the prospect of faster sea level rise placing at risk low-lying areas of Sydney and similar exposed cities around the world.
New research, including from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has lifted the “plausible” sea level rise by 2100 to as much as two metres to 2.7 metres.
That has superseded earlier estimates, such as the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that placed the likely top range of sea level rise at about one metre if greenhouse gas emission rises continued unabated.
Those higher forecasts have now been included in new mapping by Coastal Risk Australia that combines the estimates with national high-tide data and the shape of our coastline. 
The resulting maps show airports in Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart will be largely under water by 2100 if that two-metre rise happens.
Other areas at risk in Sydney from such a rise include Circular Quay, Wentworth Park, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Woolloomooloo and Rose Bay. (See map below of indicative water-level increases.)

“Our worst case scenario [for 2100] is now looking three times worse than it did previously,” said Nathan Eaton, a senior principal with NGIS, a digital mapping consultancy that compiled the maps.
Elsewhere in NSW, at-risk regions include low-lying parts of Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Ballina and Byron Bay.
Among exposed areas of other states are the Port of Melbourne, St Kilda and Docklands in Melbourne, parts of Noosa, the Gold Coast and Port Douglas in Queensland, and the WACA ground and Cottesloe beach in Perth, WA.
“Every state has got an area that’s massively different [from previous forecasts for 2100],” Mr Eaton said. “For a lot of low-lying areas, it makes the inundation that much further inland.”
Rising seas

NOAA estimates global mean sea levels have risen about 3.4 millimetres a year since 1993, roughly double the average rate of increase during the 20th century. (See chart below).
Even the last century’s pace of increase was the fastest in at least 2800 years, NOAA said.
Global warming is driving the increase in sea levels by melting land ice – such as glaciers and ice sheets – and from the thermal expansion of the warmer oceans.

John Church, a global sea level expert at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, said other new research indicated Antarctica’s contribution to rising seas appears to particularly sensitive to carbon emissions rates – underscoring the urgency to reduce them.

“With ‘business as usual’ emissions, the questions are when, rather than if, we will cross a two-metre sea-level rise,” Professor Church said. “This scenario would result in major catastrophes and displace many tens of millions of people around the world.” 

Serena Lee, a research fellow and coastal dynamics specialist at Griffith University, said the rate of Antarctic ice melt was “a great unknown”, limited by the relative lack of long-term data and the region’s inaccessibility.
Of particular concern was the melting of the ice sheets from below of ice sheets as they come in contact with warming seas.
The newest studies indicate a two-metre rise by 2100 “would probably be more towards the conservative mean” of outcomes, Dr Lee said.
The mapping tool – which Coastal Risk say should not be relied upon for site specific decision making – may itself underestimate the speed threats will increase for some localities.
Some areas of Australia, particularly the north, are recording much higher rates of sea level increase than the global average, Dr Lee said.
The mapping also doesn’t take into account the impacts of more extreme weather, such as the destructive storm surge triggered by last June’s huge east coast low off NSW.
Cyclone Debbie also caused severe flooding in northern NSW in some of the regions in the state that are also particularly exposed to rising seas. 
Even with those uncertainties, the updated mapping “can’t do anything but help someone’s understanding” of those changing coastal, ocean and flooding processes, Dr Lee said.

Press link for more: SMH.COM