10 June 2016, Environmental justice Australia, Victorian climate change laws: A state stepping up. The Victorian government today released their intentions to change Victoria’s climate change laws. Climate change is real, and it’s happening now. The devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef due to warmer water is not something that can be dismissed or hidden, despite the best efforts of the Federal government – and yet Australia is still ticking off on new coal mines. With the federal election just around the corner, there’s a very real possibility that we’ll get another three years of Turnbull government tinkering around the edges of the real, lasting changes we need to make to avoid the worst climate change scenarios. But we do not need to wait for federal government action. State governments can take on the role of action on climate. Today the Victorian government are promising to do just that. Their plans for Victoria’s climate laws draw heavily on Environmental Justice Australia’s proposed Climate Charter. A report by the Independent Review Panel suggested that the government embrace many of our proposed measures. They include emissions targets enshrined in law, and provisions that mean climate change will need to be taken into account in a whole range of government decision and policies – embedding climate change considerations throughout the Victorian Government. Read more here
Monthly Archives: June 2016
9 June 2016, Renew Economy, Victorian government targets net zero emissions by 2050. The Victorian Labor government has pledged to get the state – host to the country’s remaining brown coal generators – to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with the release of a series of five-year interim climate change policies and programs. The yet to be legislated, long-term emissions reduction target comes in response to the recommendations of the 2015 Independent Review of the Climate Change Act 2010, most of which have been accepted by the Andrews government. The supporting policies, released by Premier Daniel Andrews and climate and energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio on Thursday, include a wide-ranging emissions reduction pledge program for the private, government and community sectors. The government said the pledge program – called TAKE2 – would give those businesses and organisations already acting on climate change the opportunity to showcase their efforts and to build on it; while also inspiring others to take action. Participation in the program will also give businesses and organisations a say on the development of a 2020 interim emissions reduction target for the state, which the government plans to have in place by the end of the year. Further to the review’s recommendations, the government has also committed to amend the Climate Change Act (CCA) to require a Victorian Climate Change Strategy every five years, incorporating mitigation and adaptation; require integrated Adaptation Action Plans for key climate exposed sectors; and embed climate mitigation and adaptation as a key consideration in government decision making. Read more here
8 June 2016, Climate News Network, Puzzle of Antarctica’s long-term ice loss. Analysis of satellite data records reveals that the worrying loss of hundreds of square kilometres of ice along West Antarctica’s coastline has been occurring for decades. Parts of Antarctica are not only losing ice to the ocean, they have been doing so for 40 years. Geoscientists from the University of Edinburgh and a US colleague report in Geophysical Research Letters that they looked at satellite imagery of West Antarctica’s coastline along a 2,000 km stretch and found that the region has lost 1,000 square kilometres of ice in four decades. The surprise is not that melting occurs, but that it has been happening for such a long time. Frazer Christie, a PhD student, and partners analysed data from NASA, the US Geological Survey and the European Space Agency to find that ice has been retreating along almost the entire coast of Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea since satellite records began. Some of the largest changes – where ice has thinned rapidly and retreated several kilometres since 1975 – matched those places where the ice front is deepest. “We knew that ice had been retreating from this region recently, but now, thanks to a wealth of freely available satellite data, we know this has been occurring pervasively along the coastline for almost half a century,” Christie says. Colder water He and his colleagues blame warmer ocean waters, rather than warmer atmosphere.But, paradoxically, a study from the University of Washington in Seattle, US, reports that the waters lapping the continent are not warming substantially − because of a steady upwelling of much colder water from the depths of the Southern Ocean. Read More here
7 June 2016, Washington Post, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this’: Arctic sea ice hit a stunning new low in May. The 2016 race downward in Arctic sea ice continued in May with a dramatic new record. The average area of sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean last month was just 12 million square kilometers (4.63 million square miles), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). That beats the prior May record (from 2004) by more than half a million square kilometers, and is well over a million square kilometers, or 500,000 square miles, below the average for the month. Another way to put it is this: The Arctic Ocean this May had more than three Californias less sea ice cover than it did during an average May between 1981 and 2010. And it broke the prior record low for May by a region larger than California, although not quite as large as Texas. This matters because 2016 could be marching toward a new record for the lowest amount of ice ever observed on top of the world at the height of melt season — September. The previous record September low was set in 2012. But here’s what the National Snow and Ice Data Center has to say about that: Daily extents in May were also two to four weeks ahead of levels seen in 2012, which had the lowest September extent in the satellite record. The monthly average extent for May 2016 is more than one million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) below that observed in May 2012.In other words, for Arctic sea ice, May 2016 was more like June 2012 — the record-breaking year. Going into the truly warm months of the year, then, the ice is in a uniquely weak state. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Mark Serreze, who directs the center. “It’s way below the previous record, very far below it, and we’re something like almost a month ahead of where we were in 2012.” Granted, the NSIDC called the May numbers “tentative” because of problems with the satellites that scientists rely on to observe the Arctic, but added that they are “supported by other data sources.” Read More here