Climate Spectator: A Clean Start

The Business Spectator team were planning our new site, Climate Spectator, when former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd dropped the government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme in April and we have launched it today in the same week as his successor, Julia Gillard, will announce its replacement.

In the meantime a heavy-handed resources rent tax has come and gone, a PM has been sacked and New Zealand has begun an emissions trading scheme.

We were initially despondent when the CPRS was kicked into the long grass by Kevin Rudd, thinking that the subject would now be off the agenda until well into the next Parliamentary term. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

The more we talked to business people about it, the more we realised carbon abatement was not off the agenda at all. The New Zealanders merely confirmed that on July 1.

Firms operate on far longer time horizons than politicians, and business people understand that while the gaming of the international conference in Copenhagen, and the coalition coup in Australia that saw the replacement of Malcolm Turnbull with Tony Abbott, might have derailed political progress on a global price on carbon, including in Australia, this is an issue that is not going away.

So we pressed on, and this morning Climate Spectator becomes the first new venture from Business Spectator, itself launched just three years ago, and Australia’s first free news and commentary publication dedicated to the business of climate change.

The new website is edited by Giles Parkinson, Australia’s leading journalist specialising in the business of climate change, and will include 24-hour global news on environment and emissions trading issues, daily commentary from a wide range of experts and, crucially, daily carbon and renewable energy prices.

Climate Spectator will publish the three key carbon prices – European EUA, the international CER and the New Zealand emissions trading price – as well as Australia’s renewable energy certificates.

These market prices will, over time, become as important to companies as the price of oil and the price of electricity.

And even though both Australian political parties are now trying to come up with credible carbon reduction policies that don’t involve a price on carbon, it is inevitable in this country as well. ‘Direct action’, whatever that involves, simply won’t do the job.

It remains bipartisan policy in Australia to reduce carbon emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, from the year 2000 levels. That might not seem much, but it would require a cut in emissions of 21 per cent against business as usual baseline emissions, because we are half-way there already and emissions are still rising rapidly. On a per capita basis, the task is even higher – 26 per cent

So unless the government ditches the 5 per cent target as well as a price on carbon, the emissions reduction target for Australia is so ambitious that whatever happens it will touch every company and every business-person in the nation. No doubt during the election campaign both parties will claim that the target can be achieved effortlessly with direct action, but it is not true.

And eventually there must be a price on carbon, and it won’t be via a carbon tax. The only politically viable method of achieving an ambitious carbon emissions reduction target is through a market-based trading scheme.

As politicians in Australia and the world struggle their way towards emissions trading, and businesses try to cope with the uncertainty, Climate Spectator will be there to inform and analyse – 24 hours a day and, like Business Spectator, entirely free.

Full article and links HERE

And,

It’s a little known fact that there is now more carbon in the atmosphere and in oceans from degraded landscape, namely soils, than has been emitted by the burning of fossil fuels since the the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

In the last 200-odd years, the amount of carbon lost from soils is estimated at around 500 billion tons, while the amount created by fossil fuel emissions is estimated at around 360 billion tons – making the focus on fossil fuels emissions as the predominant cause of climate change, arguably, misplaced.

In Australia, scientists have estimated that soil carbon lost since European settlement, by traditional grazing and cropping on the 500 million hectares of Australian rangelands and farmlands, could be as much as 150-200 billion tons. This is equivalent to around 300 years of Australia’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, the world’s forests and oceans currently take up about 40 per cent of annual human CO2 emissions, of around 30 billion tons a year.

A reason for this shortfall is that there are over three billion hectares of managed grazing and cropping lands on the planet, most of which are now well below their saturation soil carbon capacity. Indeed, these lands are now net emitters of greenhouse gases.

However, a 0.1 per cent increase in soil carbon in these agricultural lands could reduce atmospheric CO2 levels by around 4 ppm.

Or to put it another way: A 0.1 per cent increase in soil carbon on just 10 per cent of Australia’s cropping and grazing lands, each year, would offset all of Australia’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

What’s more, Professor Ross Garnaut has called biosequestration “potentially Australia’s most important contribution to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gases.”

So Australia has disproportionate opportunity. The question is, how can we harness this opportunity?

The International Federation of Agricultural Producers says “economic incentives are needed to enable farmers to implement more sustainable agricultural practices. Carbon credit systems would reward farmers for their contribution to climate mitigation through carbon sequestering activities.”

In July 2009 the Portuguese government introduced a soil carbon offsets scheme based on dryland pasture improvement compliant with Article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol. The Portuguese data shows that under sown perennial pasture soil organic matter increased by around 0.21 per cent per annum over a 10 year period. So why can’t Australia do the same?

There are now hundreds of farms in Australia that have converted to biological farming and fertilising systems, and planned grazing techniques that, while being more profitable, successfully and sustainably sequester CO2 in the soils as soil carbon. But little has been done so far by our science institutes to study such success stories.

The Australian government should expand on the Voluntary Carbon Market (governed by National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) that is due to become operational 1 July 2010) to encourage every farmer in Australia to adopt farm practices that build soil carbon.

Farms that are already successfully building soil carbon should be identified and funded as Global Demonstration Projects – to educate all farmers and prove up soil carbon measurement and accounting systems that meet international standards.

And soil carbon must be part of any future carbon pricing system.

Biological carbon capture use and storage (Bio-CCS) needs to become common practice for Australia’s agriculture industry. Not only would it mean a huge reduction in Australia’s carbon emissions, it has the great advantage that it uses CO2 to deliver useful products and better environmental, employment and health outcomes, at very low-cost, with positive GDP impacts, and potentially at huge-scale in the near-term.

John White is executive director of Ignite Energy Resources

And, from Jon Sumby:

This is a really compelling video. James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA, various Admirals and senior US military staff all talk about how global warming is a ‘clear and present danger’. I had a look-see at the CIA White Paper on this topic about five years ago and this video seems to follow on from that assessment. Climate change denialists tend to come from the conservative, right-wing, part of society. (e.g. Tony Abbott), but senior CIA and military figures (who would be expected to be conservatives) are calling for change and warning of the dangers. See also their combined letter to the public:

33 generals, admirals: “Climate change is making the world a more dangerous place” and “threatening America’s security”
April 29, 2010

America’s billion-dollar-a-day dependence on oil makes us vulnerable to unstable and unfriendly regimes…

And, from phill Parsons:

Researchers Witness Overnight Breakup, Retreat of Greenland Glacier
ScienceDaily (July 13, 2010) — NASA-funded researchers monitoring Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier report that a 7 square kilometer (2.7 square mile) section of the glacier broke up on July 6 and 7, as shown in a new image. The calving front — where the ice sheet meets the ocean — retreated nearly 1.5 kilometers (a mile) in one day and is now further inland than at any time previously observed. The chunk of lost ice is roughly one-eighth the size of Manhattan Island, New York.

Research teams led by Ian Howat of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University and Paul Morin, director of the Antarctic Geospatial Information Center at the University of Minnesota have been monitoring satellite images for changes in the Greenland ice sheet and its outlet glaciers. While this week’s breakup itself is not unusual, Howat noted, detecting it within hours and at such fine detail is a new phenomenon for scientists.
“While there have been ice breakouts of this magnitude from Jakonbshavn and other glaciers in the past, this event is unusual because it occurs on the heels of a warm winter that saw no sea ice form in the surrounding bay,” said Thomas Wagner, cryospheric program scientist at NASA Headquarters. “While the exact relationship between these events is being determined, it lends credence to the theory that warming of the oceans is responsible for the ice loss observed throughout Greenland and Antarctica.”
The researchers relied on imagery from several satellites, including Landsat, Terra, and Aqua, to get a broad view of ice changes at both poles. Then, in the days leading up to the breakup, the team received images from DigitalGlobe’s WorldView 2 satellite showing large cracks and crevasses forming.
DigitalGlobe Inc. provides the images as part of a public-private partnership with U.S. scientists. Howat and Morin are receiving near-daily satellite updates from the Jakobshavn, Kangerlugssuaq, and Helheim glaciers (among the islands largest) and weekly updates on smaller outlet glaciers.
Jakobshavn Isbrae is located on the west coast of Greenland at latitude 69°N and has been retreated more than 45 kilometers (27 miles) over the past 160 years, 10 kilometers (6 miles) in just the past decade. As the glacier has retreated, it has broken into a northern and southern branch. The breakup this week occurred in the north branch.
Scientists estimate that as much as 10 percent of all ice lost from Greenland is coming through Jakobshavn, which is also believed to be the single largest contributor to sea level rise in the northern hemisphere. Scientists are more concerned about losses from the south branch of the Jakobshavn, as the topography is flatter and lower than in the northern branch.
In addition to the remote sensing work, Howat, Morin, and other researchers have been funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation to plant GPS sensors, cameras, and other scientific equipment on top of the ice sheet to monitor changes and understand the fundamental workings of the ice. NASA also has been conducting twice-yearly airborne campaigns to the Arctic and Antarctic through the IceBridge program and measuring ice loss with the ICESat and GRACE satellites.
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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

It is time to secure America with clean energy…

http://climateprogress.org/2010/04/29/senior-military-leaders-announce-support-for-climate-bill/

The video is at: http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/06/video-climate-change-and-national-security/