environment – Page 5 – ANGFA Queensland

‘It’s been hot before’: faulty logic skews the climate debate

Feb 212014

Original story by John Cook at The Conversation

Global warming is increasing the risk of heatwaves. This isn’t a hypothetical abstraction that our grandchildren may experience in the distant future. Heatwaves are currently getting hotter, they’re lasting longer and they’re happening more often. This is happening right now.

Tony Abbott has pledged to help drought-stricken farmers while dismissing the link to climate change. Photo: AAP

Of course, heatwaves have happened in the past, including before humans started altering the climate. But it’s faulty logic to suggest that this means they’re not increasing now, or that it’s not our fault.

Sadly, this logical fallacy pervades the debate over heatwaves, not to mention other extreme events such as droughts, bushfires, floods and storms and even climate change itself. What’s more, we’re hearing it with worrying regularity from our political leaders.

Heatwaves on the rise

First, the science. As the Climate Council has reported, hot days have doubled in Australia over the past half-century. During the decade from 2000 to 2009, heatwaves reached levels not expected until the 2030s. The anticipated impacts from climate change are arriving more than two decades ahead of schedule.

The increase in heatwaves in Australia is part of a larger global trend. Globally, heatwaves are happening five times more often than in the absence of human-caused global warming. This means that there is an 80% chance that any monthly heat record is due to global warming.

As the figure below indicates, the risk from heatwaves is expected to increase in the near future. Assuming our greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040, heat records will be about 12 times more likely to occur three decades from now.

Increase in the number of heat records compared to those expected in a world without global warming. Image: Coumou, Robinson, and Rahmstorf

The impacts of heatwaves go a lot further than tennis players’ burnt bottoms. As we are now coming to realise, heatwaves kill more Australians than any other type of extreme weather. Floods, cyclones, bushfires and lightning strikes may capture more media coverage, but heatwaves are deadlier. On top of this comes new research linking heatwaves to increased rates of suicide.

Why are heatwaves increasing? Put simply, our planet is building up heat. Over the past few decades, our climate system has been building up heat at a rate of four Hiroshima bombs every second. As we continue to emit more heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the warming continues unabated.

“But it’s happened before!”

This is the point at which some people’s logic tends to go off the rails, distorting the science and insidiously distracting us from the risks. The reasoning is that as heatwaves have happened throughout Australia’s history, it follows that current heatwaves must also be entirely natural. This is a myth.

This is the classic logical fallacy of non sequitur – Latin for “it does not follow”. It’s equivalent to arguing that as humans died of cancer long before cigarettes were invented, it therefore follows that smoking does not cause cancer.

The non sequitur logical fallacy

This non sequitur is routinely used by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. He invoked it to deny that human-caused global warming was influencing bushfires (a phenomenon strongly influenced by heatwaves) and floods:

“Australia has had fires and floods since the beginning of time. We’ve had much bigger floods and fires than the ones we’ve recently experienced. You can hardly say they were the result of anthropic global warming.”

Like a magician’s misdirection, this false argument distracts from the fact that the risk is increasing. Fire danger has been rising across many Australian locations since the 1970s. Fire danger days are happening not just in summer but also in spring and autumn.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has followed the Prime Minister’s lead. The fact that Hunt used Wikipedia rather than scientific experts to inform his views caused many to overlook his logically flawed argument in downplaying the increasing risk from bushfires:

“I looked up what Wikipedia says for example, just to see what the rest of the world thought, and it opens up with the fact that bushfires in Australia are frequently occurring events during the hotter months of the year. Large areas of land are ravaged every year by bushfires. That’s the Australian experience.”

This week, Abbott reportedly denied the link between climate change and drought using the same fallacy:

“If you look at the records of Australian agriculture going back 150 years, there have always been good times and bad times. There have always been tough times and lush times and farmers ought to be able to deal with the sorts of things that are expected every few years.”

This argument overlooks the relationship between climate change and drought. Global warming intensifies the water cycle, making wet areas get wetter while drying other regions such as Australia’s south and east. Drier conditions, along with increased heatwaves, also drive the increase in bushfire danger.

Abbott doesn’t restrict his fallacies to extreme weather. Several years ago, he also presented the non sequitur to a classroom of schoolchildren, arguing that past climate change casts doubt on whether humans are now causing global warming:

“OK, so the climate has changed over the eons and we know from history, at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth the climate was considerably warmer than it is now. And then during what they called the Dark Ages it was colder. Then there was the medieval warm period. Climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history. It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays.”

This flies in the face of decades of peer-reviewed research. My colleagues and I have found that among climate research stating a position on the causes of global warming, more than 97% endorse the consensus that humans are responsible.

It is greatly concerning that Australian policy is being dictated by science-distorting false logic. The science is sending us a clear message: human-caused global warming is increasing the risk of heatwaves as well as other extreme weather events such as floods, drought and bushfires. We need to look this problem square in the face, rather than have our attention misdirected.

John Cook created and maintains the Skeptical Science website

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Newly discovered microbe holds key to global warming

environment, research

Feb 192014

Media release from UQ News

Scientists from The University of Queensland have discovered a microbe that is set to play a significant role in future global warming.

Scientists document the temperature of soil, one layer above permafrost. Photo: Dr Virginia Rich, University of Arizona.

UQ’s Australian Centre for Ecogenomics researcher Ben Woodcroft said the methane-producing micro-organism, known as a ‘methanogen’, was thriving in northern Sweden’s thawing permafrost in a thick subsurface layer of soil that has previously remained frozen.

Mr Woodcroft said no one knew of the microbe’s existence or how it worked before the research discovery.

He said global warming trends meant vast areas of permafrost would continue to thaw, allowing the microbes to flourish in organic matter and drive methane gas release, which would further fuel global warming.

“The micro-organism generates methane by using carbon dioxide and hydrogen from the bacteria it lives alongside,” Mr Woodcroft said.

Lead researcher and UQ’s Australian Centre for Ecogenomics Deputy Director Associate Professor Gene Tyson said the findings were significant.

“This micro-organism is responsible for producing a substantial fraction of methane at this site,” he said.

“Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with about 25 times the warming capacity of carbon dioxide.”

The researchers showed the organism and its close relatives live not just in thawing permafrost but in many other methane-producing habitats worldwide.

The team made the discovery by using DNA from soil samples and reconstructing a near-complete genome of the microbe, bypassing traditional methods of cultivating microbes in the lab.

The ‘Discovery of a novel methanogen prevalent in thawing permafrost’ research is published here in the journal Nature Communications.

PhD candidate Rhiannon Mondav who is student of UQ and Uppsala University based in Sweden, co-authored the paper alongside ACE researchers and international collaborators.

The work was funded by the United States Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research’s Genomic Science Program and the Australian Research Council.

Media: ACE Deputy Director Associate Professor Gene Tyson, 07 3365 3829,g.tyson@awmc.uq.edu.au or UQ Faculty of Science Communications Officer Monique Nevison, 07 3346 4129, m.nevison@uq.edu.au.

A wet warning from Australia’s Top End on rising sea levels

community, environment, government, waterways/wetlands

Feb 192014

By Andrew Campbell, Charles Darwin University and Stephen Garnett, Charles Darwin University at The Conversation

Rising sea levels are typically written about as a “threat to future generations” – something to worry about by 2050 or 2100, not now. But if you want to see why even relatively small increases in sea levels matter, come to Darwin.

Riding underwater on Darwin’s most popular bike path, on 1 February 2014. Photo: Andrew Campbell

The Arafura and Timor Seas off northern Australia are a global hotspot for warming oceans and rising sea levels. Image: CSIRO

Australia’s top end is a global hotspot for rising sea levels. In Darwin and the World Heritage-listed floodplains of Kakadu National Park, we’re seeing how the combination of gradual sea level rise and “normal” weather events – such as storms and king tides – can have surprisingly big impacts.

Small changes adding up to big damage

Storms and heavy rain are not unusual in the Darwin wet season. But recent weather has been spectacular, as monsoonal onshore winds coincided with king tides to batter the shoreline. Crowds gathered to see waves crashing over cliffs and jetties that usually overlook calm seas. Tragically, two people got into trouble in these rough seas, losing their lives, and a young boy drowned in a flooded stormwater drain.

Sea levels around Darwin, which abuts the warm, shallow Arafura Sea, have risen by about 17 centimetres over the past 20 years. As the CSIRO noted in its last State of the Climate report, the rates of sea-level rise to the north and northwest of Australia have been 7 to 11 millimetres per year, which is two to three times the global average. Along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia, rates of sea-level rise are around the global average.

Sea-level rise rates around Australia, as measured by coastal tide gauges (circles) and satellite observations (contours) from January 1993 to December 2011. Source: CSIRO State of the Climate 2012

Seventeen centimetres may not seem much, especially with a 7 to 8 metre daily tidal range. However, raising the underlying base makes a big difference, not just to the ultimate penetration of big tides and storm surges, but also in the everyday hydrodynamic fluxes on beaches, estuaries and floodplains.

The impact of recent Darwin weather on infrastructure — both built and natural — has profound implications for coastal planning, design, management and regulation. The recent confluence of 8-metre king tides with strong onshore winds after weeks of wet monsoonal weather was unusual, but well short of being even a Category 1 cyclone.

By Darwin standards, there has been nothing exceptional about this wet season’s wind or tides. There was heavier than average rain last month – but even that has been a long way short of the records, or even a 1-in-10 year event.

The chunk of bitumen with the white line used to be the bike path. Photo: Andrew Campbell

Yet the damage we are seeing in Darwin has been considerable. Near where we live, a significant stretch of the city’s most popular bike path (right) was washed away. Further north, a large casuarina tree, which 10 years ago stood atop the landward side of two dunes, toppled into the surf. A blowhole emerged where waves had undercut the cliffs.

As the City of Darwin has acknowledged for years, eroding coastlines are a growing problem for Darwin.

And as global maps in a recent article in the journal Nature showed, Darwin is just one of many cities – including heavily populated centres such as New York City, Kolkata and Shanghai – at growing risk of coastal flooding, in part due to accelerating sea-level rise.

How can we manage change better?

In Darwin, like other low-lying coastal settlements, we essentially have three options: start managing our retreat from the sea; try to engineer coastal defences; or get used to much more volatile and risky life on the edge, and modify our systems, policies and behaviour accordingly.

Of course, we could simply do nothing. But we contend that is the least credible and potentially most expensive option in the long run.

The other three options of managed retreat, investment in coastal defences, and accepting greater risk are not mutually exclusive. They can be blended within a well-conceived long-term strategy.

Managed retreat is the most confronting option, which some communities are already facing. Some low-lying coastal areas simply cannot be defended cost-effectively, and even the best adaptation strategies may be inadequate.

But there are also significant opportunities to reconfigure coastal settlement in ways that minimise social disruption.

In places with valuable assets, such as parts of some cities or Kakadu, we can improve coastal defences, natural and/or engineered.

On the Tommycut Creek: this used to be a freshwater melaleuca forest, like those seen in the film Ten Canoes, but saltwater intrusion has turned it into a hypersaline swamp. Photo: Eric Valentine

After our recent storms, Darwin’s coasts were more intact in sections where mangroves, trees and shrubs protected the soil. While the shoreline did retreat, damage was less than in cleared sections. We need to be replanting the dunes we want to keep, and retaining or restoring mangroves in estuarine and low-lying areas.

The North Australian Biodiversity Hub is working with Kakadu Traditional Owners to look at options for managing the impacts of weeds and sea level rise on the floodplains that are so important for food for local people, and more broadly for Top End fishing and tourism experiences.

A casuarina tree that used to be on the landward side of two dunes, now toppled on the beach. Photo: Andrew Campbell

In Darwin, hard protection of foreshore made some difference. But even rock-walled sections were disassembled in places, with the rocks dragged back into the sea or thrown, with astonishing force, onto the tops of cliffs.

If expensive hard protection is going to be used, it needs to be done at a scale that is engineered to last for decades and withstand extreme weather events, taking into account projected future sea levels.

Darwin residents protest against a proposed residential island between Nightcliff and East Point. Photo: Andrew Campbell

The latest climate science suggests that northern Australia may have less frequent cyclones in future, but a higher proportion of extremely intense (Category 5 or worse) tropical cyclones.

Thirdly, the construction of new residential or tourism infrastructure in exposed zones of the coastal environment is inherently risky. At the very least, coastal planning must take into account the amplified risks from continuing sea-level rise.

Prepare now, or pay later

What we are seeing now in Darwin is a taste of things to come in many coastal areas of the world if we don’t take preventative and adaptive measures.

This has major implications for residents, investors, insurers, planners and policymakers. It also promises to create fertile grounds for litigation in the future, if people approving developments are not seen to be basing their decisions on the best available information.

Recent events in Darwin underline that sea level, especially in the monsoonal north, is rising fast, and old assumptions should no longer hold.

So we need to think long-term about which bits of coastal infrastructure we want to try to keep, and for how long, while steadily moving essential services to more secure places.

And we should remember that recent storms have been mild compared to the cyclone that will likely whack Darwin again sooner or later.

The Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods undertakes research and monitoring in Darwin Harbour and other coastal areas in northern Australia and south-east Asia, funded by a wide range of NT and Commonwealth agencies and industry, including the Bushfires and Natural Hazards CRC.

Stephen Garnett receives funding from the Australian Research Council for research on Indigenous land and sea management and has received funding from the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility on climate change adaptation for birds.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Catch, cut, tag, follow the fish to find out why they die

environment, fisheries, waterways/wetlands

Feb 142014

Original story by Sharon Kennedy and Ron Tait, ABC south west WA

The death of thousands of fish has prompted Murdoch University researchers map the movement of fish in one of the most important waterways in the South West.

Dead fish in the estuary in April last year. Photo: Roxanne Taylor – ABC News

The research was initiated following fish deaths in the Vasse Wonnerup estuary in April last year.

Over the years, there have been several large fish kills, with the most recent happening just weeks ago.

Dr James Tweedley is part of the Murdoch Fish Health Unit. Community concerns following the deaths focussed on the use of the system’s flood gates, he says.

Understanding the fish movement could then lead to better use of the gates.

“Just because you open the door, doesn’t mean the fish are going to walk through it.”

The researchers will focus on two species, sea mullet and black bream.

“The Vasse is an interesting system because traditionally estuaries are fresh at one end and salty at the other.

“The Vasse switches between the two. The upper becomes very salty at some point of the year and the bit down the bottom by the bar is actually the fresher, even though it’s at full strength sea water.

“We’re really interested to see how fish naturally cope with this variation.

“That’s why we’re tagging them for a year so we get the seasonal changes in salinity.

“If a low oxygen event occurs, we’ll be able to see how fish move into and away from areas.

The species under study use the estuary in very different ways, says Dr Tweedley.

The black bream are born and die in the estuary while the sea mullet spawn in the ocean before swimming into the sheltered, food rich environment as juveniles.

“Once mature, they move back into the ocean to spawn.”

There are several reasons why mass fish kills can happen, says Dr Tweedley.

“In the Swan (River) we have phytotoxic blooms that break down the gills so the fish can’t breathe.”

“Fish will try to escape differently in high salinity waters or low oxygen waters.”

Community consultation has highlighted concerns about the use of the flood gates in the Vasse.

Dr Tweedley argues that understanding fish movement may underpin changes in their use.

The gates, he says, are manmade flood prevention and stop salt water moving up into the system.

“We don’t get that (flooding) in summer. Providing we can still maintain the value of the ecosystem for birds, we could use them (the flood mitigation) to better protect fish.

“Our research is the first step…we don’t know how fish interact with the gate.”

The researchers will use two types of tagging to follow the fish in the estuary, explains Dr Tweedley.

“The first is an acoustic tag. We catch, anaesthetise and then we perform surgery.”

A very small lozenge is inserted into the body cavity and the fish are released.

Acoustic listening stations throughout the estuary will log a tagged fish each time it swims past.

The buoys will be deployed for 380 days of monitoring and will operate 24 hours a day.

As well, the Murdoch team hope to involve recreational fishers in other aspects of the project.

Host an event for Connect to Your Creek Week in May

Australian native freshwater species, Club News, community, environment, government, waterways/wetlands

Feb 132014

Original story at the Fraser Coast Chronicle

COMMUNITY groups and schools are being encouraged to host an event for the inaugural Connect to Your Creek Week.

Community groups and schools are being encouraged to host an event focused on their local creek.

Healthy Waterways chief executive Julie McLellan said the aim of the campaign, from May 17-25, was to improve waterway health by increasing community stewardship of local waterways so people valued and cared for their local creek.

“Throughout the week, there will be a variety of events across South East Queensland to celebrate the diversity and beauty of our waterways,” she said.

“We encourage all community groups and schools to join us by hosting an event focused on their local creek.”

Examples of events that groups might host include tree plantings, kayaking tours, litter cleanups, guided walks, documentary screenings and workshops.

People have until February 24 to register their interest in hosting an event by completing the online form at http://www.healthywaterways.org.

Environment Minister Andrew Powell said the Queensland Government was proud to partner with Healthy Waterways on the exciting new initiative.

“One of the many reasons people love living in Queensland is our beautiful environment and our outdoor lifestyle,” he said.

“In south-east Queensland our waterways play a major role in the way we enjoy ourselves outdoors. Whether it’s visiting a cafe near the Brisbane River or taking a family camping trip near a favourite creek or waterhole.

“I look forward to celebrating our connections to our favourite waterways and attending some of the Connect to your Creek Week events.”

Human influence heats up Australia

community, environment

Feb 122014

Original story by Clare Pain, ABC Science

Global warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions were the likely cause of last year’s record-breaking temperatures in Australia, say researchers.

Last summer’s record temperatures occurred in neutral, slightly ‘La Ni’ conditions . Photo: Will Burgess/Reuters

The Australian summer of 2012/13 was the hottest on record and the calendar year 2013 saw the highest average temperatures recorded in over 100 years of observations,University of Melbourne research fellow Dr Sophie Lewis, told the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society‘s annual conference in Hobart today.

Modelling analysed by Lewis and Professor David Karoly points the finger at human influences on climate, particularly emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Since records began in 1910, the average temperature in Australia has climbed by around 1°C, says Lewis.

This may not seem much, but Lewis says it is important: “With a degree change in average temperature we can get very large changes in the frequency and severity of climate extremes.”

In 2013 the average temperature, across the nation’s network of weather stations, was 1.2°C above the average for the 30 years between 1961 and 1990. Lewis and Karoly set out to find out why.

Parallel worlds

The researchers used “state-of-the art” climate models to run two different ‘experiments’.

One experiment puts all the known influences on temperature into the models: radiation coming from the Sun, emissions from volcanic eruptions, and human influences such as carbon dioxide and aerosol emissions.

The second experiment puts in the same data for natural events, but no data for human influences.

“It gives us that hypothetical parallel world … the world that might have been without human influences,” says Lewis.

The models simulate the global climate over the past 150 years or so. By comparing the outputs of the two experiments, the human influence can be quantified.

Using output from nine climate models used by international groups throughout the world, the pair were able to calculate the odds of last year’s unusual temperatures.

“We found that the human greenhouse gas influences had increased the risk of that 2012/13 hot summer by at least five times,” says Lewis.

But, it was the results for the calendar year of 2013 that were most striking, she says.

“We found it was nearly impossible to reach the temperatures we experienced [in 2013] in the model experiments with just the natural climate variations.”

In fact, of the 13,000 model-years they looked at, where only natural factors were allowed to influence climate, only one reached the temperatures we saw last year.

ENSO found ‘not guilty’

Natural variations caused by the ‘El-Niño Southern Oscillation’ (ENSO) would, if anything, have favoured lower temperatures last year.

Six of the past eight record-breaking hot summers have occurred in years of ‘El Niño’ conditions, but last year’s summer occurred in neutral, slightly ‘La Niña’ conditions, which normally lead to cooler, wetter weather, says Lewis.

“This study really does show that the human influences – the global warming – made a very crucial difference to the extreme temperatures of 2013,” she concludes.

Fish may end up in hot water as climate warms the ocean

environment

Feb 112014

By Michael Burrows, Scottish Association for Marine Science at The Conversation

The rate at which the world has warmed over the past 50 years and is likely to continue to do so in the future poses problems for life on land and in the ocean. Most species have a defined range of temperatures within which they can live – and when temperatures exceed the upper limit for a particular species in a particular location, that species will struggle to survive there. Likewise, places can become newly habitable when temperatures become warmer than a species’ lower limit.

Cod: in search of cold waters. Photo: August Linnman

The complex patterns and distribution of these ecological niches with specific temperatures and the varying rates at which they are changing around the globe make it hard to predict where these changes will be felt, and what consequences they will have. Our study, published in Nature, has taken a new look at these changes and their likely effects on biodiversity.

Our research group examined how fast and in which direction local temperatures have moved over the past 50 years. Based on the projections from current climate models we also looked projected forward oceanic changes to the year 2100 under two scenarios, one the “business-as-usual” scenario of largely unchanged greenhouse gas emissions and another modelling a global increase in temperature of 1.75°C.

Assuming that species move toward areas that suit their preferences for heat or cold, our findings provide some insight into how species have migrated over time, and where they may end up after years, decades or even a century of changing, warming world. This is a big assumption. Some species may adapt to the change in temperature and not move, while others may not be able to disperse and colonise new habitats fast enough, and may die off.

But in general, shifts in temperature have proved to be a good predictor for past changes in species distributions. Around the coasts of North America, for example, Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska, big skate on the US west coast and American lobster in the north-east have all shifted in the direction and over the distance predicted from thermal shifts.

Over the past few decades, numerous fish and invertebrate species have moved toward cooler regions, in some cases with important consequences for local biodiversity. For example, in the North Sea the areas where cod are found have shifted up to 100km northwards over the the 40 years between 1961-2001. In the same period, plankton in the North East Atlantic have similarly shifted 1,000km poleward.

Temperature gradients, 1960-2009: where will species move to seek relief from the heat? Photo: Burrows et al./Nature

However, a key finding of this study is that geographic features such as coastlines create barriers for marine life that may be tracking shifting temperatures. By mapping where these barriers influence potential migrations around the globe it may be possible to identify places where the movement of species biodiversity might be blocked.

These naturally existing blockages might cut some areas off from species migrating from warming seas. Blocked-off areas included the North Sea and the southern Mediterranean in the period since 1960, places without direct connections to warmer environments. In other places it might prevent migrating species from escaping, with potentially catastrophic results – blocked in to a region in which it cannot thrive, extinction becomes likely unless it can adapt to the new conditions.

Knowing where vulnerable areas occur can help focus and inform conservation efforts. Areas where temperature shifts are slow may be better suited to protecting endemic species or long-lived structural species, for example those forming forests or land or coral reefs underwater. Moving species from those warming places without cool refuges might be an option to prevent climate-driven extinctions, although care must be given to the potential negative ecological consequences of introducing these species to new places. For those species unable to move, conservations may need to find ways of enhancing species’ natural adaptation wherever possible.

We are far from advocating that distribution shifts are the only issues for deciding what to do in the face of climate change. Biological factors such as a species’ capacity to adapt and disperse need to be considered. But in an unprecedented period of climate change, economic development and fast-growing demand on an already pressured planet, we need to act fast to make sure the world’s living resources survive that change.

Michael Burrows receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, and is also a professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Is $15 a year really too much to pay for renewable energy?

community, environment, government

Feb 112014

By Dylan McConnell, University of Melbourne at The Conversation

Australia’s Renewable Energy Target looks likely to be weakened or even axed, with the Prime Minister saying the scheme needs to be reviewed because it is causing “pretty significant price pressure”.

Cooling towers at Yallourn, one of Victoria’s major brown coal power generators. Photo: Flickr/ccdoh1

But does $15 a year sound like a “pretty significant” cost to you?

According to the last national review of the Renewable Energy Target, $15 a year from now to 2031 is all that an average Australian household would save if we scrapped our national scheme to drive extra investment in renewable power.

That review – by the independent Climate Change Authority, with economic modelling by global consultants Sinclair Knight Merz – was completed just over a year ago, in December 2012.

Yet that very recent finding hasn’t stopped the federal government setting up a new Renewable Energy Target review, with Mr Abbott saying last week that the review would “consider the impact of the renewable energy target on power prices”.

Already there have been front page reports of rifts within the government about the scheme’s future.

Some, including Nationals Senator Ron Boswell, want to scrap the renewables target entirely, while others, including Environment Minister Greg Hunt, say they are “committed to keeping the RET because of the pre-election commitment and it’s been an effective way of reducing emissions”.

So just what is the Renewable Energy Target? And what does it really cost an average Australian household – not just now, but in the future – according to the reviews and reports done on it before?

What are we aiming for?

The Renewable Energy Target (RET) is designed to encourage additional investment in renewable energy generation. It does this by requiring wholesale electricity consumers (mainly big power retailers) to purchase a certain percentage of renewable energy, which increases each year. This incurs a cost to retailers – companies like AGL and Origin – which is passed on to consumers through electricity bills.

The current scheme is a more ambitious version of the scheme first set up by the Howard government in 2001. In 2009, the target was increased five-fold (under the Rudd government, with Coalition support) to mandate that 45,000 gigawatt hours of Australia’s electricity generation must come from renewable resources by 2020. At the time the RET was legislated, this was projected to be the equivalent of 20% of total energy supplied in 2020.

It wasn’t controversial at the time; in fact, then opposition MP Greg Hunt wrote an article that year, questioning why it was taking so long to introduce.

What does the renewable target cost you?

Currently, around 3-4% of your bill can be attributed to the Renewable Energy Target. For a typical residential consumer, that works out to be about $50-$70 per year, out of an average bill of about $1800-$2200. So in that sense, the Prime Minister is right about there being some additional cost.

But let’s put that in perspective. As the graph below shows, the main reason for “pretty significant price pressure” on retail power prices is increasing network costs. According to the Australian Energy Market Commission, these have and will continue to dominate electricity price increases.

You have to look hard to even see the costs associated with renewable energy.

Components of residential electricity tariffs. The Renewable Energy Target scheme costs are shown in yellow (SRES: Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme) and red (LRET: Large-scale Renewable Energy Target). Data from the Australian Energy Market Commision

Increased competition, lower costs

When you consider the way renewables interact with the wholesale electricity market, the overall cost is even less.

Adding more renewable energy into the mix of our electricity supplies actually has the effect of lowering wholesale electricity prices. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but it is simply the laws of supply and demand at work.

If you increase supply and competition in a market, prices can be expected to fall. In the case of renewables, it is exacerbated by the low marginal cost of generation, and is known as the “merit order effect”.

The merit order effect is often overlooked in discussions of renewable energy costs. If lower wholesale prices were passed through to consumers, the overall cost of the Renewable Energy Target scheme would be even lower.

In fact, some energy users may be effectively overcompensated, and benefiting from this effect. Trade exposed industries (such as aluminium smelting) are exempt from paying 90% of the Renewable Energy Target costs, but may benefit from lower wholesale prices.

Why not tinker with the target?

In the few years since the Renewable Energy Target was set, demand for electricity has dropped, meaning the amount of power we’re likely to consume in 2020 has been revised significantly downwards. Under current arrangements, that means that the RET scheme would end up providing more than 20% of total power demand in 2020 – probably more like 26%.

One option being pushed by Origin Energy is for a “25% by 2025” target. That might sound like an increase – but actually that would mean less renewable energy in 2025 than Australia is currently on track to build by 2020.

On the weekend, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann was asked if the government planned to scrap or weaken the RET on Sky News. Senator Cormann said the government was looking for “sensible adjustments” to bring down power prices, since that would boost our international competitiveness while “helping families with cost of living pressures”.

So let’s say Australia adjusted its current target to make sure we don’t build any more than 20% renewable energy by 2020. How much would it help families with cost of living pressures?

The previous review for the federal government looked at just that option. And including the impacts on the wholesale market, the saving for an average Australian consumer was estimated to be between $0 and $10 per year.

Going further, and scrapping the Renewable Energy Target entirely, would save just $15 per year.

Yet the constant reviews and threat of further tinkering with the target is paralysing solar and wind energy projects worth up to $18 billion and putting thousands of jobs at risk. As of late last year, the solar PV industry alone employed about 13,600 people.

Will we let history repeat?

With such a relatively small impact on retail prices, why all the fuss about needing to change the target?

The existing fossil fuel electricity generators have been hit hard by the impact renewables has had on the market: not only are they being displaced by renewables and selling less energy, they are receiving a lower wholesale price.

In the past, the demands of the existing power industry to protect their own interests have easily won out against the emerging renewable industry. For instance, a 2011 Victorian Auditor-General’s Report noted that a state renewable energy scheme was weakened:

primarily to alleviate the concerns of brown coal generators that the 10 per cent target would deliver too much renewable energy generation too quickly, which would reduce wholesale electricity prices and adversely affect existing generators.

Will that happen all over again, this time at a national level?

Perhaps. But this time, the renewable industry has grown and is planning to fight back with a marginal seats campaign and a public appeal to save the current Renewable Energy Target.

With a bigger renewables industry, more jobs at stake and greater public awareness, maybe this time will be different.

Dylan McConnell has previously received funding from the AEMC’s Consumer Advocacy Panel.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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Most Australians overestimate how ‘green’ they really are

community, environment

Feb 072014

By Zoe Leviston, CSIRO at The Conversation

Most Australians overestimate how much they are doing for the environment compared to others, and are more concerned about water shortages, pollution and household waste than climate change, a new CSIRO survey reveals.

More than half of Australians say they recycle for mostly environmental reasons. Photo: Shutterstock/spwidoff

Taken over a period of July to August last year, it is the latest in a series of annual national surveys on Australians’ attitudes to climate change involving more than 5000 people from across urban, regional, and rural Australia. (You can read about past survey results here and here.)

More than 70% of people said they thought climate change was an important issue, which has remained consistently the case since we first asked this question in 2010.

However, compared to many other issues including health, costs of living and other environmental issues such as drought, we found that climate change was considered to be much less of a concern.

Biased towards ourselves

The way we perceive ourselves and others can influence how we respond to contested issues, including climate change. However, these perceptions are subject to cognitive biases or distortions as we attempt to make sense of the world around us.

Misperceptions about what others think about climate change extend to misperceptions about what others do.

One of the questions we asked people in this latest survey was what they were doing in their everyday lives to respond to climate change, and why.

For example, did they always recycle their household waste, had they installed solar panels, or had they changed their diet? The results are shown below.

What environmental actions people said they were doing in their everyday lives. Image: CSIRO

When we added up all the actions people said yes to (regardless of why they were doing them), we found a normal distribution of responses: a few people did not much of anything; quite a lot of people did a moderate amount; and a few people did a great deal.

We then asked our respondents this question: “How much do you think you do compared to the average Australian: a lot less, a little less, about the same, a bit more, or a lot more?” Here’s what they said.

How much environmental action the survey respondents thought they took, compared with an average Australian. Image: CSIRO

So how good were our 5000 respondents at guessing how they compared with others? To find out, we cross-referenced what people said they did with their estimates of how they compared with an average Australian.

Just under one-quarter (21.5%) got it about right: regardless of how many actions they performed, their assessment of where they stood in relation to other people was fairly accurate.

The same amount (21.5%) were what we might call “self-deprecating”: they undervalued their comparative performance.

But more than half our participants (57.1%) were “self-enhancing”: they tended to overestimate how much environmental action they were compared to others.

Research tells us that it’s not just the environment where we tend to think we’re better than others.

The “better than average effect” describes our predisposition to think of ourselves as exceptional, especially among our peers. The effect reflects our tendency to think of ourselves as more virtuous and moral, more compassionate and understanding and (ironically) as less biased than other people.

In a famous example, when people were asked to assess their own driving ability relative to peers, more than three-quarters of people considered themselves to be safer than the average driver.

How important is climate change?

When we asked people how important climate change was, just over 70% of people rated it as “somewhat”, “very”, or “extremely” important. That importance rating has remained unchanged when we first asked this back in 2010.

But this year we also asked people to rank the importance of climate change relative to a list of 16 general concerns in society, including health, the cost of living, and the economy. When framed in these relative terms, climate change was ranked as the third least important issue.

How people ranked a list of general and environmental concerns. CSIRO

Similar to previous years, we found the majority of respondents (81%) think the Earth’s climate is changing, and people are more likely to think that human activity is the cause (47%) as opposed to natural variations in temperature (39%). When we look at repeat respondents (those people who participated in more than one of our surveys), we find no significant changes since 2010, although there was a very slight increase in the small proportion of people who say they “don’t know”.

Other changes have been slight, but noteworthy. There has been an increase in the levels of responsibility individuals feel to respond to climate change. People have also become more trusting about information from environmental and government scientists.

Zoe Leviston does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Marine reserves: finding the balance with oil and gas

community, environment, fisheries, government, threatened species, waterways/wetlands, wildlife

Feb 062014

By Cordelia Moore, University of Western Australia; Euan Harvey, Curtin University, and Hugh Possingham at The Conversation

How do we get the most out of our marine reserves? The government is in the process of reviewing Australia’s network of marine protected areas. The review focuses on zones that exclude recreational fishers, and whether those fishers can be allowed back in.

While we don’t know much about oceans off north west Australia, we know they’re important. Photo: Australian Institute of Marine Science

However, fishing isn’t the only threat to marine life: oil and gas developments also influence offshore waters. Separating marine protected areas and regions with oil and gas potential leads to an unrepresentative reserve system. But working with oil and gas companies could work out both for industry and our ocean.

Like oil and water

Striking the balance between biodiversity conservation and industry is never easy. It is particularly difficult in regions that support both important biodiversity values and industry assets such as oil and gas resources and important commercial and recreational fisheries.

While the current management review will focus on fishing, a very different challenge exists in Australia’s northwest marine region. Here, some of the world’s most pristine and biologically diverse marine ecosystems overlay internationally significant oil and gas reserves.

Australia’s gas production has almost doubled since the turn of the century and is expected to quadruple by 2035. In a time of transition, following a decade-long mining boom, the government is seeking to maximise access to the nation’s oil and gas resources. With the majority (92%) of Australia’s conventional gas resources located in Australia’s northwest, finding the right balance between biodiversity conservation and industry interests is difficult and potentially expensive.

In fact, disasters have happened. In 2009, this region experienced the worst offshore oil spill in Australia’s history. The blowout from PTTEP’s Montara wellhead, located 250km off the Kimberley coast, resulted in 10 weeks of continuous release of oil and gas into the Timor Sea.

In total, the oil spill was estimated to cover an area of 90,000 square kilometres. Ongoing aerial spraying with dispersants was the primary early response to the spill with tens of thousands of litres of chemical dispersants sprayed into Australian waters.

We learned two very important lessons from the spill. First, the threat of an oil spill was realised and one of our most pristine and ecologically diverse marine environments was put at risk of irreversible damage.

Second, it highlighted what we don’t know. We lack the ecological data for the region to be able to identify and manage the impacts of an oil spill.

The proposed strict no-take marine reserves for Australia’s northwest leave many ecological communities unprotected. Image: Cordelia Moore

Protecting hidden reefs and biodiversity hotspots

After the spill, scientists hurried to start filling the gaps in what we know. While we lacked pre-existing ecological data, there was little evidence of a substantial impact from the oil spill. To improve this process in the future we now have some baseline monitoring sites in place. In addition, we have a new regulator focused on the implementation of more stringent oil spill response plans and risk management procedures and individual companies have had to upgraded their response and management plans.

One important discovery was the rich coral reef communities of the submerged banks and shoals. These abrupt geological features pepper the continental shelf and shelf edge. However, as these underwater mounds plateau beneath the sea surface they have previously gone unnoticed, hidden beneath the waves.

Intensive post-spill surveys revealed the shoals to support fish diversity greater that that seen on similar features within the Great Barrier Reef. They are also positioned to act as important stepping stones for biological connectivity across Australia’s north west and may serve as an important refuge for species vulnerable to climate change.

However, the current national marine reserves system offers almost no protection for these areas (less than 2% fall within the no take marine reserves).

“World’s largest marine park network”

The previous government aimed to create the “world’s largest marine park network”. With the current network falling just shy of 30% of Australia’s territorial waters, they came very close.

Although, as Bob Pressey detailed in his article on Australia’s marine protected areas, size isn’t everything.

Last month I lead a workshop at the University of Western Australia to assess the marine park network to the north west of Australia (north of Broome). The workshop included universities, government and industry.

During the workshop we assessed just how representative the marine parks of this region actually are. With little data available on biodiversity, we used the proxy of undersea geomorphology.

What we found is that of 19 different ecological communities, only four are adequately represented, two are over-represented, seven are under-represented and six aren’t represented at all.

Because we don’t exactly know what’s under the sea, we use geomorphology as a proxy. Image: Cordelia Moore

The most vulnerable section of our marine region is the continental shelf (less than 200m depth), where threats to biodiversity are concentrated. Despite this, the majority (75%) of the proposed no take areas focuses on the abyssal plain 3000-6000 metres below the surface.

Why? Protecting biodiversity to the north west of Australia comes with substantial opportunity costs to the oil and gas industry and commercial fishers. As a result, the proposed marine reserves of Australia’s north west have weighed heavily in favour of industry.

A way forward

With a reserve system already struggling to be representative, there are very real concerns associated with making any changes outside a robust conservation planning process. Currently the federal government proposes to maintain the outer boundaries of the marine parks network, while changing zoning within the reserves to allow recreational and commercial fishers access. But without closing alternative areas, this will only compromise our limited ability to manage threatening processes and conserve biodiversity.

Examining a small fraction of the problem will only ever provide a small fraction of the solution.

At the workshop in WA, we tried to come up with a better solution. We looked at a way to maximise representativeness, while minimising costs to user groups using an advanced systematic conservation planning approach.

Preliminary analyses demonstrated that entirely excluding whole regions prospective for oil and gas reserves makes a system of marine protected areas unrepresentative while including these regions makes a reserve system very expensive.

One cost-effective solution could be found for this region by bringing industry users into the management process and agreeing that prospective areas for oil and gas extraction are not incompatible with marine biodiversity conservation. Oil and gas developments often have stringent biodiversity protection targets and with people present on most sites all the time, enforcement of adjacent no take areas is potentially far cheaper.

The possibility for the oil and gas industry to be actively engaged in the protection of marine biodiversity may be a way of offering presently unrepresented marine ecosystems some level of protection too. In general the industry’s infrastructure footprint is quite small. Major oil spills from exploration and production activities world-wide are relatively rare with just one occurring on the west coast of Australia. While the risk is low, the consequences can be high. Therefore implementing multiple protected areas is one way of ‘hedging our bets’.

In a region highly valuable to industry the costs of biodiversity protection will be high if we continue to see oil and gas interests as incompatible with conservation. But leaving these unique ecosystems without management and protection may cost us even more in the long term.

Read more about marine parks here.

Hugh Possingham receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The National Environmental Research program and several NGOs. He is affiliated with The Wentworth Group, Trees For Life SA, BirdLife Australia and WWF Australia.

Cordelia Moore and Euan Harvey do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. They also have no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

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