Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Thursday 15 February 2018
Gas industry finally admits that its lobbying spin contains untruths?
Tucked into the wall-to-wall spin of this media release is a tacit admission that safe aquifer recharge with treated water is little more than a convenient deception offered up to governments and citizens in the gas industry's drive to create more gasfields and extract more water from the natural environment in the mining process.
Gasfields Commission Queensland, 12 December 2017:
Research into the effects of the Coal Seam Gas industry on groundwater is continuously improving our understanding about underground water movements and implications for coal seam development.
Scientists from Queensland's independent Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment (OGIA) and the University of Queensland Centre for Coal Seam Gas have been wading through an enormous amount of data being contributed by landholders, government, industry and other research projects to build up a better understanding of groundwater movements.
Early studies suggest that the recharge of underground aquifers may not be as effective as once thought and recharge flow paths may not be what we first thought.
Research indicates that much of the rain recharging the Hutton and Precipice Sandstone aquifers in the North-East Surat Basin is discharging into the local low topography of the Dawson River.
That means the water is flowing in a north easterly direction, rather than to the south west into the regional Great Artesian Basin as was thought prior to 2009.
These findings were applied by OGIA in the development of regional groundwater flow models in 2012 and 2016 but many landholders remain unaware of the new findings.
It's also thought there could be small faults that create a localised connection between the Precipice and Hutton Aquifers in the vicinity of what is known as the Moonie-Goondiwindi fault system.
Researchers stress that this is still a work in progress and it is currently being reviewed by UQ and CSIRO researchers working independently on multiple data sets to either confirm or refute the hypothesis.
Lead researcher at the UQ Centre for Coal Seam Gas, Prof Jim Underschultz says, "Our understanding of the Great Artesian Basin is increasing as researchers analyse the growing amount of data collected from the basin.
"The use of groundwater monitoring data, water production figures, detailed geographic distributions of water levels and hydrocarbon migration 'fingerprints' are giving us a level of detail never seen before".
The UQ researchers are collaborating closely with CSIRO, OGIA and the CSG Compliance Unit to ensure that research findings are made publicly available as quickly as possible.
Jim's research publications can be found at: http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/8868
Labels:
Coal Seam Gas Mining,
sustainability,
water
Friday 9 February 2018
Falling biodiversity, degradation of productive rural land, intensification of coastal & city development, and the threat of climate change require Australia to produce blueprint for a new generation of environment laws
“The next
generation of environmental laws will need to recognise explicitly the role of
humanity as a trustee of the environment and its common resources, requiring
both care and engagement on behalf of future generations.” [APEEL,
Blueprint for the Next Generation of Environmental Law,
August 2017]
The Guardian, 6 February 2018:
Environmental lawyers and academics have called for a comprehensive rethink on how Australia's natural landscapes are protected, warning that short-term politics is infecting decision-making and suggesting that the public be given a greater say on development plans.
The Australian Panel of Experts on Environmental Law has launched a blueprint for a new generation of environment laws and the creation of independent agencies with the power and authority to ensure they are enforced. The panel of 14 senior legal figures says this is motivated by the need to systematically address ecological challenges including falling biodiversity, the degradation of productive rural land, the intensification of coastal and city development and the threat of climate change.
Murray Wilcox QC, a former federal court judge, said the blueprint was a serious attempt to improve a system that was shutting the public out of the decision-making process and failing to properly assess the impact of large-scale development proposals.
"We found the standard of management of the environment is poor because everything is made into a political issue," Wilcox said. "Nothing happens until it becomes desperate.
"We need a non-political body of significant prestige to report on what is happening and have the discretion to act."
The legal review, developed over several years and quietly released in 2017, resulted in 57 recommendations. It was suggested by the Places You Love alliance, a collection of about 40 environmental groups that was created to counter a failed bid to set up a "one-stop shop" for environmental approvals by leaving it to the states. The panel undertook the work on the understanding it would be independent and not a piece of activism.
Review report can be found here.
Tuesday 30 January 2018
Scientists issue a final warning to humanity
THEN……
1992 World Scientists'
Warning to Humanity
Scientist Statement: World
Scientists' Warning to Humanity (1992) (PDF document)
Some 1,700 of the
world's leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the
sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of
UCS's board of directors.
Introduction
Human beings and the
natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and
often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not
checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish
for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the
living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present
course will bring about.
NOW……
World
Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice (PDF Document)
WILLIAM
J. RIPPLE, CHRISTOPHER WOLF, THOMAS M. NEWSOME, MAURO GALETTI, MOHAMMED
ALAMGIR, EILEEN CRIST, MAHMOUD I. MAHMOUD, WILLIAM F. LAURANCE, and 15,364
scientist signatories from 184 countries
Twenty-five years ago,
the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists,
including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the
1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” (see supplemental file S1).
These concerned
professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and
cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on
it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto,
they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world. They
expressed concern about current, impending, or potential damage on planet Earth
involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion,
ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and
continued human population growth. They proclaimed that fundamental changes
were urgently needed to avoid the consequences our present course would bring.
The authors of the 1992
declaration feared that humanity was pushing Earth’s ecosystems beyond their
capacities to support the web of life. They described how we are fast
approaching many of the limits of what the biosphere can tolerate without
substantial and irreversible harm. The scientists pleaded that we stabilize the
human population, describing how our large numbers—swelled by another 2 billion
people since 1992, a 35 percent increase—exert stresses on Earth that can
overwhelm other efforts to realize a sustainable future (Crist et al. 2017).
They implored that we cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and phase out fossil
fuels, reduce deforestation, and reverse the trend of collapsing biodiversity.
On the twenty-fifth
anniversary of their call, we look back at their warning and evaluate the human
response by exploring available time-series data. Since 1992, with the
exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to
make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental
challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse (figure 1, file
S1). Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic
climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels (Hansen et al.
2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production—
particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014).
Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540
million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least
committed to extinction by the end of this century.
Humanity is now being
given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends (figure 1). We
are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically
and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued
rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even
societal threats (Crist et al. 2017). By failing to adequately limit population
growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse
gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb
pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is
not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere.
As most political
leaders respond to pressure, scientists, media influencers, and lay citizens
must insist that their governments take immediate action as a moral imperative
to current and future generations of human and other life. With a groundswell
of organized grassroots efforts, dogged opposition can be overcome and
political leaders compelled to do the right thing. It is also time to
re-examine and change our individual behaviors, including limiting our own
reproduction (ideally to replacement level at most) and drastically diminishing
our per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources.
Read the full
Second Notice here.
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
It
is now two minutes to midnight
Editor’s
note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped
develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using
the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear
explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The
decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock
is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in
consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates. The
Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s
vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new
technologies emerging in other domains. A printable PDF of this statement,
complete with the President and CEO’s statement and Science and Security Board
biographies, is available here.
To:
Leaders and citizens of the world
Re:
Two minutes to midnight
Date:
January 25, 2018
In 2017, world leaders failed to respond
effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making
the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as
dangerous as it has been since World War II.
The greatest risks last year arose in
the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable
progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in
the region, and the United States. Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions
by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or
miscalculation.
But the dangers brewing on the Korean
Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States
and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of
NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading
their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.
In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions
over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United
States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.
In South Asia, Pakistan and India have
continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.
And in the Middle East, uncertainty
about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a
bleak overall picture.
To call the world nuclear situation
dire is to understate the danger—and its immediacy.
On the climate change front, the danger
may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the
long run requires urgent attention now. Global carbon dioxide emissions have
not yet shown the beginnings of the sustained decline towards zero that must
occur if ever-greater warming is to be avoided. The nations of the world will
have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate
risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of
meeting this challenge.
Beyond the nuclear and climate
domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as
states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as
weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining
elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and
global security.
The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists Science and Security Board believes the perilous world security
situation just described would, in itself, justify moving the minute hand of
the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
But there has also been a breakdown in
the international order that has been dangerously exacerbated by recent US
actions. In 2017, the United States backed away from its long-standing
leadership role in the world, reducing its commitment to seek common ground and
undermining the overall effort toward solving pressing global governance
challenges. Neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict
US actions—or understand when US pronouncements are real, and when they are
mere rhetoric. International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving
it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation
ever more threatening.
Because of the extraordinary danger of
the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand
of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes
to midnight—the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it
was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
The Science and Security Board hopes
this resetting of the Clock will be interpreted exactly as it is meant—as an
urgent warning of global danger. The time for world leaders to address looming
nuclear danger and the continuing march of climate change is long past. The
time for the citizens of the world to demand such action is now:
#rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
The untenable nuclear
threat. The risk that nuclear weapons
may be used—intentionally or because of miscalculation—grew last year around
the globe.
North Korea has long defied UN
Security Council resolutions to cease its nuclear and ballistic missile tests,
but the acceleration of its tests in 2017 reflects new resolve to acquire
sophisticated nuclear weapons. North Korea has or soon will have capabilities
to match its verbal threats—specifically, a thermonuclear warhead and a
ballistic missile that can carry it to the US mainland. In September, North
Korea tested what experts assess to be a true two-stage thermonuclear device,
and in November, it tested the Hwasong-15 missile, which experts believe has a
range of over 8,000 kilometers. The United States and its allies, Japan and
South Korea, responded with more frequent and larger military exercises, while
China and Russia proposed a freeze by North Korea of nuclear and missile tests
in exchange for a freeze in US exercises.
The failure to secure a temporary
freeze in 2017 was unsurprising to observers of the downward spiral of nuclear
rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The failure to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program will reverberate not just
in the Asia-Pacific, as neighboring countries review their security options,
but more widely, as all countries consider the costs and benefits of the
international framework of nonproliferation treaties and agreements.
Nuclear risks have been compounded by
US-Russia relations that now feature more conflict than cooperation.
Coordination on nuclear risk reduction is all but dead, and no solution to
disputes over the INF Treaty—a landmark agreement to rid Europe of medium-range
nuclear missiles—is readily apparent. Both sides allege violations, but
Russia’s deployment of a new ground-launched cruise missile, if not
addressed, could trigger a collapse of the treaty. Such a collapse would
make what should have been a relatively easy five-year extension of the New
START arms control pact much harder to achieve and could terminate an arms
control process that dates back to the early 1970s.
For the first time in many years, in
fact, no US-Russian nuclear arms control negotiations are under way. New
strategic stability talks begun in April are potentially useful, but so far
they lack the energy and political commitment required for them to bear fruit.
More important, Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea and semi-covert support
of separatists in eastern Ukraine have sparked concerns that Russia will
support similar “hybrid” conflicts in new NATO members that it borders—actions
that could provoke a crisis at almost any time. Additional clash points could
emerge if Russia attempts to exploit friction between the United States and its
NATO partners, whether arising from disputes on burden-sharing, European Union
membership, and trade—or relating to policies on Israel, Iran, and terrorism in
the Middle East.
In the past year, US allies have
needed reassurance about American intentions more than ever. Instead, they have
been forced to negotiate a thicket of conflicting policy statements from a US
administration weakened in its cadre of foreign policy professionals, suffering
from turnover in senior leadership, led by an undisciplined and disruptive
president, and unable to develop, coordinate, and clearly communicate a
coherent nuclear policy. This inconsistency constitutes a major challenge for
deterrence, alliance management, and global stability. It has made the existing
nuclear risks greater than necessary and added to their complexity.
Especially in the case of the Iran
nuclear deal, allies are perplexed. While President Trump has steadfastly
opposed the agreement that his predecessor and US allies negotiated to keep
Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he has never successfully articulated
practical alternatives. His instruction to Congress in 2017 to legislate a
different approach resulted in a stalemate. The future of the Iran deal, at
this writing, remains uncertain.
In the United States, Russia, and
elsewhere around the world, plans for nuclear force modernization and
development continue apace. The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review
appears likely to increase the types and roles of nuclear weapons in US defense
plans and lower the threshold to nuclear use. In South Asia, emphasis on
nuclear and missile capabilities grows. Conventional force imbalances and
destabilizing plans for nuclear weapons use early in any conflict continue to
plague the subcontinent.
Reflecting long decades of frustration
with slow progress toward nuclear disarmament, states signed a Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the ban treaty, at the United
Nations this past September. The treaty—championed by the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which has been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for its work—is a symbolic victory for those seeking a world without
nuclear weapons and a strong expression of the frustration with global
disarmament efforts to date. Predictably, countries with nuclear weapons
boycotted the negotiations, and none has signed the ban treaty. Their increased
reliance on nuclear weapons, threats, and doctrines that could make the use of
those weapons more likely stands in stark contrast to the expectations of the
rest of the world.
An insufficient response
to climate change. Last year, the US government
pursued unwise and ineffectual policies on climate change, following through on
a promise to derail past US climate policies. The Trump administration, which
includes avowed climate denialists in top positions at the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other key agencies, has
announced its plan to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. In its rush to
dismantle rational climate and energy policy, the administration has ignored
scientific fact and well-founded economic analyses.
These US government climate decisions
transpired against a backdrop of worsening climate change and high-impact
weather-related disasters. This year past, the Caribbean region and other parts
of North America suffered a season of historic damage from exceedingly powerful
hurricanes. Extreme heat waves occurred in Australia, South America, Asia,
Europe, and California, with mounting evidence that heat-related illness and
death are correspondingly increasing. The Arctic ice cap achieved its
smallest-ever winter maximum in 2017, the third year in a row that this record
has been broken. The United States has witnessed devastating wildfires, likely
exacerbated by extreme drought and subsequent heavy rains that spurred
underbrush growth. When the data are assessed, 2017 is almost certain to continue the trend of exceptional global
warmth: All the warmest years in the instrumental record, which extends
back to the 1800s, have—excepting one year in the late 1990s—occurred in the
21st century.
Despite the sophisticated disinformation
campaign run by climate denialists, the unfolding consequences of an altered
climate are a harrowing testament to an undeniable reality: The science linking
climate change to human activity—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that
produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases—is sound. The world continues
to warm as costly impacts mount, and there is evidence that overall rates of
sea level rise are accelerating—regardless of protestations to the contrary.
Especially against these trends, it is
heartening that the US government’s defection from the Paris Agreement did not
prompt its unravelling or diminish its support within the United States at
large. The “We Are Still In” movement signals a strong commitment within the
United States—by some 1,700 businesses, 250 cities, 200 communities of faith,
and nine states, representing more than 40 percent of the US population—to its
international climate commitments and to the validity of scientific facts.
This reaffirmation is reassuring,
and other countries have maintained their steadfast support for climate action,
reconfirmed their commitments to global climate cooperation, and clearly
acknowledged that more needs to be done. French President Emmanuel Macron’s
sober message to global leaders assembled at December’s global climate summit
in Paris was a reality check after the heady climate negotiations his country
hosted two years earlier: “We’re losing the battle. We’re not moving quickly
enough. We all need to act.” And indeed, after plateauing for a few years,
greenhouse gas emissions resumed their stubborn rise in 2017.
As we have noted before, the true
measure of the Paris Agreement is whether nations actually fulfill their
pledges to cut emissions, strengthen those pledges, and see to it that global greenhouse
gas emissions start declining in short order and head toward zero. As we drift
yet farther from this goal, the urgency of shifting course becomes greater, and
the existential threat posed by climate change looms larger.
Emerging technologies
and global risk. The Science and Security Board
is deeply concerned about the loss of public trust in political institutions,
in the media, in science, and in facts themselves—a loss that the abuse of
information technology has fostered. Attempts to intervene in elections through
sophisticated hacking operations and the spread of disinformation have
threatened democracy, which relies on an informed electorate to reach
reasonable decisions on public policy—including policy relating to nuclear
weapons, climate change, and other global threats. Meanwhile, corporate leaders
in the information domain, including established media outlets and internet
companies such as Facebook and Google, have been slow to adopt protocols to
prevent misuse of their services and protect citizens from manipulation.
The international community should establish new measures that discourage
and penalize all cross-border subversions of democracy.
Last year, the Science and Security
Board warned that “[t]echnological innovation is occurring at a speed that
challenges society’s ability to keep pace. While limited at the current time,
potentially existential threats posed by a host of emerging technologies need
to be monitored, and to the extent possible anticipated, as the 21st century
unfolds.”
If anything, the velocity of
technological change has only increased in the past year, and so our warning
holds for 2018. But beyond monitoring advances in emerging technology, the board
believes that world leaders also need to seek better collective methods of
managing those advances, so the positive aspects of new technologies are
encouraged and malign uses discovered and countered. The sophisticated hacking
of the “Internet of Things,” including computer systems that control major
financial and power infrastructure and have access to more than 20 billion
personal devices; the development of autonomous weaponry that makes “kill”
decisions without human supervision; and the possible misuse of advances in
synthetic biology, including the revolutionary Crispr gene-editing tool,
already pose potential global security risks. Those risks could expand without
strong public institutions and new management regimes. The increasing pace of
technological change requires faster development of those tools.
How to turn back the
Clock. In 1953, former Manhattan
Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch set the
hands of the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, writing, “The achievement
of a thermonuclear explosion by the Soviet Union, following on the heels of the
development of ‘thermonuclear devices’ in America, means that the time, dreaded
by scientists since 1945, when each major nation will hold the power
of destroying, at will, the urban civilization of any other nation, is close at
hand.”
The Science and Security Board now
again moves the hands of the Clock to two minutes before midnight. But the
current, extremely dangerous state of world affairs need not be permanent. The
means for managing dangerous technology and reducing global-scale risk exist;
indeed, many of them are well-known and within society’s reach, if leaders pay
reasonable attention to preserving the long-term prospects of humanity, and if
citizens demand that they do so.
This is a dangerous time, but the
danger is of our own making. Humankind has invented the implements of
apocalypse; so can it invent the methods of controlling and eventually
eliminating them. This year, leaders and citizens of the world can move the
Doomsday Clock and the world away from the metaphorical midnight of global
catastrophe by taking these common-sense actions:
• US President Donald Trump should
refrain from provocative rhetoric regarding North Korea, recognizing the
impossibility of predicting North Korean reactions.
• The US and North Korean governments
should open multiple channels of communication. At a minimum,
military-to-military communications can help reduce the likelihood of
inadvertent war on the Korean Peninsula. Keeping diplomatic channels open for
talks without preconditions is another common-sense way to reduce tensions. As
leading security expert Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University recently wrote: “Such talks should not be seen as a reward or
concession to Pyongyang, nor construed as signaling acceptance of a
nuclear-armed North Korea. They could, however, deliver the message that while
Washington fully intends to defend itself and its allies from any attack with a
devastating retaliatory response, it does not otherwise intend to attack North
Korea or pursue regime change."
• The world community should
pursue, as a short-term goal, the cessation of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and
ballistic missile tests. North Korea is the only country to violate the norm
against nuclear testing in 20 years. Over time, the United States should seek
North Korea’s signature on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—and then,
along with China, at long last also ratify the treaty.
• The Trump administration should
abide by the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear
program unless credible evidence emerges that Iran is not complying with the
agreement or Iran agrees to an alternative approach that meets US national
security needs.
• The United States and Russia should
discuss and adopt measures to prevent peacetime military incidents along the
borders of NATO. Provocative military exercises and maneuvers hold the
potential for crisis escalation. Both militaries must exercise restraint and
professionalism, adhering to all norms developed to avoid conflict and accidental
encounters.
• US and Russian leaders should return
to the negotiating table to resolve differences over the INF treaty; to seek
further reductions in nuclear arms; to discuss a lowering of the alert status
of the nuclear arsenals of both countries; to limit nuclear modernization
programs that threaten to create a new nuclear arms race; and to ensure that
new tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons are not built and that existing
tactical weapons are never used on the battlefield.
• US citizens should demand, in all
legal ways, climate action from their government. Climate change is a real and
serious threat to humanity. Citizens should insist that their governments
acknowledge it and act accordingly.
• Governments around the world should
redouble their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so they go well
beyond the initial, inadequate pledges under the Paris Agreement. The
temperature goal under that agreement—to keep warming well below 2 degrees
Celsius above preindustrial levels—is consistent with consensus views on
climate science, is eminently achievable, and is economically viable, provided
that poorer countries are given the support they need to make the post-carbon
transition. But the time window for achieving this goal is rapidly closing.
• The international community should
establish new protocols to discourage and penalize the misuse of information
technology to undermine public trust in political institutions, in the media,
in science, and in the existence of objective reality itself. Strong and
accountable institutions are necessary to prevent deception campaigns that are
a real threat to effective democracies, reducing their ability to enact
policies to address nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global dangers.
• The countries of the world should
collaborate on creating institutions specifically assigned to explore and
address potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies,
particularly as regards autonomous weaponry that makes “kill” decisions without
human supervision and advances in synthetic biology that could, if misused,
pose a global threat.
The failure of world leaders to
address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable—but that failure
can be reversed. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has
ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can
again move it further from apocalypse. The warning the Science and Security
Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. The
opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear.
The world has seen the threat posed by
the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of
democracies to disinformation. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social
media. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the
world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of
their children and grandchildren. They can insist on facts, and discount
nonsense. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear
war and unchecked climate change. They can seize the opportunity to make a
safer and saner world.
They can #rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
Friday 29 September 2017
WA company with Chinese & UK backing announces a desire to mine near, extract water from and potentially pollute Clarence River catchment waters
The Daily Examiner, 29 September 2017, p.1:
JUST 35km north-west of Grafton is a block of private land with the potential to change the face of Clarence Valley’s industry as we know it.
Mt Gilmore, which lies between Fine Flower and The Gorge, has been revealed to be home to several deposits of high-grade cobalt.
Now Western Australia-based company Corazon Mining is trying to work out just how big that deposit is, and whether it’s worth mining.
On June 16 2016, Corazon announced it had secured the right to earn up to 80% of the Mount Gilmore Cobalt-Copper-Gold Project from private company Providence Gold and Minerals Pty Ltd.
Their project tenure included one granted Exploration Licence covering an area of approximately 25km by 15km, and over the past couple of months they have been drilling to in an effort to find precious metals.
Corazon managing director Brett Smith said so far, things were looking good.
“We’ve been saying that this is one of the highest- grade cobalt deposits in Australia, we just don’t know how big it is,” he said. “There was a lot of gold and copper prospecting there back in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and so it’s amazing where it’s located how little modern exploration has gone on there.”
The reason they have their eye on cobalt, rather than gold or copper, is that the element’s value has risen exponentially in recent years due to its use in lithium-ion batteries.
Mr Smith said demand from the battery sector had tripled in the past five years and was projected to double again by 2020.
It is most commonly used in smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles.
“Cobalt is the most expensive raw material used for building lithium-ion batteries, paying about $61,000 per tonne,” Mr Smith said.
“A lot of people have been exploring for cobalt in NSW but are looking at oxide deposits. Ours is a bit different in that it’s a sulphide deposit, and they are fairly rare to be cobalt dominant.
“It’s all in vogue at the moment so we’re pretty hopeful this can be used to produce cobalt salts for batteries.”
Mr Smith said the company was currently on its second drill program, which they hoped could be used to accurately determine the lay of the land.’
Exactly what mining exploration licence is this newspaper article talking about?
Well according to NSW Planning & Environment on 1 September 2017 it is EL8379 granted to Mt Gilmore Resources Pty Ltd on 23 June 2015.
So who is Corazon Mining Limited?
The company’s 2016-17 Annual Report states:
Corazon Mining Limited (ASX: CZN) (“the Company” or “Corazon”) is an Australian based company exploring and developing the Lynn Lake Nickel-Copper-Sulphide project in Canada and Mt Gilmore Cobalt-Copper-Gold project in Australia.
It has three main exploration projects - the Lynn Lake and Victory projects both in Manitoba Canada and the Mt Gilmore Project in NSW Australia.
This is the corporations current Board of Directors:
Clive Jones, Non-Executive Chairman - 4,235,330 fully paid ordinary shares, 5,000,000 options exercisable at $0.035 expiring 31 March 2020, total annual remuneration $154,607
Brett Smith, Executive Managing Director - 7,107,131 fully paid ordinary shares, 10,000,000 options exercisable at $0.035 expiring 31 March 2020, total annual remuneration $417,250
Adrian Byass, Non-Executive Director - 9,357,370 fully paid ordinary shares, 7,000,000 options exercisable at $0.035 expiring 31 March 2020, total annual remuneration $144,600
Jonathan Downes, Non-Executive Director - 11,154,512 fully paid Ordinary Shares, 5,000,000 options exercisable at $0.035 expiring 31 March 2020, total annual remuneration $190,557
Mark Qiu, Non-Executive Director (appointed 18 August 2017) - 1,269,300 fully paid ordinary shares, total annual remuneration unknown
Robert Orr is company secretary and Chief Financial Officer, shareholding unknown, total annual remuneration $114,360.
The last annual report indicated that the company share structure comprised 1,039,283,317 fully paid ordinary shares held by 2,135 individual shareholders and, 60,000,000 unquoted options are held by 10 individual option holders.
The largest options holders are Brett Smith with 10 million held and Zenix Nominees Pty Ltd with 20 million held.
On 1 December 2016 the Company announced the issue of 3,410,840 shares to key management personnel in lieu of cash-based salary. This strategy was implemented in order to conserve cash reserves for operational expenditure.
Corazon Mining appears to be operating at a loss and apparently paid no tax in 2016-17.
Corazon Mining Limited’s Purchase Agreement for the Mt Gilmore Cobalt-Copper-Gold joint venture project:
Under the terms of the agreement with Providence and subject to Corazon completing due diligence to its sole satisfaction on or before 30 June 2016, Corazon has the exclusive right to earn up to an 80% interest in the Project as follows:
Corazon can earn an initial 51% interest by:
* Issuing Providence 25 million Corazon Mining Limited shares
* Paying cash reimbursements of costs totalling $100,000
* Spending $200,000 on exploration within the first 12 months from the date of satisfaction of all conditions precedent (“Commencement Date).
Corazon can earn a further 29% interest (totalling 80%) by:
* Completing $2M in exploration within 3 years of the Commencement Date
* Paying $150,000 in cash or shares upon the earlier of the commencement of the third year and Corazon spending a minimum of $500,000 on exploration
* Paying $250,000 in cash or shares upon earning 80% equity in the Project.
Corazon has the opportunity to extend this earn-in period by one year by paying $50,000 in cash or shares.
According to Corazon Mining;
The Project is located only 35km from the major centre of Grafton in north-eastern New South Wales. Project tenure includes one granted Exploration Licence (EL8379 – one year old), covering an area of approximately 25km by 15km……
On 22 August 2017 the Company issued 139,856,665 fully paid ordinary shares at an issue price of $0.014. The share issue was comprised of:
- an issue of 120,000,000 shares to Hanking Australia Investments Pty Ltd under a Subscription Agreement for a $1,680,000 investment in the Company;
- an issue of 7,356,665 to sophisticated investors to raise $102,993; and
- an issue of 12,500,000 shares to Providence Gold and Minerals Pty Ltd pursuant to the Company’s Earn-in Agreement with Providence in respect of the Mt Gilmore Project. Under this Agreement, Corazon has the exclusive right to earn up to an 80% interest in the Project. The shares have a total valuation of $175,000.
On the same date, the Company also issued 85,000,000 options to Hanking Australia Investments Pty Ltd following their investment in the Company. The options were issued with an exercise price of $0.03 and an expiry of 22 August 2019.
On 18 August 2017, Dr Mark Qiu of Hanking Australia Investments Pty Ltd was appointed to the Company’s Board of Directors.
China Hanking Holdings Limited, registered in the Cayman Islands and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is the parent company of Hanking Australia Investments Pty Ltd.
The second largest shareholder in Corazon Mining Limited is Crescent Nominees Limited, a private equity firm registered in Northern Ireland since 2014 and owned by venture capitalist Crescent Capital NI Limited.
As part of NSW Minerals Week Corazon Mining Limited had a booth at the 14th Sydney Resources Round-Up in May 2017 where interested geologists could view their sulphide core from the 2016 Cobalt Ridge drilling program.
Area in which the proposed cobalt mine would be situated
Satellite image of Mount Gilmore (height 372m) situated just above the Clarence River system at The Gorge
It doesn’t take a genius to look at this image and see the potential for heavy rain episodes over Mt. Gilmore leading to surface water runoff into Clarence River tributaries.
So the first question is; what happens if Corozon Mining was granted a mining licence by the NSW Berejiklian Coalition Government and one or more of its heavy metal contaminated holding ponds were breached during such a rain period? The potential exists for any such breaches to result in long-term contamination of surrounding soils and water courses, as well as higher sediment levels in surface waters.
Heavy metal and metalloid concentrations within stream-estuary sediments already occur naturally in NSW north-eastern coastal rivers and current Clarence River levels are also the result of historic mining in the upper catchment below the Dorrigo Plateau region.
This leads to a second question. Can a river system, which supplies drinking water to est.126,008 residents (Census 2016) along with water to farmers, graziers and commercial fishers in the Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City local government areas, safely tolerate higher heavy metal and metalloid concentrations in that water? Communities relying on the Clarence river system might not be happy with the thought of any increase in localised or overall toxicity.
Given that mining is a thirsty business and water used in its extractive processes has to come from nearby surface/groundwater sources, there is a third question which immediately springs to mind. In the face of increasing impacts from climate change can we afford to have the environmental water flow in the Clarence River system compromised further?
Then there is the question of required associated infrastructure, including transport of ore via trucks and rail – need I say more?
One has to wonder when Clarence Valley Council was going to mention this proposed mining activity to residents and ratepayers because it is highly likely that this mining company or someone acting on its behalf has approached either the Mayor or council administration.
UPDATE
NSW Planning & Environment mapping of EL8379
Wednesday 9 August 2017
Still feel unhappy with the Turnbull Government's policies on underground, land surface and marine waters? So you should
“Dead zones are hypoxic (low-oxygen) areas in the world's oceans and large lakes, caused by "excessive nutrient pollution from human activities coupled with other factors that deplete the oxygen required to support most marine life in bottom and near-bottom water.” [US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration]
Every Northern Hemisphere Spring this dead zone occurs in the Gulf of Mexico and increases in size over time.
It occurs because every year the Mississippi River collects roughly ten thousand pounds of fertilizer and raw sewage pollution from 31 states and some of Canada. When spring and summer rains come down, they wash the excessive nutrients in fertilizers and sewage downstream and out into the Gulf.
It is only one of more than 400 hypoxic areas world-wide which were mapped in 2008.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Andrew H. Altieri et al, 2017, Tropical dead zones and mass mortalities on coral reefs:
Oxygen-starved coastal waters are rapidly increasing in prevalence worldwide. However, little is known about the impacts of these “dead zones” in tropical ecosystems or their potential threat to coral reefs. We document the deleterious effects of such an anoxic event on coral habitat and biodiversity, and show that the risk of dead-zone events to reefs worldwide likely has been seriously underestimated. Awareness of, and research on, reef hypoxia is needed to address the threat posed by dead zones to coral reefs.
Degradation of coastal water quality in the form of low dissolved oxygen levels (hypoxia) can harm biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human wellbeing. Extreme hypoxic conditions along the coast, leading to what are often referred to as “dead zones,” are known primarily from temperate regions. However, little is known about the potential threat of hypoxia in the tropics, even though the known risk factors, including eutrophication and elevated temperatures, are common. Here we document an unprecedented hypoxic event on the Caribbean coast of Panama and assess the risk of dead zones to coral reefs worldwide. The event caused coral bleaching and massive mortality of corals and other reef-associated organisms, but observed shifts in community structure combined with laboratory experiments revealed that not all coral species are equally sensitive to hypoxia. Analyses of global databases showed that coral reefs are associated with more than half of the known tropical dead zones worldwide, with >10% of all coral reefs at elevated risk for hypoxia based on local and global risk factors. Hypoxic events in the tropics and associated mortality events have likely been underreported, perhaps by an order of magnitude, because of the lack of local scientific capacity for their detection. Monitoring and management plans for coral reef resilience should incorporate the growing threat of coastal hypoxia and include support for increased detection and research capacity.
Anyone still in favour of allowing an expansion of coal mining in the Galilee Basin, Queensland?
Anyone still comfortable with the amount of agricultural/industrial run-off into the Great Barrier Reef, marine protected areas and Australian coastal waters, which is allowed under state and federal policies?
It’s not just our rivers and aquifers which are suffering from political inaction and vested interest greed.
BACKGROUND
The Australian Government’s OzCoasts website states:
A reduction in dissolved oxygen concentrations is amongst the most important effects of eutrophication on aquatic organisms [4]. Hypoxia can cause direct mortality, reduced growth rates and altered behaviour and distributions of fish [4] and other organisms. In addition, bottom-water hypoxia can interact with elevated water temperatures at the surface to produce a "temperature-oxygen squeeze" effect, which can greatly reduce the amount of summer habitat available for some species [12]. Eggs and larvae of fish (and crustaceans) may be particularly susceptible to this effect because these life history stages are less able to avoid unfavourable conditions, and because they live in near shore areas, such as estuaries, where too-high water temperatures and too-low oxygen conditions often occur [5]. Changes in fish assemblages and crustaceans in response to hypoxia and & anoxia can render these organisms more susceptible to fishing pressure, and can increase the abundance of non-targeted species in by-catch [4].
Dissolved oxygen status also influences the uptake or release of nutrients from sediment. When oxygen is depleted, the nitrification pathway is blocked, and efficiencies may be lowered. As a consequence, more nutrients (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorous) are released from the sediment in bio-available forms [7]. These nutrients help to sustain algal blooms, and therefore continue the supply organic matter to the sediments [7]. With organic matter (energy) diverted from invertebrate consumption to microbial decomposition, the natural pattern of energy flow is altered, and pelagic and opportunistic species are favoured [8]. Indeed, an increased ratio of planktivore:demersal fish biomass is an important effect of eutrophication [11]. Low bottom water oxygen concentrations are also conducive to the build-up of toxic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia gas, which can also be harmful to benthic organisms and fish. Even short-lived anoxic events can cause the mass mortality of fish and benthic organisms [10].
Overall, anoxic and hypoxic events can cause large reductions in the abundance, diversity and harvest of fish in affected waters [4], and can contribute to an overall loss of bio-diversity[9]. However, the extent to which bottom water anoxia causes declines in overall fish production depends on a balanced between the negative and positive and effects of eutrophication in the full spectrum of habitats within the system [4]……
Major research institutions, universities and government (local and State) agencies gather oxygen data for specific research studies. Some information on anoxic and hypoxic events in Australian coastal waterways was compiled during the National Land & Water Resources Audit. In most cases, no data was available. However, localised or short-lived periods of hypoxia were reported in the Derwent and Huon estuaries (TAS) and in the Tuggerah Lakes (NSW). Prolonged and extensive anoxia is experienced in the Gippsland Lakes.
Note:
Anoxia is an extreme form of hypoxia.
Labels:
environment,
sustainability,
water,
water policy politics
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