A reminder that Grafton & Lismore air quality monitoring stations produce readings on an hourly basis and DPIE issues alerts for windblown dust or bushfire smoke as necessary

Rural air quality according to North Coast Local Land Services -  Pollutants (concentration unit: μg/m3) at 1-hour average, 6-7pm on 11 January 2022:

GRAFTON   Particles PM2.5 = 2 GOOD, Particles PM10 = 8 GOOD, Total Suspended Particles = 9*.

LISMORE Particles PM2.5 = 3 GOOD, Particles PM10 = 15 GOOD, Total Suspended Particles = 16*

* Total Suspended  Particles (TSP) are generated by a variety of sources - such as combustion and non-combustion processes, including windblown dust, sea salt, earthworks, mining activities, industrial processes, motor vehicle engines and fires. 

Air quality in the Northern Rivers is monitored on an hourly basis and can be checked at https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/air-quality/rural-air-quality-network-live-data.

Air quality categories can be found at 

https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/air-quality/understanding-air-quality-data

NSW Air Quality Alerts are issued on days when pollution levels are forecast to be unhealthy or very unhealthy. For information on other related health matters please visit the NSW Health website. 

Air Quality by Region in an easy to read form at 

https://www.airquality.nsw.gov.au/.

You can sign up to receive daily SMS or email updates with air quality ratings and forecasts, for your selected locations within New South Wales.

 

On 22 April 2021 two Australian fossil fools came out to frolic under the public gaze - Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the virtual Leaders Summit and Saudi Arabian Oil Company director Andrew Liveris on the ABC program Q&A

Two fossil fools currently roaming wild in Australia
Saudi Arabian Oil Company director Andrew Liveris (left) and Prime Minister Scott Morrison (right)
IMAGE: Crikey, 16 September 2020

In March 2020 Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison created the National COVID-19 Co-ordination Commission Advisory Board with the aim of building a fossil fuel led economic recovery.

One Andrew N. Liveris - former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Dow Chemical Company, former director of DowDuPont, current director of Saudi Arabian Oil Company, self-styled advisor to Australian & US governments and an apparent chum of Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest of Cashless Welfare Card fame and Scott Morrison - became a Special Adviser to the Commission from April 2020 to September 2020 and head of the Commission's Manufacturing Taskforce.

Perhaps there is a hint in the following exchange as to why he is no longer mentioned in connection with the National COVID-19 Co-ordination Commission.

The man has a very large ego and a rather abrasive personality. He apparently also has a problem with basic maths.

ABC Q&A program, 22 April 2021 transcript, excerpts:

HAMISH MACDONALD:

Andrew Liveris, you’ve promoted this gas-led recovery. Many take the view that you’re committing us to fossil fuels for much longer than we need to.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

So, let me...

HAMISH MACDONALD:

Explain it. Justify it.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

...let me teach you a new term – fossil feedstock. OK? Let me...

NARELDA JACOBS:

Let me teach you a term.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Yeah, please.

NARELDA JACOBS:

If you believe there’s a future in fossil fuels...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Yeah.

NARELDA JACOBS:

...then you are a fossil...fool.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Narelda...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Thank you. I take it as a...I take it as a badge of honour that you would call me that. Fossil feedstock is all of your modern life. You want to live a modern life, you need a fossil feedstock. You can’t get carbon any other way. If you want a chemistry lesson, I’ll help you out the back.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Oh...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

What you’ve got to do...

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG:

Man...

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Andrew. Andrew.

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG:

...you’re just...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Listen.

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG:

You’re so patronising. Like, just...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

But...

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG:

Seriously.

HAMISH MACDONALD:

Let’s just try and keep it respectful amongst all of us...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

And you’re not?

HAMISH MACDONALD:

...and stick to the policy...

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG:

Well, I’m not the one shaking my finger at people, mate.

HAMISH MACDONALD:

Folks, let’s just keep to the policy, if we can.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Yeah. Well, you’re yelling.

HAMISH MACDONALD:

Uh, why is it that Australia...why is it that Australia needs a gas pipeline, for example, across the Nullarbor to bring it to the east coast from the west? Can you just justify this promotion of a gas-led recovery?

ANDREW LIVERIS:

There’s 850,000 Australians employed by industries that use gas as a feedstock. 850,000. At the current pricing levels, they’re paid Japanese spot price. Spot price. So, Japan gets cheaper gas than we do for our industry. Those industries you need for everyday life. And I’ll take the commentary that I’m patronising and I’m yelling, ‘cause I’m passionate about this, ‘cause there’s a gap in our knowledge base.

I’ll buy Malcolm’s discussion on gas as a firming fuel anytime. I totally agree with that. Gas as a segue to hydrogen, I also agree with that. That’s the fuel part. The feedstock part is not well understood, and it absolutely, totally makes me... Try to understand, why is it not understood in this wonderful country of ours? These jobs need to be not only protected, but we need to grow them. So, we... This sequester of carbon…

HAMISH MACDONALD:

So, how long do we need gas for as a transition fuel, then?

ANDREW LIVERIS:

So, again, you use the word ‘fuel’, OK, and I’m trying to actually...

HAMISH MACDONALD:

Yeah, I understand the point you’re making about feedstock, but...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

You do?

HAMISH MACDONALD:

...ultimately, this is a question that’s been put to you about a commitment to fossil fuels longer-term.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

So, remember...

HAMISH MACDONALD:

So, I’m just trying to understand what you...what period you see us using gas as a transition for.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

The National COVID Commission work we did was for manufacturing, OK? It wasn’t for electricity. It wasn’t for doing the power balance, or any of that. The work we did was totally based on using the carbon for manufacturing. That’s the work we did. OK? I have no skin in the game to keeping natural gas for power, for anything other than a transition. There’s no reason to do that. Because it is an emitter. It’s not as big an emitter as coal, but it certainly is an emitter. So you’ve got to use it as a transition. That’s it. Until batteries become affordable and scalable, until we can actually get more Snowy Hydros. And why you need a gas pipeline is as much to provide that transition for that, but more for industry, which is why I’m trying to bring it back to the feedstock conversation.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Andrew, where are the 850,000 jobs that use gas as feedstock? 

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Fertilisers, plastics, chemicals, explosives… [my yellow highlighting]

NOTE: An estimated 16,511 persons are employed in the four industries cited by Mr. Liveris. See note below.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

And there are 850,000 people working in Australia making plastics?

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Yes, yes.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Is that right?

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Not plastics – all those industries I just said.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I don’t think that’s true.

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG:

No. Yeah.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

That is true. I can send you the data.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

I think you’ve exaggerated. I honestly think you’re way out of...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Well...

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

...you’re way off the chart.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

Malcolm, I use the same people you used for research, as when you were prime minister. So, go talk to the people in Canberra.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

OK. Well...

ANDREW LIVERIS:

I mean, they’re the same...

MALCOLM TURNBULL

I don’t mind you mansplaining me. That’s alright. (CHUCKLES)

ANDREW LIVERIS:

I’m not. I’m not, Malcolm.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

You are, but it’s alright. It’s OK. It’s OK.

ANDREW LIVERIS:

That’s a pretty cheap blow.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s alright.

NOTES:

1.Fertiliser Manufacturing in Australia in 2021 employed 3,557 persons.

2.Plastics Manufacturing & Plastic Bottle Manufacturing in Australia in 2020 & 2021 employed a combined total of 8,154 persons.

3.Explosives Manufacturing in Australia in 2020 & 2021 employed 3,527 persons.

4.Basic Organic Chemical* Manufacturing in Australia in 2020 employed 1,273 persons. *The modern term “basic organic chemical” now refers to chemicals derived from both organic and carbon sources such as petroleum & natural gas.

5.Industrial Gas Manufacturing in Australia in 2021 employed 2,005 persons.

Quote of the Week

"The question you should all be asking is why should the PM have tax -payer funded air purifiers, while ppl in public housing have spent the summer choking on bushfire smoke?" [Asher Wolf, Twitter, 9 February 2020]

Australia's 2019-20 bushfire season expected to increase total global atmospheric greenhouse gases by est. 2 per cent this year

According to NOAA Climate.gov; The global average atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2018 was 407.4 parts per million (ppm for short), with a range of uncertainty of plus or minus 0.1 ppm. Carbon dioxide levels today are higher than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years.

With the ability of Australia's east coast forests to act as carbon sinks severely impacted by bushfires and air pollutants released by these fires to date circumnavigating the earth, it was to be expected that the amount of carbon dioxide parts per million in the atmosphere will rise sharply in 2020.

UK Met Office, media release, 24 January 2020:

A forecast of the atmospheric concentration of carbon-dioxide shows that 2020 will witness one of the largest annual rises in concentration since measurements began at Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, 1958.

During the year the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ is expected to peak above 417 parts per million in May, while the average for the year is forecast to be 414.2 ± 0.6ppm. This annual average represents a 2.74 ± 0.57 ppm rise on the average for 2019. While human-caused emissions cause the CO₂ rise in concentration, impacts of weather patterns on global ecosystems are predicted to increase the rise by 10% this year. Emissions from the recent Australian bushfires contribute up to one-fifth of this increase.

Professor Richard Betts MBE, of the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter, said: “Although the series of annual levels of CO₂ have always seen a year-on-year increase since 1958, driven by fossil fuel burning and deforestation, the rate of rise isn’t perfectly even because there are fluctuations in the response of ecosystem carbon sinks, especially tropical forests. Overall these are expected to be weaker than normal for a second year running.”

Weather patterns linked to year-by-year swings in Pacific Ocean temperatures are known to affect the uptake of carbon-dioxide by land ecosystems. In years with a warmer tropical Pacific, many regions become warmer and drier, which limits the ability of plants to grow and absorb CO₂ and increases the risk of wildfires which release further emissions. Along with other weather patterns and human-induced climate change, this has contributed to the recent hot, dry weather in Australia, which played a key role in the severity of the bushfires.

Professor Betts added: “The success of our previous forecasts has shown that the year-to-year variability in the rate of rise of CO₂ in the atmosphere is affected more by the strength of ecosystem carbon sinks and sources than year-to-year changes in human-induced emissions. Nevertheless, the anthropogenic emissions are still the overall driver of the long-term rise in concentrations.”

The CO₂ concentrations at Mauna Loa are measured by the Scripps Institution for Oceanography at UC San Diego and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Fire emissions are monitored by the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED).

The 2020 CO₂ forecast is available here.

As far as I can tell, it is likely that before 2020 draws to an end the atmosphere above the Australian land mass and coastal waters will probably contain at least est. 406.138 to 411 parts per million of carbon dioxide.

A carbon dioxide concentration of 400 parts per million is considered unsafe - a danger warning - and Morrison Government denialist-based climate change policy is making sure that we are now well and truly exceeding that figure.

The average surface temperatures over the Australian continent and its surrounding oceans have increased by nearly 1°C since the beginning of the 20th century.

This global rise saw land surface temperature in the NSW Northern rivers region rise by somewhere between 1°C and 1.4°C by 2014, with most of that warming occurring since 1950.

How hot will this region become in 2020?

Even the Australian Bureau of Meteorology rain radars are finding they are impacted by NSW bushfires

This tweet is from the Director of ABC News on 6 December 2019:

The ⁦@BOM_au⁩ satellite map over this significant part of NSW suggests desperately needed rain .. but unfortunately, all of the activity picked up here is bushfire smoke. Extraordinary. #NSWbushfires ⁦@abcnews⁩ ⁦@NSWRFS⁩ pic.twitter.com/zZry4r1mLk

— Gaven Morris (@gavmorris) December 6, 2019

Queensland Government gives Adani Group an early Christmas present worth up to $900 million in royalty deferrals

INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY ECONOMICS AND FINANCIAL ANALYSIS (IEEFA):

29 November 2019 (IEEFA Australia) – Queensland Treasury are expected to sign off on a massive early Christmas present worth up to $900m packaged as a seven-year royalty deferral – another term for a capital subsidy – for the Adani Group on 30 November 2019 (likely to be announced on 29 November), ironically on the one-year anniversary of Adani declaring it will self-fund its Carmichael thermal coal mine in the Galilee Basin, Queensland.

Adani Australia – part of the Adani Group of India – announced the Carmichael thermal coal mine would ‘stand on its own two feet’, without any subsidies, in November 2018.

One year later and the Adani Group is not only expected to receive a $900m royalty present from the Queensland government, but the Adani Group is also set to receive over $4.4 billion in total tax exemptions, deferrals and capital subsidies from taxpayers for the life of the Carmichael mine.

“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable.”

“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable,” says Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

“Global and domestic banks and insurers have turned their back on financing the Adani Group, joining the massive global financial exit away from thermal coal. To-date, 111 globally significant banks and insurers have implemented formal thermal coal restriction policies, including the latest just this week, being UniCredit, the largest bank in Italy.

“Yet the Queensland government still wants to give an early $900m Christmas present to the Adani Group for a product that faces technological obsolescence, is reliant on ongoing subsidies, and is only viable absent a price on carbon emissions.”

Under existing arrangements, Adani will effectively receive 17% of their coal for free compared to the royalty regime applying in NSW, according to The Australia Institute.

IEEFA notes the Queensland government’s royalty subsidy to Adani is due to be delivered this week.

Any deal should be publicly transparent given rising stranded asset risks

“Queensland’s generosity in providing such a lavish gift to India’s richest man means local Queenslanders will NOT see royalties from Adani’s Carmichael thermal coal mine for a decade,” says Buckley. “Any deal should be made transparent to the public, and credible financial assurance needs to be put in place as a minimum to ensure eventual payment, given rising stranded asset risks....

Read the full article here.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 14 March 2017:

Up to $3 billion from Adani's planned Carmichael coal mine will be shifted to a subsidiary owned in the Cayman Islands if the controversial project goes ahead, an analysis of company filings shows.

Key points:

• 'Royalty deed' gives shell company rights to recieve $2-a-tonne payment beyond first 400K tonnes mined for two decades
• Entitlement owned by company registered in Cayman Islands, controlled by Adani family
• Carmichael coal mine's production capacity means payment ammounts to about $120 million per year

An "overarching royalty deed" gives a shell company rights to receive a $2-a-tonne payment, rising yearly by the inflation rate, beyond the first 400,000 tonnes mined in each production year for two decades.

The company with this entitlement is ultimately owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a secretive entity registered in the Cayman Islands, and controlled by the Adani family.

"In plain English, the upshot for the Adani family is [that] if the mine goes ahead, they receive a $2-a-tonne payment, so up to $3 billion, via a Cayman Islands company, a company owned in a tax haven," says Adam Walters, principal researcher and Energy Resource Insights.

With a production capacity of 60 million tonnes or more a year, that amounts to about $120 million per annum in payments, increasing each year in line with the CPI, potentially flowing offshore.

"I would describe it as a structure that means that the Adani family enriches themselves if the mine goes ahead but that other shareholders are impoverished," associate professor Thomas Clarke, director of the Centre for Corporate Governance at UTS told the ABC.

"The worry is that this may be just the beginning.

"That the Adani family have the ability to shift cash and assets around at will and in the future they may well do so at the cost of shareholders and the Queensland economy."

He said the billions flowing to the Adani private company would come at the expense of minority shareholders in the company listed on the Bombay stock exchange which ultimately owns the Carmichael mine.....

Read the full article here.

ABC News, 21 December 2016:

Giant Indian conglomerate Adani, which plans to build one of the world's largest coal mines in Queensland's Galilee Basin, has set up a complex network of companies and trusts in Australia which are owned in one of the world's major tax havens, the Cayman Islands.

The Adani Group is also attempting to shift ownership of the existing Abbot Point coal port — which it bought for $1.8 billion — to a Singaporean company ultimately owned in the Cayman Islands.

An exhaustive search of company filings and documents across the globe has cast light on this opaque structure of ownership and control.

It has alarmed environmental activists and legal experts, who fear it could make it harder to gain compensation from Adani in the event of an environmental disaster from Adani's planned mine and port expansion on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.

"I've been a businessman for most of my life, as well as an environmental activist, and the risks are great," said Geoff Cousins, former Optus CEO and chairman of the George Paterson advertising agency, now a board member of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

"With these kinds of approvals of big mining operations or port operations, you always get a set of conditions that the Government puts on.

"But those conditions aren't worth anything if, when something goes wrong, you try to find the company responsible and either it has no money or if it has money it's in a tax haven and you can't reach it."

It is a view echoed by David Chaikin, a professor of business law at the University of Sydney.

"The advantage of having the money in tax havens is that you are able to conceal the source of money, the use of money, and also to minimise tax," he said…..

Adani has created four companies and two trusts in Australia for the rail project.

The parent company for all these entities is Carmichael Rail and Port Singapore Holdings Pte Ltd, a company registered in Singapore where the corporate tax rate is 15 per cent.

This Singapore parent company is in turn owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a private company controlled by the Adani family and based in the Cayman Islands.

The port expansion has a similar structure: five companies and two trusts in Australia, ultimately controlled by Atulya Resources in the Cayman Islands……

The Guardian, 29 August 2018:

Mining conglomerate the Adani Group is trying to prevent Indian authorities from accessing its business records as part of an investigation into an alleged $4bn fraud by power companies.

Lawyers for Adani on Tuesday filed a plea asking the Bombay high court to quash a formal request by Indian investigators to Singaporean authorities to force the company to produce information regarding its coal imports from Indonesia.

The request is part of an investigation by India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) into a $4.4bn alleged fraud by 40 power companies including six Adani subsidiaries.

According to DRI documents, the companies allegedly used fake middlemen to inflate the price of coal they were importing from Indonesia. The scheme allowed the companies to charge higher tariffs by exaggerating their production costs, the DRI claimed.

If true, the alleged scam would also have allowed the companies to siphon billions of dollars from India into offshore bank accounts where Indian authorities would struggle to tax or account for the money....

In November 2019 NASA tracked smoke from NSW & Qld bushfires as far as the middle of the Pacific Ocean and beyond

NASA’s satellite instruments are often the first to detect wildfires burning in remote regions, and the locations of new fires are sent directly to land managers worldwide within hours of the satellite overpass. Together, NASA instruments detect actively burning fires, track the transport of smoke from fires, provide information for fire management, and map the extent of changes to ecosystems, based on the extent and severity of burn scars. NASA has a fleet of Earth-observing instruments, many of which contribute to our understanding of fire in the Earth system. Satellites in orbit around the poles provide observations of the entire planet several times per day, whereas satellites in a geostationary orbit provide coarse-resolution imagery of fires, smoke and clouds every five to 15 minutes. For more information visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/missions/index.html

Image possibly from 13 November 2019 fires.

NASA modelling has tracked black carbon travelling from Australia’s bush fires.

Black carbon is harmful to humans & it can accelerate ice melting. The thing about climate change is, the worse it gets – the worse it gets, creating feedback loops that speed up the #ClimateCrisis pic.twitter.com/keOrpZi2Od

— Greenpeace Aus Pac (@GreenpeaceAP) November 22, 2019