Goodbye Tuvalu

*Pic: Under threat … Funafutu Atol, Tuvalu

Along with at least 36 other Small Island States to be affected by anthropogenic global heating, Tuvalu is in danger of becoming uninhabitable with a 20 to 40cm rise in sea levels. At the current rates of sea level rise that is 40 to 80 years.

The highest point in the former Ellice Islands is 4.6m.

In March 2015 the winds and storm surge created by Cyclone Pam resulted in waves of 3 to 5metres breaking over the reef of the outer islands causing damage to houses, crops and infrastructure. On Nui the sources of fresh water were destroyed or contaminated. The flooding in Nui and Nukufetau caused many families to shelter in evacuation centres or with other families. Nui suffered the most damage of the three central islands (Nui, Nukufetau and Vaitupu); with both Nui and Nukufetau suffering the loss of 90% of the crops. Of the three northern islands (Nanumanga, Niutao, Nanumea), Nanumanga suffered the most damage, with 60-100 houses flooded, with the waves also causing damage to the health facility.

The latest science puts a when, not if, question on a long term and permanent sea level rise of 4m. Indications are much of that rise will be this century if we do not reduce CO2 emissions markedly. [Hansen et al 2015]

Cultural Heritage

No doubt Tuvaluan culture is changing, as it has since contact with western culture. However, how will it withstand the whole population being relocated?. Wherever it was to move to will already have a culture and the two will mix. On top of that they are removed from the location that has driven the development of their individual culture. A cultural heritage destroyed by loss of place.

We are outraged by ISIS destroying cultural heritage items before our very square eyes, so what is the difference when you erode it away times 36. The threat alone should be enough to cause outrage.

ISIS has been named as the Evil Death Cult. Living Cultural Heritage attacked and damaged – the culture of the Yezidi. World Cultural heritage Sites looted and damaged.

Deaths

This year a heat wave in India had a death toll of over 2,200 people. In the hottest year of the 20th century, 1998, 2,541 people died from heat effects, the highest number ever recorded.

Granted heat waves, like cold snaps have been a part of the global experience for some time.

However, there is a change in their character. Belgium experienced two heat waves in July 2006. Before 1990 a heat wave occurred about once every 8 years, but between 1997 and 2006 the country averaged one heat wave per year. On 19 July 2006, temperatures throughout the entire country rose to 36 °C (97 °F), making it the hottest July day in almost 60 years. The highest temperatures were recorded at the stations of Kleine Brogel and Genk, which measured 37.5 °C (99.5 °F) and 38.3 °C (100.9 °F), respectively.

There were 36 consecutive days of temperatures above 25 °C (77 °F) where the heat wave lasted for 34 days straight. In the rest of the country, the second heat wave lasted for 17 days.

The 2003 European heat wave was the hottest summer on record in Europe since at least 1540.[1] France was hit especially hard. The heat wave led to health crises in several countries and combined with drought to create a crop shortfall in parts of Southern Europe. Peer-reviewed analysis places the European death toll at more than 70,000

It would be an enormous mistake to think that this is a passing phase of only affects other places.

The four-day heat wave in Victoria in January 2014 resulted in a 24 per cent increase in the number of deaths and a 97 per cent increase in emergency calls for cardiac issues. Also there was a 25% increase in emergency ambulance dispatches.

In some parts of the state it was 45 degrees Celsius or more on three consecutive days, and in Melbourne it was over 41C on each of four days during that heat wave.

There were 858 deaths that week, 691 of which would have been expected based on data from previous years. That is an additional 167 people died that week compared to previous years.

During the 2009 heat wave, which was one day shorter, there was a 62 per cent increase in the number of deaths expected.

ISIS has caused deaths numbering in their tens of thousands and it is labeled as an Evil Death Cult.

The death toll listed above is related to heat waves. The data shows that the frequency and intensity of climate events is increasing.

Not iterated are the impacts of the various types of storms or of droughts or the higher ends of the rainfall spectrum.

The deaths in the attack on Iraq were an estimate. A current estimate for global heating related deaths is 400.000.

Much of the Middle East experienced a heat dome effect last month.

Causes of Middle East turmoil

There is evidence that the Arab Spring and thus the problem of political instability in Syria and the rise of ISI [Daésh] was the result of droughts forcing up the price of food. In Syria a drought put many off their land and fed into the social unrest.

Evil Death Cult

Evil: morally bad, wrong, sinful, wicked.

Death; the ending of any form of life in people, animals or plants.

Cult: a group showing great admiration of a thing or idea

Have the supporters of the fossil fuel industry joined a crazy evil death cult?.

The description has been applied to religious fundamentalists wreaking terror in Syria and Iraq to push their message in spite of all the evidence that communities can and do operate with many religions present.

We have a consistent long standing body of evidence that humans burning fossil fuels is affecting the climate and solid projections of the increased death dealing results of continuing to burn coal, oil and gas.

Tacitly the government has admitted the cause of global heating is CO2 emissions by committing to a 26 to 28% reduction in their production over the next 15 years.

Yet the same government is apparently unable to see the dichotomy between expanding the exports of fossil fuels and continuing to burn the dirtiest of them, such as brown coal, and trying to limit the expansion of the renewable energy industry and their stated goal.

Also they have worked to lower the Renewable Energy Target even though the evidence of its benefits, and the countries technological and financial capacity, means Australia should be doing much, much more.

Having reduced or abolished the measures to reduce CO2 emissions they propose and have budgeted for Direct Action.

The problem for them is the cost of implementation. It will rise and rise as a direct cost to taxpayers, not as a price signal in the market that an emissions trading scheme would cause. That is of course if it is not simply a promise they will break if they are returned to government

Natural Heritage

Does natural heritage have a lesser value than cultural heritage?.

Thousands of species are threatened by loss of habitat as the major determinate of the conditions conducive for the complex web of life that is dependent on each other changes irrevocably under increasing temperatures and changed rainfall regimes.

We see fires spreading into areas where they have been rare or unknown and the frequency in the drier areas increasing, all leading to changes in the suite of plants upon which all animals depend.

Olympic Park in the wettest part of Seattle experienced its first forest fires in history.

Surely destabilizing and possibly destroying the underpinnings for all human activity rank as a greater crime than any other, especially when you should know this is what you are doing because all the evidence a normal person needs is there to read and see.

The fossil fuel companies have admitted they know but their toady apologists continue to dissemble with a coal is good, coal is cheap mantra and other twists such as the price of electricity will rise.
The good burghers of Manly have to ask themselves what price does the Corso and its beaches have when they consider the fate of their local member at the next election.

Avoidability

In October 2013 the Blue Mountains had a series of bushfires early in the bushfire season. Abbott had been Prime Minister for only a few weeks when this disaster struck. Links were made between climate change and the fire season’s early arrival.

As a warrior for the fossil fuel industry he manfully strode into the ring to do battle claiming there had been bushfires in October before. Whilst true, he had also made a fool of himself by forgetting that there had been a reduction in the number of years between events, indicating an increasing frequency of October bushfires over the last 100 years.

An awakening sleeper is ocean temperatures. They are on the rise. The forecasts now are for at least 4m of sea level rise at the current volume of warming gases, once they convert their warming values to temperatures. It won’t be instantaneous but it will be unavoidable and long lasting changing all coasts.

This is one of the many unavoidables. Currently CO2 levels sit at above 400ppm but the effects we are seeing are from levels 3 or 4 decades ago, a range between about 330 and 340ppm by volume.

Will it get worse?. Oh yes, much worse. The upper limit target is 450ppm for what is believed to be a politically achievable agreement. The safe level of 350ppm we passed in 1990. We will not see the effects of that until between 2020 and 2030.

Abbott cannot be trusted as we have seen from his selective approach to political promises. The reduction target he offers is either hollow or extraordinarily costs without the means to implement it, means he has abolished or neutered.

How can the Australian fossil fuel industry redeem itself?

Firstly the fossil fuel industry as a whole must public ally admit what they already know, that burning fossil fuels is endangering climate stability, and then they should apologize without equivocation.

One apology for their denial of the science and another for their intransigence would give strength to their acceptance but it is not an absolute.

Secondly they must join with Government and Industry to lead a staged transition to renewable energy that is just for fossil fuel dependent workers and communities.

That is they must pay to slow down then stop further emissions. There is a Carbon budget and an upper limit to the total amount that can be emitted.

Such a realignment of investment would assist their shareholders from losing more value and their workforce from becoming jobless as well as partially protect the banker barons’ investment. It may even bring access to those funds that have, and those that will soon, divest.

However, continuing with business as usual, running campaigns and pulling backroom strings and stunts to derail action will only confirm that the greatest evil death cult that is coming for all of us is the fossil fuel industry.

By continuing on the path to endangerment the fossil fuel industry cannot later complain that they did not know or they did their best. I doubt if future generations will be at all forgiving to an industry unwilling to change

Arguing over percentages is just a distraction when we need to rapidly exit fossil fuels.

Phill Parsons has watched the growing connective dissonance among the fossil fuel vested interests and their sycophants for almost 20 years, the point where scientific debate ended. He has had to consider what their denialism means for the future of natural systems and the constructs of human activity. Whilst he has not remained silent and nor does he wish to simply remain ahead of the pack Phill can no longer avoid the conclusion he has drawn. Like the political systems that terrorised the whole world between 1941 and 1945 that grew from humorous comedies in uniform from the 1920’s to accepted governments in the 1930’s to dangers by the end of that decade so the fossil fuel industry is morphing into the biggest threat humans have ever faced. Phill grew up in what has become the electorate of the current Prime Minister. He knows the saltwater lenses are pressing on the foundations and walls of the buildings in parts of the Corso when they were not present when he was a resident 4 decades ago. Older residents can remember the sea running into the Sydney Harbour along Ashburner Street. That time will return. It has already arrived in Miami. Phill has not lost his optimism about humans finding a solution but that will be in a much altered world. However, time is fast running out to retain a habitable planet where the construct we have now can operate.