phill Parsons
Bartlett defends Tasmania’s destruction of the embodied Carbon because we are responsible for a tiny proportion of emissions 1.2%, from a small world player [Australia 1.5%]. As shallow as Alderman Wilson’s belief he is saving the ratepayers a few cents by abandoning recycling. [Devonport has voted to stop kerbside recycling in mid 2009]. Wilson has an eye to the future claiming he would die before the Dulverton tip was filled.
Some years ago I wrote to Queensland Premier Beattie about the disastrous impact of human driven changes to the climate on the Great Barrier Reef and received from a minion the reply which summarized was “don’t you worry about that”, the government had the matter in hand.
Whilst waiting for the mysterious hand of government to take in these matters what has happened to this Australian icon, a piece of World Heritage and the largest reef system in the world?.
The human induced destabilization of the global climate has been blamed for dramatic declines in seabird populations on the Great Barrier Reef and surrounding waters just like it is impacting in the Murray Darling Basin. Everything is connected to everything else.
Tens of thousands of seabirds are failing to breed because warmer water from more frequent and intense El Nino events means there is insufficient food to raise their young, according to research compiled by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
Bird populations are following the trajectory of the swift parrot [Lathamus discolor].
On Raine Island, in the northern barrier reef, populations of at least 10 of the 14 breeding seabird species have been falling. Numbers of common noddies have fallen by 96 per cent, sooty terns by 84 per cent, bridled terns by 69 per cent, and red-footed boobies by 68 per cent.
So is the outlook better for the Southern Ocean
Shell-life in the Southern Ocean will face the acid test first, because colder waters will become acidic faster as a direct result of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide dissolves in sea water, forming carbonic acid — leaving the ocean more acidic. More fossil fuels, more forest destruction, gives more carbon dioxide.
Scientist Dr Andrew Davidson, who left for his 15th expedition, said the forecast was that in the next 20 to 30 years some Antarctic marine life would be unable to make shells. Eventually shells in all oceans could be under threat.
“The resulting increase in ocean acidity interferes with the formation of calcium carbonate, a major structural component of the shells of many important planktonic organisms,” he said.
Dr Davidson said these tiny sea creatures would be unable to form shells in an acidic ocean because their shells would dissolve as they were trying to form.
He said the ramifications were huge, with all Antarctic marine life potentially affected if there was a threat to the marine microbes at the bottom of the food chain.
It makes the voyages of the heroic Sea Shepherds irrelevant unless we address this. As a major ocean feeding system fails the results will cascade. Ocean life will collapse and all the fisherfolk will join the lines of coal miners and forestry workers, made unemployable by their own failure to change their own industries in time.
And when the ocean life ceases to sink the carbon dioxide because it cannot function in an acidified ocean the climates heating will escalate rapidly and their ain’t no turning back baby. The ocean sinks half the CO2.
So what about building
In a report the British government has been told by the Green Building Council [GBC] must urgently begin improvements to make Britain’s 25m homes more energy efficient if it is to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint by 80% by 2050, a report says today.
The report says some homes are so environmentally harmful that they may have to be demolished. It also wants the government to introduce a system of “green mortgages” to pay for reducing homes carbon footprint.
All new homes must be zero-carbon from 2016, but campaigners say that older houses must be a priority, as they account for around a quarter of the total carbon emissions.
One of the report’s key ideas is a “pay as you save” system, where the homeowner or landlord borrows the costs of improvements such as new windows and insulation from a bank or local authority, and then pays the money back over a number of years, with the costs more than covered by lower energy bills.
Now why is it that across the world this is suggested again and again and the dolts in charge fiddle at the edges with rebates and subsidies?.
Improvements to reduce carbon footprints are “absolutely doable,” and could unlock tens of thousands of “green-collar” refurbishment jobs. Instead of trading valueless paper all those financiers now out of work could get a real job shoring up nature’s capital.
For peat’s sake it’s not just the Arctic Ocean going ice free
Warmer temperatures in the years ahead will dry up peatlands; release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and drive climate instability further and more rapidly along with increasing the rate of ocean acidification.
Peat is the accumulation of partially decayed vegetation in very wet places and it covers about two percent of global land mass. Peatlands store large amounts of carbon owing to the low rates of carbon breakdown in cold, waterlogged soils.
Using computer modelling, scientists in Japan found that peatlands – concentrated in high latitude places like Canada, Russia and Alaska – look set to get dryer with increasingly warmer global temperatures.
And look at the decline in Greenland Ice, flooding into the ocaae from the land this Ice will contribute to sea level rise. As this and the other large land masses held under the weight of ice are freed what will be the impact on the tectonic plates.
The vulcanologist McGuire postulates on evidence of volcanic activity in the intergalacial’s of earth’s past that their will be increased activity.
Deniers of the accumulating evidence of deleterious effects on the environment and their social and economic impacts still expound, although the connect with reality is rapidly approaching the disappearing point.
The climate change unbelievers [The Independent 12OCT] gives voice to a range of deniers with some professional scientific experience if being an economist is science.
Judge for yourself, only time will prove events now that the camps have become entrenched.
Bellamy, of Franklin River fame and thus ‘green’ credibility continues to deny the evidence of theWorld Glacier Monitoring Inventory from the US National Snow and Ice Data Monitoring Centre which measures glacial retreat.
He should have a look at the data at http://nsidc.org/glims/glaciermelt/index.html.
Even with wax and wane the trend for glaciers is clear if we continue to heat the earth’s atmosphere.
As the oil giant ExxonMobil lobbies for a free ride, threatening to show its loyalty to Australians by going offshore to refine the National party Senator Ron Boswell attacks Australian businesses for supporting the government’s proposals.
Other business lobbyists such as Paul Howe from the CFMEU are seeking a soft start for emissions trading because of the downturn in the economy.
This contrasts with the United Kingdom whose climate change committee has recommended to government that the 2050 target rise from a low 60%, the Rudd election target, to a more realistic 80%.
The opportunities to grow new investment to meet higher targets scream out for support to avoid the more extreme impacts that lower targets and slower starts will bring upon the descendants of those same CFMEU workers and onto the rural community Boswell claims to represent.
If an economic stimulus is the right step to cushion the Australian economy from the fallout impact then why isn’t a high end ETS target the stimulus for business to invest in the returns from a low carbon economy.
As I and others have said Australian car manufacturers have failed to be perceptive of the new market demanded by the climate. Drip fed for years to keep the industry propped up, it failed to change its product from the Aussie version of Detroit gas guzzlers, and now finds it cannot compete against low per litre fuel use per 100 kilometres of the imported ‘green cars’.
Tough as it is for workers who are loosing their jobs at Ford and did at Mitsubishi now, if Australian industry does not go green and take on the low carbon challenge it will find itself outclassed by countries manufacturing products that avoid the impacts of peak oil and the cost of carbon and so appeal to the consumer ahead of the local manufacturer.
Meanwhile down at stupidity central
What is the answer from the government with control over the fate of a major part of the Carbon Store through the Pulpmill Wood Supply Agreement in the organization they supposedly control but seems to announce government policy on this matter and await the Premier’s slightly embarrassed agreement.
Bartlett defends Tasmania’s destruction of the embodied Carbon because we are responsible for a tiny proportion of emissions 1.2%, from a small world player [Australia 1.5%].
As shallow as Alderman Wilson’s belief he is saving the ratepayers a few cents by abandoning recycling. [Devonport has voted to stop kerbside recycling in mid 2009].
Wilson has an eye to the future claiming he would die before the Dulverton tip was filled.
The cultural impacts run beyond the supposed savings, Devonport looking like the home of troglodytes to investors considering the environmental standing of that community.
The kerbside recycling has been taken from local businesses and a regional contract has been awarded to the multinational Vieola.
Unknown is if Vieola will be changing from the old hand powered plastic box system to recycling wheelie bins but the total cost to Councils is $1.3M. All this and I believe none of the glass is recycled in Tasmania. The location of recycling of the other recyclables is unknown
And on the same day the local rag, The Advocate, has a supplement for the Sustainable Living Expo in Hobart.
What people like Wilson and Bartlett fail to grasp is that everything is connected to everything else.
Socially, economically as well as environmentally and without a connected policy the degradation of forest stored carbon and the dumping recyclables means the mitigation of others such Bartlett’s exemplary 5 star energy saver and adaptation activities by the state through, for example, its regional water supply authorities is a waste of money.
Distorted and contradictory policies are no longer affordable; the immutable laws of physics and chemistry will bring this lesson home if there is not a sharp turn in a new direction.
Phill Parsons reminds the premier that his failures in the climate area are very likely to be directly questioned by his offspring and their children, his grandchildren. Failure here will make that a very serious matter for those generations. He should hope they are forgiving of his stupidity.
