An issue heats up

phill Parsons

The climate is still running high as an election issue in Australian opinion polls.

WHILST any single weather event may not be directly attributable to a change in the climate when a number of events occur and they are of the type predicted by the climate models, increased intensity and greater temperature, the attention of the voter and thus the politician is drawn to the matter.

Naming what is happening has been important, with the benign global warming and climate change being popular when downplaying the issue was the game. Now we have some finer definitions such as “avoiding dangerous climate change” with a figure of a rise of 2dC, occurring after enough CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere top raise the level to 450ppmv, currently predicted to be about 2050.

What is the record reporting

Global land surface temperatures for January and April will likely be ranked as the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization reports.

Global temperatures were 1.89°Celsius (3.4°Fahrenheit) warmer than average for January and 1.37°C (2.46°F) warmer than average for April.

Among the latest extremes, the WMO cited four monsoon depressions, double the normal number, which caused heavy floods in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, killing more than 500 people, displacing over 10 million others and destroying vast areas of croplands, livestock and property.

A series of huge swells with waves more than 20 feet high swamped 68 islands in the Indian Ocean island nation of Maldives in May, no tsunami required.

The first cyclone ever documented in the Arabian Sea struck Oman and Iran in early June, 2 years after the first one recorded in the South Atlantic.

Other extremes included a powerful storm system in much of northern Europe in January; and in England and Wales the period from May to July was the wettest since recordkeeping began in 1766.

Elsewhere in Europe, extreme record-breaking heat waves hit southeastern Europe in June and July; and a heat wave swept across western and central Russia in May, breaking several records.

In the southern hemisphere, an unusually cold southern winter brought winds, blizzards and rare snowfall to various parts of South America in July.

In June, South Africa experienced its first major snowfall since 1981.

In the northern hemisphere, by contrast, many European countries had their warmest January on record.

The Netherlands reported the highest temperature since measurements were first taken in 1706, averaging about 7.1°C (44.78°F). This temperature is 2.8°C (5°F) above the 1961-1990 average.

In Germany, the temperatures in January soared even higher, averaging 4.6°C (8.2°F) above the 1961-1990 average.

An increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic since about 1970 has also been observed.

And in the north of Tasmania one would be forgiven if they thought it was spring.

So with the climate beginning to exhibit the characteristics of the activity of a post 2dC rise do the benign descriptive terms adopted because of their non confronting

nature still hold currency and if so for how long.

Scientists at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre have unveiled the first ten-year climate prediction model.

It shows at least half of the years 2009 to 2014 will be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record. Their research predicts 2014 is likely to be 0.3C warmer globally than 2004.

This is a sharp increase, as the average global temperature has risen by only 0.8C since 1900. It reflects the change in the rate of CO2 accumulation, as positive feedbacks affect the rate of change to the climate.

And this temperature increase is from the level of greenhouse gases 30 to 40 years ago, what will those alive in 2050 face.

The Murray Darling River system remains under stress with insufficient rainfall to date, most likely resulting in a zero allocation of water for irrigation condemning some long term vine and tree crops to death and their stewards and owners into financial stress.

Note: The National Interest of the 5th of August has a novel proposal to assist farmers through the coming season and the Murray Darling system in the longer term. Perhaps too practical for the politicians using the issue.

Far away for Tasmanians ?. Then have a look at the Hydros storage levels [http://www.hydro.com.au/Storages/Storage.pdf. ] as at the 6th of August, 21.4 % with the biggest storages the emptiest.

This system has failed to reach above 60% capacity for a number of years and its current state makes a mockery of the 40 year climate outlook report that Hydro recently commissioned.

Is this is the new state. The catchment records for Perth’s water supply indicate a series of declining long term averages.

Without substantial refilling there is an immense capital investment about to enter a period of major underperformance, where Tasmanians will have to pay for power produced with more carbon intensive systems and then pay later for the effects of that.

Residents of the lower Derwent and Forth Valleys have seen such costs with the recent flooding. In those catchments the major hydro storages had about 65 and 45% storage capacity respectively.

Is the climate showing the first signs of destabilizing as result of denial, obfustication, delay and inaction?. Certainly we know the state government is giving an escellent performance of being entirely asleep on this matter.

Is it purely populism or some form of reflected popularity that is driving changes in the Howard government’s policy?.

In June, John Swinney, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, said he intended Scotland to lead the world in action to combat climate change, cutting carbon emissions to just 20 per cent of present levels by 2050.

Yes readers that’s 80%, just like the Greens propose for Australia. One must also ask where is the Tasmanian equivalent department and Minister reporting to State Parliament on the efforts we taking, even if they are humble.

Are they lost in the pulp mill trance induced by the mantra of the good times to follow or the fear that the trees of the forest will be more valuable standing causing the issue to be investigated by an approach emulating the ostrich under threat.

Swinney told the Scottish Parliament he was committed to an “ambitious” programme of cuts that would be an inspiration to the world and help to turn this country into “the green energy capital of Europe”.

Another opportunity missed by Australia when it turned away from solar. More on that later

Swinney also stressed the commitment of Alex Salmond, the First Minister [Premier], to clean-coal technology, but faced criticism showing how his target could be achieved – and for not bringing in financial penalties for government departments and public bodies which miss carbon-emission targets.

Sound familiar to those cognizant of Liberal and Labor policy, well here’s more of the same sad story.

Whilst Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is ready to take the controversial step of applying California-style emission standards on the already troubled auto sector if it salvaged talks for a new plan on climate change Alberta’s Ed Stelmach opposed the idea of cap-and-trade from the start of the meetings, despite the support for the system by the provinces other provinces including Quebec and Manitoba, a group including those with the larger economies.

The California system, adopted under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, requires emissions of carbon dioxide to be cut by 22 per cent by the 2012 car model year and by 30 per cent by 2016. Eleven other states, including New York and Pennsylvania, have also adopted the standards.

A cap-and-trade system would place limits on the amount of greenhouse gases individual polluters can emit. Companies that exceed the limits would be forced to buy carbon credits from, for example, solar energy producers.

This should sound familiar, Howard is offering action on such a system now when he rejected it only 3 years before. Opinion polls convinced him to change, having wasted 3 years and lost huge investment potential.

Investment in renewable energy rose from $80 billion in 2005 to $100 billion in 2006, and solar companies raised more than any other renewable energy sector on public markets last year, at $5.6 billion – more than triple what they raised in 2005, according to a report released in June by the United Nations Environment Program. The biggest investments were in the United States, Europe, China and India.

Arguing over the causes of a climate system moving into instability and the associated costs to the natural systems upon which we depend, to the society in which we relate and so to the economy that generates the wealth that the same denial, obfustication, inaction and delay the coal and oil industries promote is egregious, unconsciable and intolerable.

Those responsible for this should be removed from having any power over decisions affecting the climate system.

What does such an impact on natural systems look like.

Data collected on forests in Panama and Malaysia has revealed that global warming could reduce the growth of trees in tropical rainforests by 50 percent, besides severely affecting their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

According to Ken Feeley of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum in Boston, the study shows that rising average temperatures have reduced growth rates by up to 50 percent in the two rainforests, which have both experienced climate warming above the world average over the past few decades.

Feeley, who presented his research at an annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in San Jose, California, warned that if other rainforests follow suit as world temperatures rise, important carbon stores such as the pristine old-growth forests of the Amazon, could conceivably stop storing as much carbon.

This aligns with modeling by the Hadley Climate Prediction Centre where the result of increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall associated with a destabilizing climate sees the release of stored carbon feeding further the changes associated with that loss of stability.

Feeley and his colleagues analysed data on climate and tree growth for 50-hectare plots in each of the two rainforests, at Barro Colorado Island in Panama, and Pasoh in Malaysia. Both have witnessed temperature rises of more than one degree Centigrade over the past 30 years, and both showed dramatic decreases in rates of tree growth.

At Pasoh, as many as 95 percent of tree species were affected.

Feeley suspects that the effect occurs because plant photosynthesis is impaired if the temperature rises above a certain threshold.

“If we’re correct and the temperature is driving these changes, this is something we’re going to see in a lot more places. It has very important implications – we may need to look elsewhere for our excess carbon sink,” Feeley predicts.

Are we able to break our addiction to oil and coal and move to a sustainable future and thus pass through a period of climate destabilization and avoid the end result of the wrong course, catastrophe.

Algeria, aware that its oil and gas riches will one day run dry, is gearing up to tap its sunshine on an industrial scale for itself and even for Europe by embarking on a new energy program.

The first plant will be a hybrid, using both sun and natural gas to generate 150 megawatts. Of that, 25 megawatts will come from giant parabolic mirrors stretching over nearly 2 million square feet – roughly 45 football fields. For a measure it is a little more than the Lake Burbury power stations capacity at 144Mw, the states second largest and the solar portion is equivalent to a little less than the Paloona station.

The longer-term goal for Algeria is to export 6,000 megawatts of solar-generated power to Europe by 2020, about 10% of current electricity consumption in Germany.

The total potential for Algeria is four times the world’s energy consumption according to New Energy Algeria, a company created by the Algerian government in 2002 to develop renewable energy.

It will take a number of years to get this first plant operating and the program of development is also dependent on undersea cables to allow export to Sicily and Spain

The Algerian program is part of a broader reassessment of green technologies by countries that owe their wealth to oil and gas. Algeria, population 33 million, remains

heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, which earned it about $54 billion last year.

Africa’s second largest country is more than four-fifths desert, with enough sunshine to meet Western Europe’s needs 60 times over, according to estimates cited by Algeria’s energy ministry.

“The solar potential of Algeria is huge, enormous, because solar radiation is high and there is plenty of land for solar plants,” said Eduardo Zarza Moya, who works on solar power for Spain’s public energy research center, CIEMAT. “The price of the land is low, it’s cheap, and there is also manpower.”

Algeria hopes to build three other hybrids generating 400 megawatts each by 2015, by which time Algeria aims to be producing 6 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

Experts warn that financing the cables may wipe out the profits from selling the power in Europe. They also say the domestic market will find it hard to compete with cheap Algerian oil and gas.

But they’re positive about the long-term outlook. The gas component in the hybrid plants will produce some greenhouse emissions. “But gas is much cleaner than oil and in time you will increase the share of solar,” said Richard Perez, a research professor specializing in solar power at the State University of New York. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone.

Franz Trieb, an analyst at the German Space Agency in Stuttgart who helped produce a recent study on Concentrated Solar Power [CSP] in Mediterranean and Middle East countries, said that by 2020 the cost of collecting solar power would be equivalent to paying $15 for a barrel of oil.

“In 2020, we will have considerable capacity of CSP installed worldwide and this will lead to cost reductions,” he said. Delivery systems “would add a little bit to the cost but not too much. It could be competitive with electricity prices in Europe.”

According to International Energy Agency figures, renewable energies excluding hydroelectricity still account for just 2 percent of world power, and 0.5 percent of world energy production. Fossil fuels are expected to remain dominant until at least 2030.

But even the biggies in exploiting fossil fuel energy can see writing on the wall, they just want to risk all to wring out that last buck.

Major energy companies say they are not yet ready to invest abroad on a large scale. ExxonMobil spokesman Dave Gardner said the technology breakthroughs would have to be significant to attract ExxonMobil investment.

But he said his company is seeking to foster such breakthroughs by funding a $225 million project at Stanford University on renewables and energy efficiency.

Algerian energy officials acknowledge that the country’s success with solar power will depend on demand and technology.

Right now, solar-derived electricity costs 25 percent more than using gas and will need to be subsidized for 10 years until the cost of solar power comes down, said Hasni, the Algerian company director.

“The current race is to see who will control renewable energy technologies, and we are in the race,” Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil told reporters. “We have the human and financial resources, and we have the will.

And Australia, whilst in the 1970’s was leading that race with its ground breaking research finds itself left behind as research undertaken here migrates to countries where there is a demand stimulated by government policy.

In China, where the sliver cell technology that was developed at the University of

NSW and will make photovoltaics much more cost competitive even where carbon emissions are discounted through the lack of a trading scheme such as in Australia, the simple expediency of heating water with the sun covers the roofs of many cities.

Why is it that countries dependent on oil and gas are making the transition when this country, so dependent on coal exports is unable to see that it will loose market share as the cost of its use outweighs its benefits as a fuel.

It is time for Australia to turn its mind to the use of coal as a raw material for the manufacture of plastics rather than one of the fuels of catastrophe.

phill Parsons