Climate Change: It is time to panic

'I hope that its foundations are strong. I hope that our foundations are even stronger.' — Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg wants us to come together to save our planet like we did to save the Notre Dame pic.twitter.com/obhOhfNKuL

— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) April 22, 2019

Quote of the Week

“I find it hard to exaggerate the peril. This is the new extinction and we are half way through it. We are in terrible, terrible trouble and the longer we wait to do something about it the worse it is going to get.”  [World renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough speaking at an International Monetary Fund event on 11 April 2019, quoted by Vox 12 April 2019]

Food crises will affect tens of millions of people across the world this year, researchers warn

Reuters, 2 April 2019:

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Food crises will affect tens of millions of people across the world this year, researchers warned on Tuesday, after war, extreme weather and economic woes in 2018 left more than 113 million in dire need of help.

Conflict and insecurity were responsible for the desperate situation faced by 74 million people, or two-thirds of those affected, in 2018, said the Global Network against Food Crises in its annual report.

The Network’s members include the United Nations’ Food aand Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme, and the European Union.

Analyzing 53 countries, it uses a five-phase scale with the third level classified as crisis, fourth as emergency and fifth as famine/catastrophe.

Luca Russo, FAO’s senior food crises analyst, warned that millions more are now at risk of reaching level three and above.

“The 113 million is what we call the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the numbers further down, you have people who are not food insecure but they are on the verge,” Russo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

These people, a further 143 million, are “so fragile that it just takes a bit of a drought” for them to fall into food crisis, he said.

“Unless we work substantially on these people and remove some of the drivers that can bring them to a worse situation, the overall numbers are likely to increase,” Russo added.

Of countries that suffered food crises in 2018, the worst affected was Yemen, where nearly 16 million people needed urgent food aid after four years of war, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo at 13 million and Afghanistan at 10.6 million.....

Climate change, what’s climate change?

Because the majority of rightwing members of the Australian Parliament refuse to accept the realities of climate change the nation ended up with legislation like this on 3 April 2019.

Unfortunately in this they were aided and abetted by Labor senators even though these senators had reservations about unintended consequences

Medium.com, 3 April 2019:

In the final sitting day before the election Senators passed a bill to greatly increase the powers and funding of the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (Efic).

Under the guise of Australia’s ‘step-up’ in the Pacific, the Senate has turned this obscure agency into a larger ‘development bank’ for infrastructure oversea.

The changes were strongly criticised by Australia’s development community, and as Australia Institute research has warned, risk fast-tracking taxpayer funding towards fossil fuel projects in the region, undermining the climate action on which the safety of the Pacific depends.

What the Efic?

Efic is a lending agency whose core job is lending to support Australian exporters, ostensibly small and medium sized enterprises.

In recent years the government has used Efic to administer the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) — the agency that wanted to lend Adani $1 billion dollars for its railway line — and the government’s multi-billion dollar Defence Exports Facility.

By passing the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment (Support for Infrastructure Financing) Bill 2019, the Senate gives Efic nearly unfettered scope to fund any sort of infrastructure, and access to an extra billion dollars, increasing six-fold its ‘callable capital’ to draw on to back up even larger loans.

Despite the stated purpose of supporting development, under the changes Efic is required only to maximise ‘Australian benefits’. There is no mention at all of the development needs and challenges of countries where Efic would invest.

Instead, Efic can now lend simply to benefit “a person carrying on business or other activities in Australia”, which the government states will empower Efic to promote fossil fuel “energy” exports from Australia.

Taxpayers Funding Fossil Fuels

Efic has a long and sorry history of funding fossil fuel projects, both overseas and in Australia. Half of its current portfolio is in the fossil fuel and mining sectors.

Despite being a Commonwealth agency, Efic explicitly states it is no constrained by the goals of the Paris Agreement and it has refused to disclose how it considers climate risk.

The biggest thing Efic has ever done was backing the PNG LNG project, a massive gas project in Papua New Guinea. Efic was warned in advance it would likely lead to civil conflict and economic disruption. And it did, sparking conflict verging on civil war.

Right now, under current rules, Efic is thinking about lending money to Woodside to develop an oil and gas field in Senegal in Africa. Efic has previously been in talks with Adani about its coal mine……..

The Morrison Government's well thumbed federal election campaign playbook needs updating

With another federal election a little over four weeks away the Morrison Government - a party without a genuine climate change policy - has obviously included a version of the 'hundred dollar lamb roast' in its talking points for the troops as allegation surface here and there that climate change policies held by The Greens or Labor will increase food prices.

Especially any part of these policies which might in the future seek to have industry limit its greenhouse gas emissions by placing a price on carbon.

Here is a rebuttal of those allegations.....

Just a little note ... for all the complaints about food price soaring on the back of carbon pricing, this is food inflation in Sydney since 2011. Pick when the carbon tax was in place... pic.twitter.com/OoeYC7Fp33

— Shane Wright (@swrighteconomy) April 1, 2019

The Gillard Labor Government’s Clean Energy Act 2011 was assented to on 18 November 2011, came into effect on 1 July 2012 and was repealed by the Abbott Coalition Government on 17 July 2014, coming into post-dated effect on 1 July 2014 .

Hottest March on record in Australia and hottest start to the year

ABC News, 1 April 2019:

Blair Trewin, senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), said March was a continuation of what we saw over summer in a lot of ways.

Not only was it the hottest March, but it has also been the hottest start to the year on record. By a lot.

"It's come in about 2.2 degrees above the long term for the first quarter of the year," Dr Trewin said.

"That's nearly a degree hotter than the previous hottest first quarter of the year.

"We've had the hottest January, we've had the hottest March and February was also in the top five."

Nearly a degree is a very large margin to break a record by.

"Even for an individual month that would be a very significant margin, but to be breaking a three-month-period record by nearly a degree is something which we would see very rarely, if ever in a continent the size of Australia," Dr Trewin said....

It may feel like the "hottest on record" headline is a constant these days but Dr Trewin said it was still not exactly normal.

"We're still getting the occasional cool months but the frequency of record warm months and seasons has gone up quite substantially in the last decade or so with the background long-term warming," he said.

"Whilst we've seen a particularly extreme few months, the background warming trend we see in Australia, as we do globally, is in the order of 0.1 to 0.2 of a degree per decade.

"Projections are that that's expected to continue at least at that rate," he said.

_____________________________________________________________

Key points:

o   March 2019 was the warmest on record for mean, minimum and maximum temperatures in Australia

o   Rainfall was below average through the centre of the country but well above average where cyclones hit

o   Outlook for the next three months suggests continued above-average temperatures

_____________________________________________________________

Est. 32 per cent of Australian farmers still haven't come to grips with the reality of climate change

ABC News, 31 March 2019:

When the Reserve Bank announced recently that it was factoring climate change into interest rate calculations, it underlined a mainstream acceptance of potential impacts for a warming planet.

Climate change now had economic consequences.

But resistance to the premise of human-induced climate change still rages, including in regional and rural communities, which often are the very communities already feeling its effects.

"When you look at the results of different surveys going back a few years, farmers were four times more likely than the national average to be climate change deniers," said Professor Mark Howden, director at the ANU's Climate Change Institute.

"That was about 32 per cent versus about 8 per cent for the population average."

So, why do so many people in regional and rural areas not believe in climate change?

ABC Central West's Curious project put that question to some experts, who say the answer has more to do with human nature than scientific reasoning.

Professor Matthew Hornsey from the University of Queensland has dedicated his academic career to understanding why people reject apparently reasonable messages.

"The metaphor that's used in my papers is around what we call cognitive scientists versus cognitive lawyers," he said.

"What we hope people do when they interpret science is that they weigh it up in an independent way and reach a conclusion.

"But in real life, people behave more like lawyers, where they have a particular outcome that they have in mind and then they selectively interpret the evidence in a way that prosecutes the outcome they want to reach.

"So you selectively expose yourself to information, you selectively critique the information, you selectively remember the information in a way that reinforces what your gut is telling you."

This is known as motivated reasoning — and online news source algorithms and social forums are only enabling the phenomenon, allowing for further information curation for the individual…..

Professor Hornsey says there is another force fanning the flames of distrust between the scientific and non-scientific communities.

"One thing that can be said without huge amounts of controversy is that there is a relationship between political conservatism and climate scepticism in Australia," he said.

To better understand this, the professor's research took him to 27 countries and found that for two-thirds of these, there was no relationship between being politically conservative and a climate science sceptic.

But Australia's relationship between the two trailed only the United States in strength of connection, he said.

"What we were seeing was the greater the per-capita carbon emissions of a country, the greater that relationship between climate scepticism and conservatism."

Professor Hornsey argues that per-capita carbon emissions is an indicator for fossil fuel reliance, which in turn creates greater stakes for the vested interests at play.

"When the stakes are high and the vested interests from the fossil fuel community are enormous, you see funded campaigns of misinformation, coaching conservatives what to think about climate change," he said.

"That gets picked up by conservative media and you get this orchestrated, very consistent, cohesive campaign of misinformation to send the signal that the science is not yet in."…..

Professor Hornsey believes current discourse can make farmers feel as though they are at the centre of an overwhelming societal problem, triggering further psychological rejection of the science.

"I feel sorry for farmers around the climate change issue, because this is a problem that has been caused collectively.

"Farmers are only a small part of the problem but they are going to be a huge part of the solution, so I think they feel put upon.

"They feel like they are constantly being lectured about their need to make sacrifices to adapt to a set of circumstances that are largely out of their control."

In 2010, in response to a drought policy review panel, the Commonwealth initiated a pilot of drought reform measures in Western Australia.

John Noonan from Curtin University led the program, which went on to have staggering success in converting not only participating farmers' attitudes to climate science, but also in restructuring their farm management models in response to a changing climate.

"First of all, when talking with farmers, we didn't call it the drought pilot — we used the name Farm Resilience Program," Mr Noonan said.

"If you go in to beat people up and have a climate change conversation, you get nowhere.

"We got the farmers to have conversations about changing rainfall patterns and continuing dry spells, rather than us telling them what to do.

"And they told us everything that we needed them to tell us for us to reflect that back to them and say, 'Well, actually, that's climate change'.

"If you take a very left-brain, very scientific approach to these matters, you are going nowhere, and what we used was very right-brain, very heart and gut-driven — and it worked."

Mr Evans agrees, underscoring the deeply personal connection farmers have to the land, its role in their business approach, and why the message must be managed psychologically rather than scientifically.

"Ultimately, for a farmer to confront the reality that this new climate might be permanent, requires them to go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance."

The full article can be read here.

Climate Change and Populations: where will you move to?

This graphic looks so far away doesn't it?

Children from a foreign country in the background, impossibly high calendar dates and population numbers as well as the word "Refugees".

But if one looks closely the first calendar date is only 11 short years away, the next just 31 years and the date after that 81 years.

And not all "refugees" will be foreign once climate change impacts accelerate.

There will be literally thousands of ordinary people living in Australia who will at some point be driven inland by rising water making their homes and coastal towns or villages uninhabitable or uninsurable.

There will be years on end where the entire population of inland country towns will be living in temporary accommodation as they try to rebuild what was lost to raging bushfires - if they ever do.

Little village communities supporting families on surrounding farmland will be disappear due to water scarcity which never ends.

These will be this country's home-grown refugees and all states and territories need to start reworking their natural disaster contingency plans to include the need to relocate a great many people on a permanent basis between now and 2100.

The scale of internal climate migration will ramp up by 2050 and then accelerate unless concerted climate and development action is taken. [World Bank Group, 2018, Groundswell : Preparing for Internal Climate Migration]

“Every year, the world's five largest publicly owned oil and gas companies spend approximately $200 million on lobbying designed to control, delay or block binding climate-motivated policy”

Forbes, 25 March 2019:

Every year, the world's five largest publicly owned oil and gas companies spend approximately $200 million on lobbying designed to control, delay or block binding climate-motivated policy. This has caused problems for governments seeking to implement policies in the wake of the Paris Agreement which are vital in meeting climate change targets. Companies are generally reluctant to disclose such lobbying expenditure and late last week, a report from InfluenceMap used a methodology focusing on the best available records along with intensive research of corporate messaging to gauge their level of influence on initiatives to halt climate change.…..

The research also found that the five companies listed support their lobbying expenditures with a financial outlay of $195 million annually for focused branding activities which suggest they support action against climate change. The most common tactics employed are drawing attention to low carbon, positioning the company as a climate expert and acknowledging climate concern while ignoring solutions. The report said that the campaigns are misleading the public given that the companies listed continue to expand their oil and gas extraction activities with only 3% of spending directed to low carbon projects. Both Shell and Chevron rejected the report's findings and reinforced their commitment to reducing greenhouse gases and addressing climate change.

Since 2013 these tactics appear to have been quite successful in shaping the political debate within the Liberal and National parties in Australia.

One again the Liberal-Nationals Coalition goes into a federal election campaign without a genuine climate change policy or a viable energy policy.

The fact that the fossil fuel industry made political donations to the Coalition of an est. $270,717 in 2016-17 and the top 10 fossil fuel donors gave a further est. $512,261 in 2017-18 can not be ruled out as a factor in the continuing absence of genuine climate change policies on the conservative side of politics, 

Insurance industry continues to warn that ability to insure property may breakdown due to ongoing impacts of climate change

The Guardian, 22 March 2019:

Insurers have warned that climate change could make cover for ordinary people unaffordable after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for $24bn (£18bn) of losses in the Californian wildfires.

Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s chief climatologist, told the Guardian that the costs could soon be widely felt, with premium rises already under discussion with clients holding asset concentrations in vulnerable parts of the state.

“If the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms or hail is increasing then the only sustainable option we have is to adjust our risk prices accordingly. In the long run it might become a social issue,” he said after Munich Re published a report into climate change’s impact on wildfires. “Affordability is so critical [because] some people on low and average incomes in some regions will no longer be able to buy insurance.”

The lion’s share of California’s 20 worst forest blazes since the 1930s have occurred this millennium, in years characterised by abnormally high summer temperatures and “exceptional dryness” between May and October, according to a new analysis by Munich Re.

Wetter and more humid winters spurred new forest growth which became tinder dry in heatwave conditions that preceded the wildfires, the report’s authors said.

After comparing observational data spanning several decades with climate models, the report concluded that the wildfires, which killed 85 people, were “broadly consistent with climate change”.

Nicolas Jeanmart, the head of personal insurance, general insurance and macroeconomics at Insurance Europe, which speaks for 34 national insurance associations, said the knock-on effects from rising premiums could pose a threat to social order.

“The sector is concerned that continuing global increases in temperature could make it increasingly difficult to offer the affordable financial protection that people deserve, and that modern society requires to function properly,” he said.

Estimated 100,000 attended School Strike For Climate rallies across Australia on 15 March 2019

New Zealand and Australia are setting the standard... and they are setting in very high!! #FridaysForFurture #SchoolStrike4climate #climatestrike https://t.co/rj59J6xw34

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) March 15, 2019

Goodness me! The amazing children of Wagga Wagga have replicated my cartoon in a photo! I could not be more proud!! #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/SizB6XY6kp

— The Cathy Wilcox (@cathywilcox1) March 15, 2019

 

@TheNewDailyAU

A huge crowd of young people marching in #Hobart for the #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/FyjaCc4RD0

— Monte Bovill (@MonteBovill) March 15, 2019

@scidocmartin

Photographs of some of the many thousands of students, their teachers, families and allies who attended this afternoon’s climate change rally in Sydney. #climatechange #rally #studentrally #climatechangerally #sydney #studentstrike4climate #schoolstrike4climate pic.twitter.com/K3pOyh73dr

— William Brougham (@WilliamBrougham) March 15, 2019

Unknown

#schoolstrike4climate Its happening in Perth West Australia @GretaThunberg pic.twitter.com/kYX0Zkf5qu

— Colin Hughes (@drcwhos) March 15, 2019

A few gaps at roll call. #schoolstrike4climate pic.twitter.com/GquSNl4R2s

— Hugh Riminton (@hughriminton) March 15, 2019

Leadership. #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/Ifk59h2uvr

— GetUp! (@GetUp) March 15, 2019

A+ crowd at the Newcastle Climate strike #climatechange #schoolstrike4climate #newcastle #climateaction pic.twitter.com/mf7iSD6ljQ

— blaggie blurphy (@maggiebronwen) March 15, 2019

Man protests protest - drowned out by “No more coal” chants. #schoolstrike4climate @GCBulletin #goldcoast pic.twitter.com/ABaamDe58z

— Kirstin Payne (@kpayneoz) March 15, 2019

The #climatestrike in Melbourne is way bigger than the last one. Spring and Collins intersection blocked by people rallying @abcmelbourne pic.twitter.com/43Cx9mKBEM

— Stephanie Anderson (@skateanderson) March 15, 2019

From the small but passionate Gunnedah #schoolstrike4climate - young Hugh Hunter responds perfectly to heckling from National Party members #auspol pic.twitter.com/FWHTEk0BIb

— Lock the Gate (@LockTheGate) March 15, 2019

All power to the students in 1,659 towns and cities in 105 countries taking part in today's #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/4SihvysM9c

— David Pope (@davpope) March 14, 2019

After Lismore’s #ClimateStrike, the Labor candidate @JanelleSaffin1 offered some words of support for the striking kids demanding climate action. #SchoolStrike4Climate #NSWVotes #LismoreVotes pic.twitter.com/EVx0p8LRH5

— Nature NSW (@naturensw) March 15, 2019

#SchoolStrike4ClimateAustralia Images from regional New South Wales 15 March 2019 https://t.co/FH4xqvNdqD including #Lismore #Murwillumbah #CoffsHarbour @MinhKular @YaThinkN @Captainturtle @lynlinking pic.twitter.com/ylLUDYXGM0

— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) March 15, 2019

Knitting Nannas from across NSW took their protest to Sydney on International Women's Day

United to Protect Our Water

101 Knitting Nannas from around NSW converged on Parliament House in Sydney on International Women’s Day (March 8) to protest about water mismanagement and the lack of effective government action to protect river and groundwater health. The theme of the protest was “No Water no Life”.

The Nannas came from Loops (local Nanna groups) in the Northern Rivers, Grafton, Coonabarabran, Dubbo, Midcoast, New England-North West, Central Coast, Gloucester, Hunter Valley, Illawarra, and Sydney.

The Nannas have long been very concerned about unwanted water impacts around NSW – issues which have been raised with elected representatives over a number of years.

· These include impacts on urban water catchments from coal mines - the Wallarah 2 mine on the Central Coast and the Hume mine in the Southern Highlands as well as the long-wall mining in the Illawarra which leads to massive water loss into mines.

· The North West of the state is also impacted by coal mines which use vast amounts of water – Whitehaven’s Maules Creek mine and the proposed Vickery mine.

· Then there’s the threat to groundwater from Santos’ gasfield in the Pilliga State Forest. This project is slated to extract 35 billion litres of groundwater – most of it in the first five years.

· But the most dramatic impact is the most recent – the Darling fish kills - the result of years of mismanagement and favouring of irrigators over the health of the river system.

The Nannas assembled in Martin Place where they donned their specially made t-shirts bearing a picture of a Nanna declaring “The Water Needs You” (in the spirit of the Lord Kitchener First World War recruiting poster) and their yellow, red and black suffragette-style sashes emblazoned with “No Water No Life”. 

After a group photo under the big banner (“United to Protect Our Water”), the Nannas walked to Parliament House and ranged themselves along the fenceline.  There they used their sashes to tie on to the iron railing of the fence in the manner of the suffragettes.

The brightly-dressed Nannas with their banners and their singing and chanting attracted a great deal of attention from pedestrians and those driving along busy Macquarie Street. A highlight of the street performance was the powerful rendition by Nanna Purl Stockinstitch of her poem about the death of farmer George Bender who was hounded by a CSG company in Queensland.  The Nannas hoped that the pollies in our parliament heard and took note of the effect the unconventional gas industry has had - and continues to have - on the lives of communities in gasfields.

Various politicians met with the Nannas on the footpath and were presented with their “knagging list” - the Nannas’ demands for action.

While the theme of the protest focused on the major problems with rivers and water, the Nannas demands were much broader. They included a call for immediate climate action, transition to 100% renewables, a state-wide ban on gas extraction (including in the Pilliga), proper protection of Aboriginal sacred sites and revocation of the draconian anti-protest laws brought in by the current NSW Government. 

The Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed are hopeful that all of the state political parties will accept their calls for effective action on these important matters. It should be noted that the Nannas, who are very concerned about the protection of the land and water for future generations, are non-party political and have a policy of annoying all politicians equally – something we aim to continue doing!

            - Leonie Blain

               Grafton Loop of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas & Greed

Climate Change creates risks for Australia’s financial stability warns Reserve Bank deputy governor

The Guardian, 12 March 2019:

A deputy governor of Australia’s central bank has issued a stark warning that climate change poses risks to financial stability, noting that warming needs to be thought of by policymakers and business as a trend and not a cyclical event.

As a debate over coal and energy fractures the Morrison government, Guy Debelle warned a forum hosted by the Centre for Policy Development on Tuesday that climate change created risks for Australia’s financial stability in a number of different ways.

“For example, insurers may face large, unanticipated payouts because of climate change-related property damage and business losses,” he said. “In some cases businesses and households could lose access to insurance.

 “Companies that generate significant pollution might face reputational damage or legal liability from their activities, and changes to regulation could cause previously valuable assets to become uneconomic.

“All of these consequences could precipitate sharp adjustments in asset prices, which would have consequences for financial stability.”

Debelle noted Australia had traditionally come at the climate change debate largely through the prism of its impact on agriculture, but he said the changing climate created “significant risks and opportunities for a broader part of the economy than agriculture – though the impact on agriculture continues to be significant”.

He said policymakers and businesses needed to “think in terms of trend rather than cycles in the weather”.

“Droughts have generally been regarded, at least economically, as cyclical events that recur every so often. In contrast, climate change is a trend change. The impact of a trend is ongoing, whereas a cycle is temporary.”

He said there was a need to reassess the frequency of climate change events, and “our assumptions about the severity and longevity of the climatic events”.

He said the insurance industry had already recognised the frequency and severity of tropical cyclones and hurricanes in the northern hemisphere had changed, and this reassessment had prompted the sector to reprice how they insure and reinsure against such events.

“We need to think about how the economy is currently adapting and how it will adapt both to the trend change in climate and the transition required to contain climate change,” Debelle said.

He said the transition path to a less carbon-intensive world was “clearly quite different depending on whether it is managed as a gradual process or is abrupt”.

“The trend changes aren’t likely to be smooth. There is likely to be volatility around the trend, with the potential for damaging outcomes from spikes above the trend.”

Debelle noted the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had provided “strong evidence” that another half degree of warming was likely in the next 10 to 30 years.

He said work from the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO pointed to an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, and noted “extreme events may well have a disproportionately large physical impact”.

“There is also a greater possibility of compound events, where two or more climatic events combine to produce an outcome that is worse than the effect of one of them occurring individually,” Debelle said.

“Combined with the increased volatility, this increases the likelihood of nonlinear impacts on the economy.”

Debelle said assessed through that lens, climate change-induced shocks to the economy would be “close to permanent” if droughts were more frequent and cyclones happened more often. “That situation is more challenging to assess and respond to.”

On 13 March 2019 ABC News reported that a leading climate analyst warns that extreme weather risks mean nearly 1 in 10 Australian houses may be uninsurable due to climate change within the next few generations, that is in est. 30-90 years.