Climate science’s official text is outdated. Here’s what it’s missing. #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani

Climate science’s official text is outdated. Here’s what it’s missing.

By Eric Holthauson Mar 22, 2018

A school bus crosses a makeshift bridge for vehicles, near where the original bridge was washed away by Hurricane Maria flooding, on December 20, 2017 in Morovis, Puerto Rico.    Mario Tama/Getty Images

The first-ever courtroom tutorial of climate science this week went about as you’d expect. The scientists representing Oakland and San Francisco had Powerpoint problems, and the oil industry’s lawyer cherry-picked his facts.

For all their differences, both sides drew from a common source: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the gold-standard for mainstream climate science.

Problem is, the last IPCC report came out way back in 2013.

As it turns out, we’ve learned a lot about our climate since then, and most of that new information paints an increasingly urgent picture of the need to slash fossil-fuel emissions as soon as possible.

It’s convenient that Chevron’s attorney relied on that aging five-year-old report.

The next IPCC report isn’t planned for public release until the fall of 2019.

Gathering consensus takes time, and the result is that IPCC reports are out of date before they’re published and necessarily conservative.

The climate models used in these reports grow old in a hurry.

Since the 1970s, they’ve routinely underestimated the rate of global warming.

Some of the most recent comprehensive assessments of climate science, including last year’s congressionally-mandated, White House-approved, Climate Science Special Report, include scary new sections on “climate surprises” like simultaneous droughts and hurricanes, that have wide-reaching consequences.

The scientists representing the two cities knew this, and didn’t limit their talking points to the IPCC.

“Positive feedbacks (self-reinforcing cycles) within the climate system have the potential to accelerate human-induced climate change,” says a section from that Climate Science Special report, “and even shift the Earth’s climate system, in part or in whole, into new states that are very different from those experienced in the recent past.” None of this was included in the last IPCC report.

Actually, a helluva lot has changed in our understanding of the Earth’s climate system since the 2013 IPCC report. Here are some of the highlights:

1 Sea-level rise is going to be much worse than we thought. Like, potentially a lot worse. In the last IPCC assessment, the worst case scenario for sea-level rise this century was about three feet. That’s now about the midpoint of what’s expected; the worst-case has ballooned to about eight feet. That’s largely because …

2 Antarctica’s massive ice sheets could collapse much more quickly than we thought. Newly discovered mechanisms of collapse in some of the planet’s largest and most vulnerable glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are beginning to capture the attention of the scientific community. Should these mechanisms kick in over the next few decades, they’d unleash enough meltwater to flood every coastal city on Earth.

3 Extreme weather is here and can now be linked to climate change in real time. From the Arctic to the tropics, wildfires, intense storms and other extreme weather events have been increasingly fierce in recent years, and climate change has played a measurable role. A 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences opened the floodgates, so to speak, of the burgeoning field of extreme weather attribution. From last year’s Hurricane Harvey to last month’s nor’easter-linked floods in Massachusetts, nearly every weather event now bares a traceable connection to human-caused climate change.

4 Global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius is pretty much locked in. A forthcoming special report of the IPCC will say that meeting the 1.5 degree target — one of the most ambitious commitments of the Paris Agreement — looks “extremely unlikely.” Humanity’s shift to zero-carbon energy sources is moving about 10 times too slowly. At this point, it would probably take geoengineering to prevent it. Researchers have started testing ways to do that.

5 We’ve already lost entire ecosystems, most notably coral reefs. During a record-breaking El Niño event in 2015, the world lost massive swaths of coral in a global bleaching event “unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.” More than 90 percent of the world’s coral will surely die by 2050 without rapid emissions reductions. That means one of the richest stores of biodiversity on the planet is already in jeopardy.

The climate system is moving much more quickly than we thought, and human action to curb climate change is moving much too slowly. Nasty surprises are increasingly possible, and hopeful surprises are more necessary than ever. But there’s some solace to take from this week’s events. The hearing this week is just one of the many courtrooms in which Big Oil has been forced to defend itself. Challenging polluters directly through the courts might result in one of those hopeful surprises people weren’t betting on five years ago.

Press link for more: Grist.org

A Plan To Nationalize Fossil Fuel Companies. #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani

A Plan To Nationalize Fossil Fuel Companies

Peter GowanMarch 21, 2018

Climate change cries out for ambitious solutions.

All progressives recognize that climate change is a serious long-term risk which could cause devastating damage around the world.

There is not, however, consensus on which policy options could seriously mitigate the effects of climate change.

One strong option: bringing fossil energy under majority public ownership.

It is being proposed by the Labour Party in the UK and is already the case in Norway.

Such ownership could bring major benefits if tried here.

The Trump administration’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan last year has taken the country in the wrong direction. But the Obama administration policies before him were very underwhelming.

The Clean Power Plan, instituted under Obama, was already facing serious legal troubles and would have been insufficient to achieve the U.S. pledges under the Paris Agreement, which themselves would have been insufficient to meet the proportional contribution required to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Free-market solutions and incentives are not capable of dealing with a major economic transition of this type on a quick enough timescale to avoid environmental disaster.

The use of workers in the fossil fuel industry as a cynical bargaining chip by the owners of those firms represents a massive political obstacle to a real energy transition, as does the valuation of these firms based off an expectation by investors that much or all of their underground assets will be developed — which, if we are to avoid climate catastrophe, will not.

What we should do instead is have the state buy a controlling stake in all major fossil fuel firms.

This could be quite costly — Alperovitz, Guinan, and Hanna recently estimated “the price tag to purchase outright the top 25 largest US-based publicly traded oil and gas companies, along with most of the remaining publicly traded coal companies” at $1.15 trillion — but there are ways to minimize this cost while still obtaining all of the benefits.

The mode for gaining public control of these companies should involve making the federal government’s final intentions well known to investors from the outset.

Control over these shares would be given to a new Social Energy Fund, which would be chartered to use its stake in the firms to achieve key priorities, including national compliance with ambitious decarbonization targets and building up publicly owned renewable energy firms.

This means stating from the outset that huge quantities of oil and gas will be left in the ground.

The state would vote for resolutions and directors that will ensure its social goals are met.

While full nationalization would be preferable under an ideal legal regime, the Supreme Court case law under the Takings Clause requires market value compensation for compulsory purchases.

Instead, having made its intentions to annihilate the fossil fuel industry known, the government would offer to voluntarily purchase up to 51% of shares.

It would also announce that it intends to compulsorily purchase any shares required to obtain its majority stake at some point in the future — say, one year afterwards.

This guarantees to investors that if they do not sell stakes, they will be left holding an asset worth far less than they paid for with no available buyer.

The price of fossil fuel shares includes both their immediate profits and a speculative value based on the expectation that firms will continue to have a stranglehold on the political system and ensure their ability to extract and sell fossil fuels for a long time to come.

We would therefore expect the value of the stocks to collapse just as shares in private prisons collapsed in 2016 due to Obama’s promise to phase them out.

The state could add a further incentive to sell now by stating that it will include a discount accounting for environmental externalities in its “just compensation” for compulsory purchase. It is likely that this would not persuade America’s right-wing judiciary and the state would eventually have to pay market value. But the prospect of holdouts having to fight an extended legal battle with the federal government should depress the stock price further.

If we assume Alperovitz, Guinan, and Hanna’s figures are correct and a conservative discount of 30% on the current prices, and only purchase 51% of the shares, the total cost works out at $410 billion. A similar plan by David Hall of the University of Greenwich put the cost of nationalizing half of the UK’s major fossil fuel companies at market value at around £36 billion ($50.2 billion), or £44.4 billion ($61.9 billion) if one includes the transmission and distribution grids. The U.S. economy is about seven times larger than the British economy, so the figures are roughly comparable.

In truth, this would be worth doing even if the sticker price was far higher. The long-term costs of climate change to the U.S. economy and society will dwarf any capital investment we need to make right now.

Economists largely agree that nationalization does not have a direct impact on the government’s balance sheet due to the acquisition of public assets, a fact recently acknowledged by the Financial Times in reference to Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to nationalize the energy network. The ability of the government to plan energy transitions in a way which does not require them to pay off fossil fuel barons with subsidies and tax incentives will no doubt improve the government’s financial resources over time, and the revenues from fossil fuels will provide a stopgap until a large public clean energy sector begins to pay dividends.

An undeniable consequence of decarbonization will be job losses in the fossil fuel sector. The fund should address this through a gradual downward trend in employment which can be absorbed through hiring freezes, voluntary redundancies, and active labor market policies rather than through large-scale immediate layoffs — especially where largely concentrated in a single area. The Wilson Labour government in the United Kingdom reduced employment in collieries by a similar absolute number to the Thatcher government, but its cooperation with unions, focus on full employment, and active industrial policy ensured this did not cause a social catastrophe.

The welfare state and union-run retraining schemes should also fill the gap here. We should aim to smooth out the transition for people as much as possible. The liberalized market is a massive obstacle to decarbonization because it polarizes the interests of energy workers against everyone else’s compelling interest in energy transition. This is not inevitable, and a large social-democratic welfare state would significantly reduce these divisions.

Norway’s social wealth fund recently suggested divesting from privately held fossil fuel firms, and its state energy company Equinor is seeking to diversify away from oil. The fossil fuel industry in America already exists, and state management is much better suited to planning a fair and viable transition that will avoid catastrophic climate change.

How should we pay for such a plan? Climate change poses a grave risk to global security in the long run. Even major oil producers have recognized this. Norway’s Climate and Environment Minister noted that “studies have pointed out that the record drought that ravaged Syria in 2005 to 2010 was likely stoked by ongoing manmade climate change,” and that this “helped push conditions over the threshold” of civil war.

If offsets are required to pass this proposal, funding it by cancelling planned military spending increases makes sense. We should not need excessive spending on the military if we are living in a safer world, and a publicly controlled energy transition whose profits finance a secure, collectively-owned clean energy industry will do more good for America, and the world, than any spending on F-35s or foreign interventions.

Press link for more: People’s Policy Project

Australia is one of the countries most exposed to climate change #StopAdani #auspol

Australia one of the countries most exposed to climate change, bank warns

Cole Latimer22 March 2018 — 2:00pm

Australia is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change in the developed world, and the threat of Australians dying from global warming-related events has risen, global bank HSBC warns.

Australia is at risk of more bushfires as climate change continues.

Photo: Jonathan Carroll

A new report by the bank, titled Fragile Planet, has ranked 67 countries for their exposure to climate change risks. Australia scored poorly, with the largest percentage rise in deaths attributable to climate change in the developed world.

Combining data from the World Bank and EM-DAT, the International Disaster Database which calculates economic damage estimates, HSBC said fatalities attributable to climate change-linked events such as stronger storms, floods, or heat-related incidents surged from 0.36 per cent of the population between 1997 and 2006 to 3.41 per cent between 2007 and 2016.

At the same time, the number of people impacted by climate change events surged from 3.25 to 15.25 per 1000 of the population.

Israel and the US were the only developed countries with a bigger share of the population impacted by climate change-related events such as floods, storms, hurricanes, and wildfires.

Globally, the World Health Organisation forecasts that around 250,000 additional deaths annually will be attributable to climate change.

HSBC developed the report as a tool for investors to provide in-depth information on countries’ climate change risk profiles, on their energy issues, risks to business operations, supply and demand and logistics as well as their long-term sustainable development issues.

Australia was ranked as highly sensitive to the physical risks of climate change, with predictions of more storms, floods, rain and bushfires. New Zealand ranked as one the nations least exposed to those risks.

Hurting the economy

Late last year, Deutsche Bank also developed a tool to forecast where its investments across the globe may be impacted by natural disasters brought on by climate change.

The German bank’s economic modelling estimated that if carbon emissions aren’t reduced throughout this century, per capita GDP will be 23 per cent lower than it otherwise would be.

Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute, Mark Ogge, said Australia’s industries and infrastructure, such as coastal based business, roads and rail, and both commercial residential assets, are at significant risk from climate change-related events.

“There’s up to $236 billion of infrastructure at risk from a one-metre sea level rise alone,” Mr Ogge said. Temperature increases also put Australia’s tourism industry at risk, with a rising number of days above 35 degrees celsius in holiday destinations such as Far North Queensland, he added.

The Australia Institute believes billions of dollars in infrastructure are at risk from a one-metre sea level rise.

Photo: Ashley Roach

Australia is the only developed market that ranked within the top ten in HSBC’s report for energy transition issues due to its high levels of fossil fuel exports – particularly coal – and is one of the few countries that has seen these exports growing as a percentage of their gross domestic product.

HSBC sees risks to the nation’s economy as Australia attempts to shift its energy and economic system, currently underpinned by fossil fuels, to one with a greater mix of renewables.

“Many countries and other actors are at risk of seeing parts of their old energy economy becoming effectively ‘stranded assets’ – or economically non-viable – given the relative economics of alternatives and new breakthrough technologies,” the HSBC report stated.

“Managing the transition to a lower carbon economy is key to mitigating downside risks,” the bank said. “We think achieving diversification is key.”

The good news

However, it is not all bad news. Australia was ranked amongst the top three nations – along with New Zealand and Norway – with the greatest potential to respond to climate change and financially prepare the country for a changing environment.

Despite Australia’s frequent drought conditions, it was seen as a market with adequate water resources availability, while Singapore was the developed market most at risk over water availability.

Press link for more: SMH.COM

Cutting carbon emissions sooner could save 153 million lives — ScienceDaily #StopAdani #auspol #qldpol

As many as 153 million premature deaths linked to air pollution could be avoided worldwide this century if governments speed up their timetable for reducing fossil fuel emissions, a new Duke University-led study finds.

The study is the first to project the number of lives that could be saved, city by city, in 154 of the world’s largest urban areas if nations agree to reduce carbon emissions and limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C in the near future rather than postponing the biggest emissions cuts until later, as some governments have proposed.

Premature deaths would drop in cities on every inhabited continent, the study shows, with the greatest gains in saved lives occurring in Asia and Africa.

Kolkata and Delhi, India, lead the list of cities benefitting from accelerated emissions cuts with up to 4.4 million projected saved lives and up to 4 million projected saved lives, respectively. Thirteen other Asian or African cities could each avoid more than 1 million premature deaths and around 80 additional cities could each avoid at least 100,000 deaths.

Nearly 50 urban areas on other continents could also see significant gains in numbers of saved lives, with six cities — Moscow, Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Los Angeles, Puebla and New York — each potentially avoiding between 320,000 and 120,000 premature deaths.

The new projections underscore the grave shortcomings of taking the lowest-cost approach to emissions reductions, which permits emissions of carbon dioxide and associated air pollutants to remain higher in the short-term in hopes they can be offset by negative emissions in the far distant future, said Drew Shindell, Nicholas Professor of Earth Sciences at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

“The lowest-cost approach only looks at how much it will cost to transform the energy sector. It ignores the human cost of more than 150 million lost lives, or the fact that slashing emissions in the near term will reduce long-term climate risk and avoid the need to rely on future carbon dioxide removal,” he said. “That’s a very risky strategy, like buying something on credit and assuming you’ll someday have a big enough income to pay it all back.”

Shindell conducted the new research with Greg Faluvegi of Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Karl Seltzer, a PhD student in earth and ocean sciences at Duke; and Cary Shindell, an undergraduate student in civil and environmental engineering at Duke. They published their peer-reviewed findings March 19 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Funding came from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

To conduct the study, they ran computer simulations of future emissions of carbon dioxide and associated pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter under three different scenarios. The first scenario simulated the effects of having accelerated reductions of carbon emissions and almost no negative emissions over the remainder of the 21st century. The second scenario simulated the effects of allowing slightly higher carbon emissions in the near term, but with still enough overall reductions to limit atmosphere warming to 2°C by century’s end. The third scenario simulated the effects of an even more accelerated approach, in which near-term emissions are reduced to a level that would limit atmospheric warming to 1.5°C.

The researchers then calculated the human health impacts of pollution exposure under each scenario all over the world — but focusing on results in major cities — using well-established epidemiological models based on decades of public health data on air-pollution related deaths.

“Since air pollution is something we understand very well and have extensive historical data on, we can say with relatively high certainty how many people will die in a given city under each scenario,” Shindell said. “Hopefully, this information will help policymakers and the public grasp the benefits of accelerating carbon reductions in the near term, in a way that really hits home.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by Duke University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Press link for more: Science Daily

Revolution is urgently needed! Naomi Klein Jeremy Rifkin #Neoliberalism #ClimateChange #auspol

We need to act urgently to slow catastrophic climate change.

Naomi Klein and Michelle Alexander in dialogue at the historic Riverside Church discussing urgent need for fundamental change arranged by the Union Theological Seminary NYC 15th February 2018.

Governments across the planet have been too slow to react to the climate crisis.

We need to rapidly join Europe and China in the Third Industrial Revolution.

The global economy is in crisis.

The exponential exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth and steep inequality is forcing us to rethink our economic models.

Nothing is more political than moving from centralized power that runs the world and the politics that went with that to distributed power and clean energy that can then be shared,” Rifkin said. “That is extremely political.

There’s lots of [early projects] but what hasn’t happened is an overarching vision or narrative to put it together.”

It’s time to join the revolution.

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Step Up to Solve Climate Change – Be heard in the Talanoa Dialogue #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani

UN Climate Change News, 21 March 2018 – The international response to climate change can get a boost of ambition this year from a Pacific Island tradition called Talanoa, ramped up to a global scale. To be a success, people representing businesses, investors, cities, regions, civil society and others need to step up to have their voices heard.

The aggregate ambition described in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement is still insufficient to reach the global goal of limiting temperature rise to 2-1.5 degree Celsius. The Talanoa Dialogue, launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn (COP 23) last December, invites everyone to engage in finding a solution, first by preparing submissions in response to three questions: Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?

The answers received will provide the substantive basis for ministerial discussions at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP 24) in Katowice, Poland, at the end of the year.

Businesses, investors, cities, regions, civil society and others are called on to engage with the Talanoa Dialogue by:

1 Submitting a written input to the Talanoa portal

2 Expressing interest to be part of an in-person Talanoa discussion during the Bonn Climate Change Conference, 30 April -10 May 2018

3 Fostering a broader conversation, such as by holding or participating in a ‘regional Talanoa’.

For more information on the ways to engage, please join the Presidency’s webinar with Fiji’s Lead Negotiator, Ambassador Danivalu, and high-level Climate Champion, Inia Seruiratu. More information will be made available soon.

The Dialogue takes its name from a traditional Pacific word – Talanoa – which describes an inclusive, non-confrontational space for collective problem solving where relationships can be forged and amicable solutions developed. By participating actively in dialogue, actors from all sectors and geographies can help meet the collective challenge of successfully implementing the Paris Agreement.

To read the full vision of the Talanoa Dialogue, please click here.

Submitting a written input to the Talanoa Portal

Inputs should be in line with the spirit of the Dialogue, which is constructive, facilitative, transparent, and, above all, solutions oriented. It is critical that inputs hit the right note, because key messages from this preparatory phase – captured in a synthesis report – will be considered, together with a complementary Yearbook of Global Climate Action, by ministers at the end of the year with a view to generating political momentum and guiding an increase in ambition.

For full guidance on submitting a written input, please click here. The high-level champions have prepared templates to assist stakeholders.

Applying to be part of an in-person Talanoa discussion during the Bonn Session

At the Bonn Climate Change Conference (30 April–10 May), UN Climate Change alongside the COP Presidencies, will convene a series of in-person Talanoa Dialogues. These will include representatives of government and various constituencies, organizations and coalitions, non-governmental and inter-governmental representatives. Visit the Platform for more information. The deadline for expression of interest is 29 March 2018.

Fostering a broader conversation

A broader conversation around the Talanoa Dialogue, which stretches beyond engagement via either the Portal or the Bonn sessions, is already emerging and is indeed a very positive development.

This conversation will naturally involve inputs, but which are not necessarily suitable for formal submission to the Talanoa Portal – such as poems and music. These are nonetheless invaluable for cultivating the right spirit for these open discussions.

Alongside this ad hoc input, which will live on social media and elsewhere, all actors are encouraged to organize their own ‘regional Talanoas’ and to submit outcomes to the Portal to further augment discussions.

We kindly ask all relevant stakeholders to help us issue a ‘call to action’, making use of your social media accounts, to foster a can-do spirit around the Talanoa Dialogue.

To this end, we have prepared a selection of webcards for use on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, which can be used by everyone.

Press link for more: COP23.UNFCCC

Project Drawdown 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming #auspol #qldpol #StopAdaniu

Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.

Our organization did not make or devise the plan—we found the plan because it already exists.

We gathered a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify, research, and model the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change.

What was uncovered is a path forward that can roll back global warming within thirty years.

It shows that humanity has the means at hand.

Nothing new needs to be invented.

The solutions are in place and in action.

Our work is to accelerate the knowledge and growth of what is possible.

We chose the name Drawdown because if we do not name the goal, we are unlikely to achieve it.

Drawdown is that point in time when the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere begins to decline on a year-to-year basis.

The Mission

Project Drawdown is facilitating a broad coalition of researchers, scientists, graduate students, PhDs, post-docs, policy makers, business leaders and activists to assemble and present the best available information on climate solutions in order to describe their beneficial financial, social and environmental impact over the next thirty years.

The Vision

To date, the full range and impact of climate solutions have not been explained in a way that bridges the divide between urgency and agency.

Thus the aspirations of people who want to enact meaningful solutions remain largely untapped.

Dr. Leon Clark, one of the lead authors of the IPCC 5th Assessment, wrote, ”

“We have the technologies, but we really have no sense of what it would take to deploy them at scale.”

Together, let’s figure it out.

For a summary of solutions by rank click here: 100 Solutions

Press link for more: Drawdown.org

Adani won’t commit to fresh funding deadline for $16.5b Carmichael mine #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani

Indian energy company Adani has refused to say when it expects to raise enough money to start its controversial $16.5 billion Carmichael coal mine after admitting it would not meet its self-imposed March deadline for the project.

By Mark Ludlow

With the company struggling to convince banks to lend money for the $6.7 billion first stage of the Central Queensland project and Labor leader Bill Shorten now openly opposing it, Adani is under pressure to make a funding commitment sooner rather than later.

It comes as Adani Renewable chief executive Jennifer Purdie admitted in a submission to the Energy Security Board that new thermal generation, such as coal-fired power, would be more expensive than existing generation assets in the National Energy Market.

Adani Australia chief executive Jeyakumar Janakaraj earlier this month vowed to go ahead with the Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin, despite a “flood of misinformation” from critics and the project becoming a lightning rod for environmental activists who want to stop any new coal mines in Australia.

Adani Australia head Jeyakumar Janakaraj won’t commit to a funding deadline for the Carmichael mine.

But Adani has yet to commit to a new deadline for the project, which has been in the planning and approval process for almost a decade.

The company claims the project will create 10,000 new jobs in regional Queensland, but this figure has been widely disputed by critics.

A spokeswoman for Adani said there were no plans to set a new deadline for funding, saying the company had already shown its commitment by investing $3.3 billion in Australia so far.

“We remain 100% committed to the Carmichael Project. We are confident of securing finance,” the spokeswoman said.

Adani has also yet to sign a royalties agreement with the Palaszczuk Labor government, with Treasurer Jackie Trad saying they were still waiting for the company to formally agree to the terms following an in-principle agreement last May.

Adani was an issue in the Batman byelection in Victoria last weekend, but Labor sources played down the party’s tough new stance against the project as being a defining factor in Ged Kearney’s victory.

Adani – which wants to export its coal to India – has in recent weeks been more vocal in spruiking its renewable business in Australia. It aims to establish 1500 megawatts of renewable energy generation, including solar, wind and pumped hydro, by 2022.

Despite critics claiming Adani’s investment in renewables was to mollify those opposed to the Carmichael mine – which would be the biggest open-cut coal mine in Australia – the Indian company is one of the world’s 15 biggest developers of solar power, with 1218 megawatts in operation and 1300 megawatts under construction in India. It also has 12 megawatts of wind power in operation and 140 megawatts under construction.

Ms Purdie said the company was committed to building a renewables business in Australia.

In a submission to the Energy Security Board, she backed the Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee – the Coalition’s proposed mechanism for the energy sector to drive down carbon emissions – but said the best chance of it building a sustainable renewable business in Australia was to have secure, reliable and affordable power.

“If consumers need to choose between affordability and reduced emissions, in almost every instance they will choose affordability,” Ms Purdie said in the submission.

Ms Purdie said new thermal generation, such as coal or gas, is going to be more expensive than older existing assets that have been depreciated.

“On this basis, it seems highly likely that the cost of energy going forward is going to be more expensive than it has historically been, for at least the next few years,” she said.

“Fundamentally, however, we should be designing the energy transition so that Australia has a global competitive advantage through a globally competitive energy prices and availability given the quality and diversity of our energy resources.”

Press link for more: AFR.COM

Climate change victims need money to survive, not words. #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani

Climate change victims need money to survive, not words

Published on 20/03/2018, 10:35am

There is an opportunity in May to help people hit hardest by climate change; governments must take it.

Sakina Bibi has lost three homes in 8 years to coastal erosion (Pic: EnGIO)

By Harjeet Singh, Sven Harmeling and Julie-Anne Richards

Sakina Bibi has lost three mud houses to the sea in less than 8 years, at Mousuni island in the Indian Sundarbans.

The 65-year-old is not alone. Since Cyclone Aila hit the region in the year 2009, over 2,000 families have been displaced due to unpredictable coastal flooding destroying their homes and livelihoods.

As climate change causes sea level rise, more than 13 million people living in the low-lying Sundarbans – a Unesco World Heritage Site spread across Bangladesh and India – face an uncertain future.

In May, there will be an opportunity to help people like Sakina Bibi: the Suva expert dialogue on “loss and damage”, to take place during interim UN climate talks in Bonn.

Governments must make sure this is not just a talking shop and leads to new finance for those hit hardest by climate change.

A pre-meeting last week showed promise, but also signs of resistance from rich countries to meaningful action. So what would be a positive outcome?

New money

First and foremost, the dialogue should mobilise money. Rich countries must engage constructively with what finance and support vulnerable countries need, who will provide it and how it will be channeled.

To date, there has been an emphasis on providing insurance against climate risks, but the expectation is that vulnerable populations pay the premiums. This is very unfair, as those people did not cause climate change. Also, insurance does not cover “slow onset events” like sea level rise and glacier melt.

We want to see polluters pay for the damage they have caused. One way would be to equitably implement a “climate damages tax” on fossil fuel extraction, which could raise billions of dollars a year.

The provisional concept does not guarantee to put such innovative financial mechanisms at the heart of the expert dialogue, but they will at least be on the agenda.

Science focus

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due to release a report later this year on 1.5C global warming, the toughest target in the Paris Agreement. It will detail what would be required to meet the target and the consequences of exceeding it.

This is an ideal opportunity to build up the evidence base around loss and damage. Sadly, some rich country representatives on the executive committee have blocked meaningful engagement with the IPCC, despite the science panel’s willingness to cooperate.

Julie-Anne Richards

@jar_climate

At the #WIM #ExCom7 meeting. For the 2nd time reps from US, Australia, UK, Germany all trying to shut down discussions between the #IPCC and this @UNFCCC body tasked with dealing with #lossanddamage from #climatechange. Why? What are they so afraid of?

9:10 PM – Mar 14, 2018

Migration

At the Paris climate summit in 2015, governments commissioned a task force to “avert, minimise and address” climate-induced displacement, which according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre already affects an average of 21.5 million people each year.

Made up of specialists from climate negotiations and agencies like the International Organisation for Migration and UN Refugee Agency, the task force is holding a stakeholder consultation mid-May to develop policy recommendations. The process will complement the UN Global Compact on Migration, which concludes this year.

Policymakers must rise above politics and self-interest to protect the life and dignity of people forced to move by climate changes beyond their control.

Sakina Bibi and millions like her depend on it.

Harjeet Singh is the global climate change lead for Action Aid International, Sven Harmeling is global policy lead on climate change for Care International and Julie-Anne Richards is an independent consultant

Press link for more: Climate change news

Turnbull The #ClimateChange Denier #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani

Turnbull knows better than to deny fire weather link to climate change

Peter Hannam20 March 2018 — 4:19pm

Raising the issue of the role of climate change in extreme weather events is always a delicate matter for families battling grief over lost homes and emergency service teams managing the aftermath.

But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have a discussion about the issues. If not now, when?

Malcolm Turnbull visit burned out homes in Tathra on Monday.

Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Malcolm Turnbull echoed the comments of his deposed predecessor Tony Abbott when he visited Tathra, the NSW south coastal town hit with huge fires amid record-breaking March heat.

Abbott in 2013 declared in the wake of Blue Mountain bushfires that destroyed 200 homes that “these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they’re a function of life in Australia”.

Unlike Abbott, though, Turnbull is not a denier of climate change, having taken personal efforts to school himself in the issue with scientists from the University of NSW well before becoming Prime Minister.

So, it’s surprising to hear Turnbull on TV on Monday, in rebuttal of Greens’ leader Richard Di Natale that climate change was behind Sunday’s fires, saying: “We have an environment which has extremes.

Bushfires are part of Australia, as indeed are droughts and floods.”

He preceded those comments, though, with a view that, if truly held, suggests the Prime Minister isn’t listening to his scientific advisors.

Fears of asbestos contamination restricted residents coming to see if their home was destroyed by fire to a bus tour of the NSW south coast town.

“[A]s you know very well, you can’t attribute any particular event, whether it’s a flood or fire or a drought … to climate change,” Turnbull said.

Labor leader Bill Shorten said on Tuesday there were legitimate questions to ask about the impact of climate change but opted to avoid inflaming the discussion just now.

“I understand there is a debate about climate in this county,” he said during a visit to Tathra. “On a day when 69 houses have gone, it is not a debate I will start.”

Actually, the science of attribution is advancing fast, and extreme heat – and with it, days of high fire risk – is among the clearer climate signals.

(Turnbull also denies climate change link to coral bleaching)

As Andrew King of Melbourne University and David Karoly – now head of the CSIRO’s climate centre – noted Australia is actually at the head of the pack when it comes to joining the dots between extreme weather and global warming.

To be clear, it’s not a case of saying Sunday’s fires near Bega (or south-west Victoria) were sparked by climate change.

Rather it’s a matter of probabilities.

“While we can’t say climate change caused an extreme event, we can estimate how much more or less likely the event has become due to human influences on the climate,” King and Karoly note.

Whether the Tathra fires are deemed large enough to examine for attribution (and the chance that Adelaide, Hobart, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane should all hit 30 degrees so late in the season as they did on Saturday) will be up the scientists to decide.

But fire authorities across Australia know the bushfire season is getting longer. So, too, is the frequency, intensity and duration of heatwaves.

Add our fire-prone eucalyptus forests – with many species needing fire to regenerate – and it’s no wonder Australians have particular cause to fear climate change.

“Nature hurls her worst at us … always will and always has,” Turnbull said.

The worst, though, will in some cases get more extreme, and pretending otherwise is not leadership.

Peter Hannam is Environment Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald. He covers broad environmental issues ranging from climate change to renewable energy for Fairfax Media.

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