Australian media ignore CSIRO/BOM's State of the Climate report

While the Australian media obsess with the arrant nonsense spouted by the likes of Chris Monckton, sober climate change warnings from reputable agencies such as the CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology continue to fly under the radar. Monckton attracted hundreds of articles and acres of print in his recent visit to Australia whereas a search of Google News found just 27 articles about the latest CSIRO/BOM State of the Climate report released this week. Only 20 of these were Australian and the most profile of these was a predictable tirade against the report by Andrew Bolt. But at least Bolt should be lauded for discussing it, generally the media were neither interested in burying nor praising CSIRO.

In doing so, they have done Australia a massive disservice. Because the document has major implications to the way we live our lives in the next 50 years. It contains an up-to-date snapshot of observations and analysis (html version, pdf version) of Australia’s climate and the factors that influence it. The data was sourced from peer reviewed data on temperature, rainfall, sea level, ocean acidification, and carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere. Between them, the two agencies that gathered the data, CSIRO and BOM, have 160 years of research behind them so there ought to be a fair degree of trust of their data.

Among their key findings is the long-term upward trend of temperature of Australia. On average temps have risen by 0.7 °C in the last half a century. Some areas have experienced a warming of 1.5 to 2 °C in that time. The strongest warming is occurring in spring (about 0.9 °C) and the weakest in summer (about 0.4 °C). The number of days with record hot temperatures has increased each decade over the last 50 years and the years 2000 to 2009 was Australia’s hottest decade on record. Rainfall has been stable since 1960 though the geographic distribution has changed significantly. Rainfall is on the rise in remote northern areas such as the Pilbara, the Northern Territory coastline and the Gulf of Carpentaria. But as city planners are only too aware, rainfall has decreased in south-west and south-east Australia, including all the major population centres, during the same period.

The report looked at 137 years of ocean data and found the global average sea level rose by close to 200mm in that time. The speed of the rise is also increasing. In the 20th century sea levels rose at an average of 1.7mm per year. But since 1993, the rise is about 3.0mm per year. There are many geographical variations within the 1993-2009 figure. In Australia sea level rises are higher in the north and west (7-10mm per year) while rising just 1.5 to 3mm in the south and east. The oceans are absorbing a quarter of all human generated CO2 making them more acidic affecting the health of ocean ecosystems around the world.

It doesn’t help that global carbon dioxide and methane emissions are on the rise. The natural range of CO2 in the atmosphere has been 170 to 300 ppm (parts per million) for at least the past 800,000 years. But emissions have been rising rapidly in the last century and were up to 386ppm by 2009. Similarly methane emissions were steady for most of human history around the 650 ppb (parts per billion) but have shot up to more than 1700 ppb in recent years.

The evidence from the report points to glaringly obvious conclusions: Australia is becoming hotter, the heavily-populated areas are becoming drier, and human activities have caused most of the damage since 1950. Being research agencies, the CSIRO and the BOM deal with probabilities so they are “only” 90 percent sure of that last fact. But I for one would not want to be backing the one in ten possibility. As the researchers baldly conclude “our observations clearly demonstrate that climate change is real”. Which makes all the more surreal, reactions from some of our more recalcitrant MPs and media decision makers.

GFC provides temporary relief from rising greenhouse emissions

A new report shows the Global Financial Crisis has had a small dampening affect on greenhouse gas emissions with energy use down in Australia's eastern mainland states in 2009. It also showed that energy use varies radically from state to state. The report by non-profit international body The Climate Group shows that annual emissions were 5.3 million tonnes lower in 2009 than the previous year across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. This represents a fall of 1.8 per cent and followed a rise in emissions of 1.3 per cent in 2008.

Now entering its fourth year, The Climate Group's Greenhouse Indicator Annual Report (pdf) tracks the main sources of greenhouse emissions in Australia from coal, natural gas and petroleum. The Climate Group tracks emissions on a weekly basis across the four states and provides useful real time information for policy makers, media and the general public alike. The 2009 annual report shows a decrease from 2008 but it is not uniform across the states. Emissions declined considerably in South Australia (4.2 percent) and NSW (3.1 percent) while barely changing in Queensland (1.1 percent) and Victoria (0.5 percent).

The reason for the decrease differed from state to state too. In Victoria most of the decrease was due to emissions reductions in both gas‐fired electricity generation and use of petroleum. This was counteracted by an increase in emissions from coal‐fired generators. In NSW and Queensland however, the coal-fired generators led the reduction while emissions from gas-fired generators rose a staggering 176 percent due to the commissioning of new stations. In SA it was gas-fired generators that led the reduction.

The use of petroleum decreased across the states except in South Australia. The reductions came despite positive population growth in each of the states, and growth in Gross State Product in each state. Again with petroleum-based products, results were different across the states. Diesel sales were up across all
states except for in Victoria which went down. Petrol sales fell in Victoria and Queensland (where the fuel subsidy ended this year), remained the same in NSW and increased in South Australia. Another Climate Group report shows petroleum emissions declined for the whole of Australia between October 2008 to September 2009.

Electricity use was also down 1.9 percent across the four states. Coal usage was slightly down but still represents a whopping 87.8 percent of all scheduled electricity generation. Gas is responsible for 9.3 percent and renewables is still a disgracefully paltry 2.8 percent (up just 0.1 percent in 12 months). Demand fell 2.0 percent in Victoria and 1.2 percent in NSW. By contrast demand rose 1.5 percent in Queensland and 0.1 percent in SA. Victoria in particular has an unhealthy reliance on higher emitting brown coal which rose 1.1 percent balanced out by the 27 percent decrease in gas-fired station.

Turning to the weather, 2009 was the second warmest year on record in Australia and the years 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. As the Bureau of Meteorology said these trends are “consistent with the background of global warming”. Going from causes to effects, the higher temperatures had and good bad aspects. There was less demand for heating over winter but more demand for cooling over summer. Demand across the national electricity market in the winter of 2009 was 3.4 per cent less than the winter of 2008. The summer of 08/09 saw demand increase by 1.7 per cent from 07/08.

The report said that all states recorded a growth in Gross State Product (GSP) over the period despite the GFC. Nevertheless it says “growth rates were reasonably low compared with previous years, and this would certainly have relieved upward pressure on emissions levels.” And so as the economy recovers, emissions are likely to increase substantially in the absence of any meaningful government action to throttle them.

Death in Manaquiri: A time bomb in the Amazon

While the world’s leaders haggle and prevaricate in Copenhagen, real and devastating climate change is happening in many countries across the world. The third world is bearing the brunt of the problem and the story of Manaquiri, in Brazil’s Amazon Basin is a microcosm of a much larger problem. Producing one fifth of the world’s oxygen, a quarter of the world's fresh water and home to the world’s largest rainforest, the Basin is often described as “The Lungs of the World”. But these lungs are now struggling to breathe as the region is crippled with the worst drought since records began. (photo: Reuters)

Manaquiri is a small sleepy town in the Brazilian State of Amazonas. It is not on the highway, but the state capital Manaus is a short trip three hours downstream where the Parana de Manaquiri River eventually flows into the mighty Amazon. The river that shares the name of the town is the area’s lifeblood. 800 of the town’s population of almost 20,000 are fishermen. And 14,000 people rely on the river as an economic lifeline. All are suffering as the river loses its grip on life.

Manaquiri is the centre of a drought that has last a month. It has not rained in 25 days which does not sound like much but it rarely happened before recent times in this lush rainforest region. The length of time without rain is enough to have a devastating effect on the local river. All the tributaries that supply water to the Manaquiri have choked up and have deprived the water of oxygen. As a result, the drought is killing tonnes of fish. Their rotting bodies are polluting the water and leaving thousands of people with no clean water.

Al Jazeera quoted a local scientist who says the problem is directly attributable to climate change. Philip Fearnside is a research professor in the Department of Ecology at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) in Manaus. Fearnside has lived in the Amazon for 33 years and he says the drying up of the Manaquiri may signal similar droughts occurring with higher frequency as the climate continues to change. "[Climate change] is something we have experience with and know from the data, it's not something that depends on the outcome of a computer simulation," he said.

A photo essay on the petroleum.berkeley.edu site shows the extent of the devastation in Manaquiri. Boats are stranded in dry lakes and whole lagoons have evaporated. The parched conditions have triggered forest fires killing off fish and crops. As the waters receded, many people were trapped in their home without access to food or medical treatment.

The current drought is happening just four years after Manaquiri suffered “its worst drought in 40 years”. The 2005 drought lasted for over two months and local officials were forced to close 40 schools and cancel the school year because of a lack of food, transport and potable water. Cases of diarrhoea rose in the region as wells became poisoned and stagnant water caused a rise in malaria. One local, 39 year old Manuel Tavares Silva was quoted at the time saying "I've never seen anything like this."

But now Silva is seeing it again. Manaquiri is a microcosm of a wider problem. The New York Times noted that in mid-October, the governor of Amazonas State, Eduardo Braga, decreed a "state of public calamity” which remains in effect two months later. Many boats cannot reach Manaus as the river level in Amazonian tributaries drop to near zero. The drought also affects neighbouring states and other Amazonian Basin countries such as Peru, Bolivia and Colombia.

Many scientists say the drought is most likely a result of the same rise in water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean that caused Hurricane Katrina. If global warming is involved as they suspect, it is likely to mean more severe and frequent droughts in the region. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace are less circumspect and say the problems in Manaquiri and in the Amazon region are a direct result of deforestation and global warming. "If you compare the rainfall averages over the last five years, you see that there have been growing rain deficits each year," said Manaus-based Greenpeace activist Carlos Rittl about the 2005 drought. "It will be extremely worrying if this becomes a tendency." Whether those meeting in Copenhagen like it or not, that tendency has now arrived.

Regional survey exposes three myths in Australian climate change debate

A new report from international law firm Allens Arthur Robinson surveying climate change strategies across the Asia Pacific region has found the debate in Australia has been too narrowly focused on an ETS. The report entitled One Hat Doesn’t Fit All was an overview of climate change measures in 14 countries: Australia, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. Report co-author Grant Anderson said that while the debate in Australia and NZ has focused on a domestic ETS, the survey has revealed the wider region is looking at a variety of other measures to promote the green economy, all of which were necessary to combat climate change. (photo of Copenhagen bike commuter by David Dennis)

The report identified "three myths" about emissions reduction. The first myth identified by the report is that Australia can afford to wait until after Copenhagen to see what the rest of the world is doing on climate change. While it is possible (though unlikely) that negotiations may see the agreement of more ambitious proposals, many countries in the region including China, South Korea, Singapore and New Zealand have all announced unilateral measures that will position them to prosper in the green economy. Australia should be looking at targets and national feed-in tariffs to support renewables as well as providing tax incentives, fuel price reforms and energy efficiency programs.

The second myth is that China is doing nothing to constrain its greenhouse gas emissions. While it is true that its emissions are growing rapidly as the economy expands, China is investing heavily in renewable energy and becoming more energy efficient while increasing taxes on higher polluting products and industries. In advance of Copenhagen, the Chinese government has announced it would curb emissions per unit of gross domestic product by between 40 and 45 percent from the 2005 levels by 2020.The Chinese are also increasing consumption taxes on transport fuel, and have introduced stringent fuel efficiency regulations for vehicles.

The third myth is that there is a “silver bullet” that will solve climate change. The countries in the Asia Pacific region are taking a wide variety of approaches suitable to local economic and geographic conditions. While Japan and Singapore concentrate on energy efficiency, poorer countries such as Indonesia and PNG are working to avoid deforestation. The Philippines is the world’s second-largest producer of geothermal energy, and is now expanding into wind, solar, mini-hydro and biofuels initiatives with the aim of being 60 per cent energy self-sufficient in 2010. The report says that a wide variety of emission reduction measures will be needed to solve the problem of climate change.

Australia is particularly exposed with its reliance on vast, cheap reserves of coal, an energy-intensive export industry, and a sparsely located population wedded to private car usage. As a lucid Malcolm Turnbull noted this week, there is no costless way of moving to a lower emission economy. The country has been absorbed by the fight over the Government’s version of the ETS, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme which remains mired in the Senate after this week’s defeat despite it being riddled with compromises that severely limit its effectiveness. Meanwhile there is a vast untapped resource of renewable energy (currently supplying less than five percent of the base load) and the Government steadfastly refuses to examine the nuclear option.

Because of these factors, Australia faces relatively high economic costs of abatement compared with other developed countries. A key element in Australia’s negotiating position at Copenhagen is the idea of “comparable effort”. The concept requires that Australia would be prepared to adopt a national allocation budget between 2013 and 2020 that is comparable in its economic impact to that shouldered by other advanced countries. Economic modeling by Access Economics has shown a comprehensive climate change global agreement is more cost and environmentally effective from Australia’s point of view that a partial agreement.

But the AAR report warns that it could take many years to nut out a comprehensive post-Copenhagen agreement. The 180-page treaty draft is currently riddled with 2,000 square brackets each of which indicates a point of difference between participants. It notes that although it took two years to agree the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, much of the nitty-gritty was not agreed until the 2001 Marrakesh Accords and even then it did not come into force until Russia signed up in 2005. In the meantime, Australia should be widening its net far beyond its flawed ETS.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis

While the media gorges itself on the blood sport of the Australian federal coalition leadership challenge, an important new document outlining the seriousness of climate change has been almost completely ignored. The Copenhagen Diagnosis is a summary of the global warming peer reviewed science of the last few years. Produced by a team of 26 scientists led by the University of NSW Climate Research Centre, the Diagnosis shows that the effects of global warming have gotten worse in the last three years. It is a timely update to UN’s Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change 2007 Fourth Assessment document (IPCC AR4) ahead of the Copenhagen conference. (photo credit: m.o.o.f)

While denialists will ignore this as they have all other science gone before it, the diagnosis report (pdf) is sobering reading for anyone concerned about the planet. Researchers found greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures, ice-cap melting and rising sea levels have all increased since IPCC AR4. Global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by 40 percent in two decades. The global temperature has increased half a degree in the last 25 years. The Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are disappearing faster than ever and the sea level has risen 50 millimeters in the last 15 years.

The document unambiguously sheets home the blame on the century long temperature increase on human factors and says the turning point “must come soon”. If we are to limit warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial values, global emissions must peak by 2020 at the latest and then decline rapidly. The scientists warned that waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognised. By 2050 we will effectively need to be in a post-carbon economy if we are to avoid unlivable temperatures.

The document puts the lie to the constant refrain of denialists is that temperatures have gone down since 1998. The reality is that the last ten years have been warmer than the previous ten and the long-term trend is unambiguously upward. In 2008 there were two temporary cooling influences, a La Nina (ENSO) and low solar output (the lowest level of the last 50 years). The Copenhagen Diagnosis says these two factors should have resulted in the 2008 temperature being among the coolest in the instrumental era, whereas it turned out to be the ninth warmest on record.

Ten year variations such as sunspots and ENSO are the reason why the IPCC choose 25 year cycles to show trend lines. Nevertheless most NASA measures of the 1990s have shown a warming between 0.17 and 0.34 °C and with an increase of 0.19 °C between 1998 and 2008. The British Hadley Centre’s most recent data had smaller warming trend of 0.11 °C for 1999-2008 but this excluded the Arctic, which has warmed particularly strongly in recent years. The Northwest and Northeast Passages were simultaneously ice-free in 2008 for the first time in living memory and the feat was repeated in the 2009 Northern summer.

The document says climate change will almost certainly cause more extreme weather events. This means more frequent hot days, hot nights and heat waves, fewer cold days and cold nights, more frequent heavy rain, more intense and longer droughts over wider areas, and an increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic. There is also evidence of more drought, typhoons and bushfires all linked to anthropogenic climate change.

The document is timely as the Australian parliament debates the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Whatever the merits of the scheme, its opponents should remember just one in four Australians think climate change fears are exaggerated. The other 75 percent may not agree on what to do but accept their scientists are telling them there is a problem. They look to lawmakers to chart out a future to best ride out the unpleasant shocks to come not to pretend the shocks do not exist.

This is why Copenhagen is happening in a week's time. None of the 198 governments want to be there and none will win from climate change. But all recognise it exists and needs to be dealt at the global level. Other than the powerless Pacific island nations, no country is yet obviously threatened enough to make it a success. The vested interest of each government will ensure less action will occur than is needed. Copenhagen will result in pious platitudes and not much concrete action.

Australia has a small but significant role to play to ensure there isn’t a tragedy of the commons. It consumes less than 2 percent of the world’s resources but that is a significant amount for a country with just 0.003 percent of the world’s people. Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is unlikely to reduce carbon usage by much if at all. Yet its potency as a symbol is undeniable. The CPRS is a referendum on climate change. This is something the Nationals and right-wing Liberals intuitively understand and the Greens do not. The Greens have missed a golden opportunity to be on the side of the symbol (and they can fix it when they gain the balance of power after the next election). In a rare moment of sense among the Liberal horserace shenanigans, Malcolm Turnbull expressed it best yesterday. No political party with any pretensions to govern responsibly can afford to turn their back on climate change.

The exact future of climate may be unknowable but the study of our past is providing overwhelming evidence of trends that simply cannot be ignored. Scepticism is justified only when the facts are unclear or ambiguous and the Copenhagen diagnosis is neither. A simple fact needs to be stated and there is no polite way to say it. Those people who say anthropogenic global warming is a myth are either liars protecting vested interests or mental incompetents. Either way, the only proper course is to ignore them. The stakes are too high.

G8 report says rich nations are failing Africa

A new G8 sponsored report issues a damning indictment of the world’s richest countries saying they are falling short on aid commitments to Africa. The Africa Progress Panel says the first world is falling seriously behind in its commitment to help the continent meet it challenge to escape poverty and debt. The aid problem is exacerbated by rising food prices and the impact of global warming. The report suggested innovative ways to meet the aid shortfall and called for immediate assistance in food production, an end to trade barriers, and a drastic increase in African infrastructure projects.

The report entitled Africa's Development: Promises and Prospects (pdf) cites four different but interlocking crises that dominate the global economy. They are the financial crisis in the West, a worsening energy crisis, the threat of global warming, and high food prices which are affecting the world’s poorest people. While it says the world has missed “early opportunities” to deal with the first two crises, it believes it is imperative “we meet the challenge of the third and take immediate steps to address the fourth”.

The Panel has drawn on the work of various institutions and eminent individuals working on African issues to present an independent assessment of progress. The report focuses on the twin challenges of food crisis and global warming. Many countries are undergoing a reversal of decades of economic growth and 100 million people are being pushed back into poverty. Export bans on key commodities such as rice are adding to the problem. The report issues a dire warning that unless a way can be found to reverse the current trend in food prices there will be a “significant increase in hunger, malnutrition, and infant and child mortality”.

The report calls on developed nations to raise the level of financial assistance to affected countries and aid agencies. It also calls on the rich nations to review economic and financial policies to ensure the production of food is not threatened. In the longer term, the report advocates “substantial new investments raise agricultural productivity and food production” in Africa and the wider world. The report also calls for a review of trade policies concerning biofuel subsidies, grain storage and the need to kick-start fertiliser markets. Africa needs fairer access to protected world markets but multi-lateral trade negotiations have been stalled since the Doha round were deadlocked in 2006. It also pleads for prioritising rural development and giving the poor access to world markets. But it warns that “the delivery of promises on aid for trade must not be held hostage to trade deals”.

The report follows other NGO warnings that Africa is ill-prepared for climate change and will bear the brunt of any negative impact. Climate change will further diminish the means of food production and will play havoc with the lives of the global poor. Already disadvantaged by high food prices, the urban poor in particular will suffer greatly if there is any further loss of agricultural productivity due to climate change. The report recommends increased funding for renewable energy noting solar, wind and geothermal production is “very viable” in Africa. It also lauds a Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to prevent the disappearance of tropical rainforests. The plan involves estimating nation’s forest carbon stocks for emissions estimates and providing financial incentives to reduce emissions below a defined threshold.

Investments in infrastructure are also needed to achieve lasting solutions to the food crisis. Africa requires roads, power and water so that farmers to produce and distribute food. Infrastructure projects will also generate economic growth, jobs and income and will help create a productive private sector currently missing in many African countries. 60 per cent of all enterprises fail to thrive due to lack of basic electricity due to a poor national grid or numerous power outages. The report recommends hydroelectric projects such as Congo’s Grand Inga Dam as having the potential to meet a significant share of the continent’s power needs. Poor roads are also a problem with only 12 percent of Africa’s roads paved and 10 percent of all road deaths worldwide occurring in Sub Saharan countries. The report calls for a Trans-African road network (pdf) linking Dakar, Lagos, Khartoum, Luanda, Mombasa, Windhoek and Gaborone.

The Africa progress panel was an initiative of the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. The eleven member Panel members has several high profile members including chair Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Bob Geldof, former International Monetary Fund chief Michel Camdessus, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus. The Gleneagles Summit pledged large funds towards debt cancellation and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. But the G8 has been slow to match these pledges with action. It has had success with debt relief but has not yet produced a timetable to progress to the much vaunted goal of doubling aid. The G8 promised $130 billion in aid by 2010 but is likely to fall short by $40 billion.

The report acknowledges that traditional budgetary resources are unlikely to address this shortfall. It suggests innovative new sources of funds such as currency transactions taxes, carbon taxes, taxes on international
air travel and freight transport, a global lottery, and measures to increase private funding of development agencies, Annan and his team say urgent collective work needs to be a priority for the donor community to evaluate these and other options. Africa, they say, is at a critical juncture. It pleads with the G8 to renew its 2002 Canadian Kananaskis Summit goal that no countries genuinely committed to poverty reduction, good governance and economic reform, will be denied the chance to achieve their Millennium Goals through lack of finance. Kofi Annan’s introduction put it best: “the world has a stake in realising the African continent's huge potential to thrive."

Tuvalu wavering not drowning

A New Zealand academic has disputed recent reports that the Pacific island of Tuvalu is sinking under the sea. Writing in the NZ Herald, Chris de Freitas, an associate professor in the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Auckland, says that there has been no discernible evidence that sea levels have risen on the main island of Funafuti and what inundation has occurred in other islands is due to erosion caused by industrial activity not global warming. De Freitas also cites other factors such as the paving over of one quarter of Funafuti’s land mass which has increased rainwater runoff causing flooding.

De Freitas also quotes a growing body of research that says that global warming will cause sea levels, which have been rising since the end of the last ice age, to either stabilise or possibly even fall. Some scientists believe there is an inverse relationship between global temperatures and sea levels, due to sea surface evaporation that transports moisture to the polar ice caps.

Dr. John Bratton of the US Geological Survey argues that global warming could cause sea level to fall for another reason. He believes the temperature rise would cause the melting of sea-floor crystals of ice (known as clathrates) which enclose gases such as methane. When these crystals melt, the gas escapes leaving a hole that could cause sea levels to fall by as much as 25 meters. Bratton estimates that sea level will fall by about 1.5 meters due to this phenomenon.

Nevertheless Tuvalu remains on the frontline of climate change. Since as far back as 1992, its government has been speaking out in international forums about the impacts of global warming. More common flooding due to storm surges has increased the salinity of the soil which in turn is forcing farmers to grow their root crops in metal buckets instead of in the ground. Tuvalu’s government have had little success in getting their big international neighbours to change their ways. “The oil industry is powerful” said local politician Paani Laupepa. “It works in sinister ways to maintain its grip on the politicians”.

Historically Tuvalu was southern Ellis part of the Gilbert and Ellis islands but opted for separation (from what is now Kiribati) and then independence in 1978. The name Tuvalu means “eight standing together” and refers to the number of populated islands in the chain. It relies on international aid (which has been put into a trust fund) and the US, Taiwan and Japan also pay lucrative amounts for fishing rights. In 1998 Tuvalu sold 80 percent of the rights to the “tv” internet domain to a Californian company for $48 million. Tuvalu still makes $3 million a year from the remaining 20 percent share with internet registrations rising by almost half in the last two years.

Tuvalu is a chain of nine islands with a population of roughly 11,000 making it the smallest voting member of the UN. The islands are mostly two to three metres above sea level and its coral atoll villages already flood at high tide. In the IPCC fourth assessment report released last year gave a range of possible sea level rises up to a metre by 2099 so most of the islands seem safe enough in the short term.

Citizens of Tuvalu are among seven million Pacific Islanders who are most at risk. Although Pacific nations contribute just one percent to global greenhouse pollution they suffer the worst of the extreme weather events and other climate change impacts. When air temperatures rise, the oceans heat up and cyclones become more frequent and severe. Changes are causing many to leave to Australia and New Zealand and these people have been called “climate refugees”.

Now a Japanese activist and journalist Shuichi Endo has set himself the task of photographing the entire population of Tuvalu (10,000 people) in order to draw political attention to the threat they face from global warming. Endo said the islanders live in tune with their environment and the rest of the world could learn a lot from them. "If industrialised countries like Japan and the United States don't cut their greenhouse gas emissions, the Tuvaluans won't be able to carry on living here," Endo said. "Their culture will be lost, the Tuvaluans will no longer exist."

The ethanol fraud

Two damaging new studies released last week have shown ethanol is even worse for the environment than fossil fuels. The studies found that almost all biofuels currently in use cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these so-called “green” fuels are taken into account. The destruction of the ecosystems converted to cropland releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as well as reducing the amount of carbon sinks as the cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the land it replaced.

The peer-reviewed Science journal printed both studies on ethanol and other biofuels. The first by ecologists at Princeton, the Woods Hole Research Center, and Iowa State University was the first ever comprehensive review of the environmental consequences of increased biofuel consumption. It found that over 30 years, use of traditional corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as regular gasoline. The second study by Nature Conservancy along with University of Minnesota researchers, found that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands in Southeast Asia and Latin America to produce biofuels will increase global warming pollution for tens to hundreds of years.

The key finding of the studies is that global production of biofuels results in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel. Land use had not previously been taken into account in ethanol studies. The end result is massive carbon debt. Even in the best case scenario of Brazilian sugar cane grown in scrubby savannahs, a carbon debt is created which takes 17 years to repay. The worst case scenario is Indonesia palm oil displacing tropical rainforest growing in peat which invokes a carbon debt of 423 years.

The process of turning plants into fuels causes its own emissions especially in the areas of refining and transport. The result is bad maths for fans of ethanol. Grassland clearance releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.”

The US is making the problem worse by heavily subsidising the ethanol industry. Already subsidised to the tune of $3 billion each year, the gravy train is about to get even richer. Iowa is the centre of the industry and state farmland values are up 18 percent in the past 12 months, according to Federal Reserve Board surveys, making paper millionaires of farmers owning more than 200 acres. Now a bill recently passed in Congress will provide another whopping $10.5 billion to the industry regardless of prices, profits, yields or weather. "A farmer's best friend in Iowa is the energy bill," said Bruce Babcock, a professor of economics at Iowa State. "What do you need the direct payments for? It's money for nothing."

Interestingly however, Babcock refused to sign off the first report which was co-authored by several economists at Iowa State’s faculty in the centre of the corn-growing belt. The study was based in part on a model developed at the University's Center for Agricultural and Rural Development for estimating changes in global crop production. Babcock claimed he was not sufficiently comfortable with the study's methodology because it relied on outdated land-use data from the 1990s. Nonetheless he agreed with the study's fundamental premise, that increased use of biofuels would boost commodity prices and encourage more crop production.

Biofuels expert Michael O’Hare at The Reality Based Community reiterated some of these points about to growing emissions. Firstly as more corn is used to make ethanol, the corn used is no longer in the food and feed corn market. This causes corn prices to increase which in turn is likely to stimulate the demand to grow more corn. Corn growing will intensify with additional fertilization which generates the potent N2O greenhouse gas. This increase will also impact land use for other crops which may make it more profitable for ranchers to turn more forest into farmland, further adding to greenhouse emissions.

Consumers are paying for ethanol subsidies with increased grocery prices. Production of ethanol also means we avoid looking at the longer-term problem: how to reduce consumption of transport fuel. Biofuels are an increasing extravagance and seem only to exist as result of lobby group pressure for those getting rich on the subsidies. As George Monbiot says “there is no such thing as sustainable biofuel.”

Biofuels cause severe greenhouse problems and a land-grab for farmers desperate to get in on the act. Where land is not available, food production suffers. As Monbiot again puts it “every time we fill up the car, we snatch food from people's mouths.” Ethanol is a costly and criminally inefficient solution to our energy problems. According to Minnesota's Republican state senator David Hann, "ethanol is bad science, bad environmental policy and bad economic policy." Now the scientists have offered proof to show Hann is right. Its time to end the cornball.

Penny Wong: the climate of political change

Just two days after Australia ratified the Kyoto Protocol, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has requested her new department calculate the effect of Labor’s environmental policies. Senator Wong made the request as projections show that Australia will not meet its 2012 target and will exceed greenhouse emissions by 1 per cent. Wong said the new government needed to see what affect their policies will have on Australia's emissions, “in particular our renewable energy target of 20 per cent by 2020”.

Handling this gap between Australia’s commitments and the reality will be the first major challenge of one of Labor’s younger leaders. Described by the Sydney Morning Herald as one of the “rising stars” of Australian politics, Penny Wong turned 39 last month and her newly minted portfolio is likely to be the benchmark test for the incoming administration. Australia’s first Asian-born cabinet minister is leading the Rudd Government team at the Bali negotiations and has been given a tough brief by the Prime Minister to help bridge the gap between the positions of the developed and developing world on future emissions controls.

The nature of the assignment is a sign of Rudd’s confidence in his young new minister. Penelope Ying-Yen Wong was born in 1968 in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo. Her father is Francis Wong Yit Shing, a Chinese architect. Her mother is from Adelaide and her Australian heritage dates back to 1836. Wong’s parents met when he came to Australia as a Colombo Plan student. The couple then moved back to Sabah. Penny was just eight years old when her parents separated. She moved with her mother and brother to Australia and the family settled in the Adelaide Hills.

Penny Wong was a gifted student at Adelaide’s Coromandel Valley Primary and won a scholarship to Scotch College. Wong went on to the University of Adelaide where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Law Degree (Hons). While still a student, she began working for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and she stayed on with the union after graduating. Wong then moved to NSW where she was employed as a ministerial advisor to the Carr government, concentrating on forest policy. She later returned to Adelaide to practise law.

In her student days in the 1980s, Wong demonstrated against the Hawke Labor government’s plan to introduce HECS fees for university students. She began to realise she would be better off working within the system to effect the change she wanted to see. She became a member of the Labor party and joined EMILY’s List Australia, the network formed to increase the number of women Labor parliamentarians in favour of childcare, equal pay, and pro choice agendas.

Penny Wong is one of only two openly gay people in Australia’s parliament, along with Green’s leader Bob Brown. Wong has properly refused to publicly comment on her sexuality but she did provide a written statement to the gay community newspaper Sydney Star Observer where she wrote:

“It seems that public figures are becoming more prepared to be open about their sexuality. This demonstrates an increased confidence in the community that people can be openly lesbian or gay and still be successful in their chosen field – a credit to years of advocacy by very brave people. That advocacy has enabled many lesbian and gay public figures to focus on their chosen fields, rather than automatically becoming spokespeople on sexuality issues. I believe this reflects maturity, diversity and strength among the lesbian and gay community”.

Penny Wong moved her chosen field from the law to politics and she was elected as a senator for South Australia in the 2001 election. In her maiden speech to parliament Wong spoke about her Chinese roots. Her paternal grandmother Lai Fung Shim (whom she referred to as “Poh Poh” in her native language) was a Chinese woman of the “Hakka” or guest people. Most of the family died during the Japanese occupation of Malaysia and Wong’s grandmother brought up the family alone. Wong described her as barely literate, humble and compassionate, but the strongest person she has ever known.

Lai Fung Shim survived the ravages of the Japanese in the Sandakan on the island of Borneo. Now the second largest city in Sabah, during the war Sandakan was notorious as the site of a Japanese airfield built by the slave labour of POWs and civilians and the starting point of an infamous death march of two thousand Australian and British prisoners. Conditions for the locals was equally awful, but Poh Poh survived with what Wong called "an indomitable spirit".

Penny Wong has clearly inherited the strength and toughness of her grandmother and she was appointed to the shadow ministry after just three years in parliament. She gained a reputation as a tough questioner on Senate estimates committees, and raised high profile issues against the Government, including the use of the Prime Minister’s residence Kirribilli House for a Liberal function.

Wong’s qualities were noted when she was appointed to the role of Labor campaign spokesperson for the 2007 election. The party’s subsequent stunning election victory was due in no small measure to a smooth ‘on message’ execution of their campaign. At a national press club speech yesterday, campaign manager and ALP national secretary Tim Gartrell praised Senator Wong’s contribution saying “she took on some of the toughest guys on the other side and came out on top.”

Penny Wong has now been rewarded with the new and influential ministry of Climate Change and Water (pushing out Peter Garrett – ironically one of the few Labor failures of the otherwise flawless campaign). In this newly minted portfolio, Wong will be responsible for negotiating the international agreement on emissions reductions after 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires. She is also responsible for implementing a domestic emissions trading regime and harmonising the farrago of state-based energy targets into a national program. Wong will relish the challenge of government. "The problem of being in Opposition,” she said, “is that the things you really want to achieve, you haven't achieved."

Climate change and the age of water wars

The UN has identified 92 countries as being in severe danger of global warming related acute water shortages that could eventually lead to resource-based conflict. Mainly in Asia, Africa and South America, these countries are home to two thirds of the world’s population and among the world’s poorest. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon told the first Asia-Pacific Water Summit in Japan yesterday that the planet faced a water crisis that could be very bad news for Asia due to massive population growth, rising water consumption, pollution and poor water management. Ban said the consequences would be grave. “Throughout the world, water resources continue to be spoiled, wasted and degraded,” he said. “Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict.”

Ban was speaking to the results of a study by London based NGO International Alert. Their report showed that 46 nations and 2.7 billion people are now at high risk of being overwhelmed by armed conflict and war because of water shortages due to climate change. A further 56 countries face political destabilisation, affecting another 1.2 billion. The report entitled “A Climate of Conflict” (pdf) highlights four key elements of risk: political instability, economic weakness, food insecurity and large-scale migration. Climate change will have a direct affect on fresh water supply. It identified several water issues arising from these risks including falling water levels in the Ganges basin, longer droughts on the margins of Africa’s Sahel, glacial melting in the Andes and the Himalayas and rising sea levels.

The worst threats affect those countries least equipped to deal with the crisis. Most lack the resources and stability to deal with global warming. International Alert’s secretary-general, Dan Smith, said the Netherlands will be affected by rising sea levels, but will avoid war and strife because it has the resources and political structure to act effectively. “But other countries that suffer loss of land and water and be buffeted by increasingly fierce storms will have no effective government to ensure corrective measures are taken,” he said. “People will form defensive groups and battles will break out.”

The UN has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Sanitation. It states that over 40 per cent of the global population, some 2.6 billion, have no access to latrines or basic sanitation facilities. As a result millions suffer from a wide range of preventable illnesses, such as diarrhoea, which claim thousands of lives each day. Young children are worst impacted. The UN Millennium task force on Water and Sanitation believes the problem can be solved for just $10 billion annually (about 1 percent of the world’s military spending).

The task force’s 2005 report on water and sanitation (pdf) sought to answer two questions: what is involved in a global expansion of water supply and sanitation in a sustainable manner and how can water use be optimised to meet the challenge. They found that in order to achieve their water and sanitation targets by 2015, the world’s richer countries needed to increase donor aid, the middle ranking countries needed to re-allocate aid to those most deserving, create support for ownership of water supply and sanitation among the poorest, focus on community mobilisation in the areas most at need and most importantly more planning and investment in water resources management and infrastructure.

Asia’s burgeoning but disparate population presents one of the greatest challenges. In the next two decades Asia's urban population will swell by 60 percent and a large proportion of this growth will take place in cities of half a million or less. It will be more difficult to manage water resources prudently in these smaller cities because they do not have the technology, financing, expertise and political support of Asia's mega cities. The Manila-based Asian Development Bank’s study of water resources calls it a strange anomaly. “These smaller centres are receiving conspicuously less attention from national and international policy makers," it said. “Unless the present policy and focus change radically, these centres are likely to be major water and waste-water `black holes' of the future.”

Africa is the other major problem area. Potential 'water wars' are likely in areas where rivers and lakes are shared by more than one country such as the Nile, Niger, Volta and Zambezi basins. The Cuito and Okavango rivers between Angola, Botswana and Namibia’s Caprivi Strip have also suffered due to large scale agriculture, urbanisation and the effects of the Angolan civil war. Tensions also erupted between Egypt and Ethiopia when the latter country considered the construction of dams on the White Nile. Lester Brown, head of environmental research institute Worldwatch, sees the problem starkly. “There is already little water left when the Nile reaches the sea,” he says. “Water scarcity is now the single biggest threat to global food security.”

IPCC report on climate change: the time for doubt has passed

UN General-Secretary Ban Ki-Moon urged world's policymakers yesterday to urgently deal with climate change at next month's summit in Bali. His call comes as the latest report from the Nobel Peace prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that global warming is “unequivocal” based on wide ranging evidence. The IPCC has observed changes in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level and have ranked eleven of the last 12 years the warmest since record began in 1850. Ban said the time for doubt has passed and climate change is the defining challenge of our age. “I can tell you with assurance that global, sweeping, concerted action is needed now,” he said. “There is no time to waste.”

Ban issued the warning as he introduced the fourth assessment report (pdf) of the IPCC. The fourth report synthesises the work of the previous three reports. The gist of the latest report is that worldwide carbon emissions must stop increasing within seven years and greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 50 to 85 percent by 2050. It found the earth's average temperature has risen by 0.75 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. Greenhouse gases emitted by humans increased 70 percent between 1970 to 2004 with the most harmful of those, carbon dioxide, increasing by 80 percent over that period.

The report is the work of thousands of scientific experts (pdf). There were 2,500 scientific reviewers, 800 contributing authors and 450 lead authors from 130 countries. The report said that an average 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature could endanger up to 30 percent of the planet's flora and fauna. It also predicted that almost 250 million people in Africa will suffer from water shortages by 2020. UN Environment Programme Director Achim Steiner said the report was a “compelling blueprint” for action. He said the price tag for failure included “increasing acidification of the oceans to the likely extinctions of economically important biodiversity”.

Ban called on the US and China to take the lead in cutting emissions. Neither country is bound by the current protocol. "I look forward to seeing the US and China playing a more constructive role, starting from the Bali conference,” he said “Both countries can lead in their own way.” The goal of the 11 day Bali December meeting is to agree to start urgent talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon gas emissions. Kyoto expires in 2012.

In the current Australian federal election, neither major party has committed to short-term emission reductions. Opposition leader Kevin Rudd reacted to the report by saying Labor were committed to “swift action” and promised to set intermediate targets within six months of election. However John Howard wasn’t as convinced matters were as dire as Ban and his team of scientists were saying, merely promising the Coalition has a “balanced approach” to combating global warming. He said the report should not be taken out of context because "the world is not coming to an end tomorrow".

Former leader of the CSIRO's Climate Impact group and contributor to the IPCC Report Dr Barrie Pittock sharply criticised Howard’s comments as “non-committal” and failing to appreciate the urgency of the problem. In his 2007 book “Climate Change - Turning up the Heat” Pittock argues our attitudes to risk and uncertainty influence our decision making. He said climate takes a long time to alter so what we do now will have impacts decades later and market forces must be encouraged to think long term. Pittock says neither Labor nor the Liberals have tackled the problem seriously enough during the election campaign, and says the small incentives offered barely scratch the surface of what is required. “That compares with tens of billions of dollars in commitments for other things,” he said. “I think they've got it completely out of proportion.”

Brisbane Writers Festival: Clive Hamilton and The Dirty Politics of Climate Change

As the NSW government announces that water restrictions will be permanent due to climate change, it was fitting that one of the best sessions at the Brisbane Writers Festival yesterday was “The Dirty Politics of Climate Change” where the speaker was Clive Hamilton. Hamilton was at the festival to promote his new book “Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change” and his dispassionate and eloquent speech was a frightening wake-up call to combat government inertia on the subject of climate change.

The session was introduced by Chris O’Connell. O’Connell is the general manager of Channel Ten in Brisbane and sits on a number of committees dealing with the impact of climate change on community and business. He described Dr Hamilton as Australia’s leading enviro-economist will great expertise in the areas of climate change and environmental tax reform. Hamilton is executive director of the Australia Institute, an independent policy research body in Canberra. Hamilton has a BA in Maths, a bachelor’s degree in economics and a PhD in economics.

Hamilton then took the floor. He said he wanted to talk about the politics of science and the role of sceptics and then move on to observations about APEC and its implications. He began by discussing the role of advocates and how they naturally exaggerate to advance their case. He said environmental campaigns had often overstated cases of environmental decline in areas such as urban air pollution. They overstate their purpose in order to elicit a more emotional response – usually fear. And especially when their opponents resort to spin, they find this urge to exaggerate irresistible.

However one subject that is continually under-estimated is climate change. Yet Hamilton said the culture was one of refusal to face the facts. Environmental scientists are afraid to talk about the true effects of climate change. They know the truth is so frightening it tends to intimidate. Hamilton said there was a “cavernous gap” between the attitudes about scientists and politicians on the subject. Public concern is well ahead of the politicians but there is no real sense of the magnitude of the disaster that lies ahead. And apart from the US, nowhere is that radical disconnect greater than in Australia.

Perhaps that is not surprising, as the science truly is frightening. In the journal of atomic chemistry and physics, environmental scientist Doctor James Hansen concluded that a one degree raise in global temperatures would lead to severe disruptions to climate systems and a rise in sea level. Yet Hansen says that a two degree rise is “locked in” and that a return to pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is simply not possible. Hansen said instead with the current levels of industrialisation and continued growth, a three degree rise is more likely, possibly rising to four or five. Few people have faced up to the facts of what Hansen and others are saying.

At two or three degrees Australia would face a doubling in the number of very hot days (over 35 degrees C) and long, hot summers would be the norm. Extreme weather events such as storms, cyclones and bushfires will increase. 95 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef would die due to coral bleach, half of the core habitat of eucalypti would be lost and 60 percent of the Murray-Darling would never flow again. Experts worry about "non-linear weather events" and “climate tipping points” are ignored when they say should go on a “war footing” against global warming.

But scientists around the world are pressured to tone down their findings in order to seek publication, even in academic journals. Scientists self-censor in the face of public criticism and the fear of seeming to ‘cry wolf’. No-one seems interested in facing the truth that there will be a disastrous multi-meter sea level rise in the next century. There is little evidence the world is prepared to do what is needed. And there is absolutely no sign the world is prepared to tackle the problem of greenhouse gases in aviation as that industry continually expands. Hamilton said that if Australia committed to a 50 percent cut in emissions, aviation alone would consume the other 50 percent by 2050. He said there should be a moratorium on airport expansion.

The recent demonstrations at Heathrow showed that some people are beginning to take the issue seriously. However the press painted the demonstrators as "anarchists" and "eco-fundamentalists" to undermine their argument. Sinclair himself has been attacked in the press for call for a moratorium on expansion. The Federal Government, Labor opposition and Virgin Blue have all condemned the proposal. Vested interests in continued growth will simply deny the truth and attack the proposers as “mad greenies”.

This is consistent with how John Howard’s government has treated the environmentalist argument when dealing with climate change. The government describes cutting emissions having “ruinous consequences”, would cause “massive losses” and would “destroy the economy”. James Hansen does say the measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions require a radically different energy use pattern – and this fact is unimaginable to politicians.

Hamilton said sceptics accuse climate scientists as being alarmist but the opposite is true: they are too afraid to tell the truth. Hamilton said this needed to change. He quoted Hansen again who said that scientists have a responsibility to the truth and future generations that is greater than the risk of personal vilification. And there is much to fight. Despite the Australian Government giving the appearance it is now serious about climate change, they still attack climate scientists’ predictions, bamboozle the evidence and create doubt in the minds of the public. Their climate change scepticism gives the impression that scientists are still not certain among themselves and therefore there is nothing to worry about.

Hamilton said the media have been complicit in this downplaying of the scientific evidence in favour of human-caused climate change. He brought up the case of the recent ABC screening of the Great Global Warming Swindle. Filmmaker Martin Durkin had already categorised environmental ideology as irrational in his previous work. Called “Against Nature” it caused an outcry in the UK as it claimed that environmentalism had its roots in Nazi Germany and it now causes suffering in the third world.

George Monbiot exposed Durkin as someone who consistently “misled” his interviewees about “the content and purpose of the programmes”. He is also linked to a Trotskyite splinter group called the Revolutionary Communist Party who take a contrarian position on positions such as climate change, support of Serbia and Rwanda’s Hutus and are opposed to the ban on landmines. The Great Climate Change Swindle was denounced by the prestigious Royal Society (Britain’s academy of sciences) who said those “who ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game”.

ABC defended their right to screen the program citing the need to promote “a full range of views” but Hamilton asked is this really true. Would they, for instance, broadcast the conspiracy theories of Lyndon Larouche? He said the ABC’s criteria for screening programs should not just be entertainment but should include a modicum of credibility and a minimum of journalistic standards.

Hamilton then went on to discuss the example of the 9 August front page story in the Australian. According to its exclusive, the head of the world’s leading body on climate change, the IPCC, had publicly backed John Howard’s decision to defer cuts in emission targets while on a visit to Australia. The article was written by the newspaper’s new environmental reporter Matthew Warren. Prior to joining the Australian Warren had been the PR director of the NSW Minerals Council, the state's peak mining body.

Embarrassed IPCC head Dr Rajendra Pachauri was called into many embassies in Canberra to explain his position. One lobbyist at the conference he was attending was so surprised to hear Dr Pachauri had endorsed Canberra's position, she asked him about it at a lecture the next day. She wasn't the first to question it. Pachauri publicly denied supporting the Australian position and he wrote a letter of complaint to the Australian. ABC’s Media Watch accused the Australian that it misrepresented an interview. The Australian did not publish the letter or offer any retraction. Instead they repeated the assertion two days later in another story.

Hamilton finished with some observations on APEC. Abroad and now finally at home, the Howard Government has suffered for its implacable opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. The Government has tried to provide cover for their position by conjuring up alternative solutions to make it look like they are doing something. Howard has made some environmental deals in its bi-lateral agreements with fellow Kyoto-holdout US. But the AP6 initiative has proved, in Hamilton’s words “a complete flop”. Then a year ago, the Government announced that the APEC Summit would be its trump card and they would be able to announce a grand “Sydney Declaration” on climate change.

But as the summit approached, other nations blanched at Australia’s plans. Apart from the US, the other nations had all ratified Kyoto and wanted any future plans to be an extension of that. The G8 meeting in June gave a “remarkably explicit” endorsement to work through the UN process. The other APEC countries told Australia they would not sign any deal in Sydney that would undermine Kyoto. Alexander Downer then had the audacity to claim he was disappointed that Sydney could not achieve a more ambitious deal. Malaysia put Australia in its place when its Prime Minister said Australia has no credibility to negotiate anything on climate change.

The countries eventually signed an “aspirational” target without any legally binding targets for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. On the day of the declaration, the front page of the Australian said that China and US’s acceptance was a “sweeping victory for John Howard on climate change”. Hamilton said that newspaper reaches “new levels of absurdity every time I open it”. But, he added, despite the Howard spin, the Declaration was not without merit. It reaffirms the UN objectives on greenhouse gas emissions and implicitly endorses the Kyoto Protocol with its call for “post 2012 international arrangements [which] strengthen current arrangements” and long-term targets. The Declaration was a final defeat for Howard’s isolationism.

Naked glacier

American installation artist Spencer Tunick’s latest mass nudist shoot saw 600 people strip naked in 10C temperatures on a Swiss glacier on the weekend. The photographic shoot was organised by Greenpeace as part of a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change. The naked 600 volunteers posed on Switzerland's shrinking Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps. Alpine glaciers have lost about one-third of their length and half their volume over the past 150 years while The Aletsch has retreated by 115 metres in the last two years.

Organisers Greenpeace say that if global warming continues at its current rate, most glaciers in Switzerland will completely disappear by 2080, leaving nothing but valleys and slopes strewn with rock debris. They described the protest shoot as a cry for help against a planetary emergency and a “chilling message from wear nothing activists to do nothing politicians”.

Greenpeace also quoted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who say the world only has eight years remaining to take the urgent action needed to curb catastrophic climate change. The IPCC’s latest report (pdf) on climate change has presented further evidence that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have increased by 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004 and will continue to grow over the next few decades.

The world’s glaciers are particularly sensitive to climate change and are therefore valuable for climate research. Scientist drill and extract ice cores from glaciers to see a long-term climate record. These cores are continuous records providing information regarding past climate. Scientists analyse core components, particularly trapped air bubbles, which reveal important information about past atmospheric composition, temperature variations, and types of vegetation. Because glaciers preserve bits of atmosphere from thousands of years ago in these air bubbles, scientists can derived when Ice Ages have taken place.

Many glaciers throughout the world are in decline. The Antarctic is particularly vulnerable. The Müller Ice Shelf at Lallemand Fjord, Antarctic Peninsula is now receding after growing over a 400-year cooling period. The nearby Larsen Ice Shelf lost a 1200 square mile section early in 2002, prompting some glaciologists to be concerned that even the giant Ross Ice Shelf could be at risk. The mile-long ice cliff of Marr Ice Piedmont, Anvers Island, has also receded about 500 meters since the mid 1960s. The regional temperature has increased 5° C in winter over the past 50 years. This reduces seasonal icepack, disrupts growth of krill and changes conditions on penguin rookeries.

More famously in recent times is the decline of the world’s largest tropical glacier. Ohio State glaciologist Lonnie Thompson and his team created headlines in February when they found evidence the Qori Kalis glacier of the Quelccaya ice cap in the Peruvian Andes could lose half its mass in 12 months and could disappear in five years. Thompson was pessimistic that nothing could be done to halt the slide. "The question is, how far down this road do we go before there's any meaningful action to reduce emissions, what does the evidence have to be?" he said. "And unfortunately as human beings…we only deal well with crises."

However Greenpeace and Tunick are determined to tackle the problem in the Alps before it becomes a crisis. It could proven a potent team. Greenpeace are masters in the PR game and Spenser Tunick is known for his provocative mass nude photographs in usually urban settings across Europe. The New York artist calls them ‘living sculptures’ or ‘body landscapes’. Earlier this year he set a new record when he got 18,000 people to pose naked for his camera in Mexico City. Because of the unique challenge of shooting on a freezing glacier, the Greenpeace call for volunteers included a message they would not 'be naked for very long'. While Greenpeace’s political message took centre stage, Tunick himself held firm to an artistic motive. 'I want my images to go more than skin-deep, “he said. “I want the viewers to feel the vulnerability of their existence and how it relates closely to the sensitivity of the world's glaciers.”

Gulf Stream out of circulation?

Paleoclimatologists at Oregon State University released a survey last month which added weight to the theory that the Gulf Stream may slow or stop entirely. Publishing a paper in the respected Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the Oregon scientists provide data that indicate why current patterns changed in the distant past in extraordinarily short timeframes. The trigger for current change is a surge of fresh water which reduces the ocean’s salinity. The study is of interest today due to concerns that global warming could perversely re-create the conditions for a new ice age.

The research relies heavily on the activity of a process called thermohaline circulation (THC). THC governs the global deepwater currents and plays an important role in supplying heat to the polar regions, and in regulating sea ice. THC causes a huge conveyor belt of warm, less-salty surface water from the tropical Atlantic Ocean to the far North Atlantic, where it finally becomes so cold and salty that it sinks, moves south, and continues the circulation pattern. Large influxes of fresh water could slow or even stop the current. The loss of the Greenland ice sheet could provide the trigger for such an event.

The northbound belt of the THC is the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is one of world’s most intensely studied currents. Visible from space, the 100-200km wide current begins in the Caribbean and moves north east keeping the seas of high latitude Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia ice free. Any disruption to the current would be disastrous for these countries. But it has happened before.

Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall produced a 2003 paper for the Pentagon called An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security. The subtitle of the document was called “Imagining the Unthinkable”. It envisages a scenario where temperatures drop over Asia, North America and northern Europe, while rising over the southern hemisphere. It will cause droughts, severe storms and rising sea levels. Europe will become like Siberia, China will be hit by famine and Bangladesh will be drowned. While fortunate nations batten down the hatches, the report says “less fortunate nations, especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbours, may initiate struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy”.

The report states that about 12,700 years ago there was substantial cooling in a period that is now known as the Younger Dryas. The period is associated with an apparent collapse of the thermohaline circulation. There was a cooling of at least 15° Celsius in Greenland, and substantial change throughout the North Atlantic region which lasted 1,300 years. During the Younger Dryas the temperature dropped by about 3° C every decade before flattening out for an extended cold period of about a thousand years. Most of Europe was icebound and icebergs would have been found off the coast of Portugal.

The most recent cooling period began in the 14th century and the North Atlantic region experienced a cooling that lasted until the mid-19th century. Known as the Little Ice Age, it brought severe winters, sudden climatic shifts, and profound agricultural, economic, and political impacts to Europe. It was the probable cause of the demise of the Norwegian settlement in Greenland and the severe climatic conditions caused the Great Famine of Northern Europe in 1315-1322.

Schwartz and Randall posit a vision of the future which considers abrupt climate change. Though they don’t predict how exactly it might happen, the scenario involves all the floating ice disappearing from the northern polar seas. The THC grinds to a halt after 2010 disrupting the temperate climate of Europe. After another ten years Europe’s climate resembles Siberia while the South deals with increased warmth, precipitation, and storms. Millions will be on the move, escaping from the cold of the north and a waterless Africa. Crop yields will fall leading to food shortages. Access to minerals will be disrupted by ice and storms. As the Earth exceeds its carrying capacity, wars will become more frequent over diminishing resources.

One of the authors, Peter Schwartz told a symposium at the World Resources Institute, his worst-case scenario report was buried in the Pentagon bureaucracy. Many planners blasted it as being too unrealistic because it wasn’t based on more gradual climate change scenarios. But as scientists such as the Oregon State University paleoclimatologists have shown, these scenarios don’t necessarily get to grips with the extreme events that characterise the climate history of Earth.

IPCC issues damning global warming report

The planet’s leading international network of climate change scientists have issued a new and damning report of the impact of human activity on global warming. The study concluded that global warming is unequivocally real and that human activity is the main driver causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. The report said global warming is contributing to rising sea levels and unpredictable weather. The report is another cold, factual document which demands the worlds' governments take urgent action to address the problem.

Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their summary report about the human impact on climate change from their meeting in Paris. The report stated that global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased greatly as a result of human activity since the start of the Industrial Age in 1750. Based on measurements from ice cores spanning many thousands of years, these concentrations now far exceed pre-industrial values.

Carbon dioxide is the predominant greenhouse gas and global concentrations have increased from 280 parts per million (ppm – the ratio of greenhouse gas molecules to the total number of molecules of dry air) in 1750 to 379 ppm in 2005. The report says the primary cause of this increase is the use of fossil fuels with land use also a contributing factor. Though there is year on year variability, annual carbon dioxide emissions are now increasing at a rate of 1.9 ppm in the last ten years compared to a growth rate of 1.45 ppm in the 45 years since measurements started in 1960.

The growth rate in methane concentration is also startling. Its pre-industrial average was 715 parts per billion (ppb) and was recorded as 1774 ppb in 2005. This latter figure is far greater than the natural range of methane measured in ice cores over the last 650,000 years which was 320 to 790 ppb. The scientists rated it a greater than 90% chance that this increase was the result of human agriculture and fossil fuel use. Meanwhile nitrous oxide has increased from 270 ppb in 1750 to 319 ppb in 2005, with a constant growth rate since in 1980.

The report also noted that eleven of the past 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years since records began in 1850. The warming trend over the past 50 years is twice that of the past 100 years. Meanwhile ocean temperatures have also increased and the oceans have absorbed 80% of the heat added to the climate system. This causes seawater to expand and sea levels to rise. This rise is exacerbated by retreating mountain glaciers and decreasing snow cover. New data suggests that ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica have contributed to the sea level rise between 1993 and 2003. During this decade sea levels rose about 3.1 mm a year though it is not clear if this is an anomaly or an increase in the longer-term trend.

The report states that climate change has been observed in many indicators such as the Arctic ice flow, rainfall, ocean salinity, wind patterns, and the incidence of extreme weather such as droughts, deluges, heatwaves and cyclones. Arctic temperatures increased at twice the global average in the last century while sea ice shrank by 2.7% per decade. Rainfall has increased dramatically in the eastern part of both Americas, northern Europe and central Asia but has decreased in the African Sahel, the Mediterranean and the south of Africa and Asia. These patterns are affected by the increasing salinity of low latitude waters and the lower salinity of mid and high latitude waters.

The report included a paleoclimatic perspective which has historical and applied scientific objectives. These supported the contention that the warming is unusual in the last 1,300 years. The last time polar regions were significantly warmer than the present was 125,000 years ago when the lack of polar ice caused a 4 to 6 metre rise in sea levels.

The report concluded while it was unlikely that climate change of the 7 centuries prior to 1950 were caused by human actions, it was extremely unlikely that the atmospheric and ocean warming and ice loss of the last 55 years were caused by natural forces. The report predicted a rise of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade for the next 20 years. Continued gas emissions at or above present levels would increase it further and cause warming larger than any observed in the 20th century.

The report predicts snow cover will contract, polar sea ice will shrink and extreme weather such as heatwaves, heavy rain and tropical cyclones will become more frequent. If the entire Greenland ice sheet is lost (which could occur after 2100) it would contribute to sea level rises of about 7 metres. The scientists predict Antarctica will remain too cold for widespread surface melting.

If carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reach twice their pre-industrial levels, the global climate will probably warm by 3.5 to 8 degrees. But there would be more than a 1-in-10 chance of much greater warming; a situation many earth scientists say poses an unacceptable risk. With these almost irrefutable scientific conclusions, the report is a call to action for the world’s governments. The recent Stern Report detailed how the cost of reducing emissions to reduce the extent of these climate changes may well be much less than the cost of not reducing emissions and having these impacts.