5 February 2016, The Guardian, After climate cuts at CSIRO, who should we ask about global warming impacts on Australia? Netflix? Dr Penny Whetton had spent 25 years working on climate change modelling for Australia’s premier science agency, but in 2014 it was time to go. “I could see the writing on the wall,” says Whetton, who put up her hand to take a redundancy package in October 2014. This week, she has heard of the anger and sadness among her former CSIRO colleagues at the news that climate change research is being targeted for cutbacks and redundancies. Whetton still holds an Honorary Research Fellow position at the agency, where she had worked as a senior principal research scientist and one of the key people leading the CSIRO’s climate modelling work. She is one of a very small handful of Australian scientists to have been a lead author on three consecutive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Her central role has been to use climate models to work out the implications for climate change on Australia. Whetton had also been a leader of the project to deliver the latest climate change projections across Australia, released last year. In short, Whetton has intimate knowledge of what Australia’s climate modelling expertise is being used for. This week’s announcement by CSIRO executive director Larry Marshall has angered many in the country’s climate science community, who have been queuing up to criticise the moves. But beyond the implications of the announcement, there has also been much bemusement about Marshall’s statements and his apparent simplistic understanding of aspects of climate science. If Whetton saw the writing on the wall in October 2014 then surely everyone else should have been able to see the letters scrawled metres high when Marshall was appointed that same month. Read More here
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4 February 2016, Renew Economy, Adani puts Galilee coal mine on hold pending recovery in coal price. The Indian mining and energy giant Adani Enterprises appears to have put development of its massive and controversial $16 billion Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin on hold – until coal prices show signs of a solid rebound. Which could be never. A report from brooking house Axis Capital in India this week quotes Adani management as saying that no capital expenditure is planned by the company for the project until there is “visibility” of a rebound in the coal price. Given that international coal prices are at record lows, and most analysts predict further falls as the commodity faces increased competition from renewables, and major economies turn away from coal due to environmental and climate impacts, it suggests that Adani accepts that the Galilee Basin may not get developed. This is in complete contrast to the comments attributed by Adani to the Queensland government, where it is apparently trying to sound optimistic about its go-ahead, suggesting it could re-start works within months. The Queensland Labor government this week gave environmental approval for the mine, despite massive concerns about its impact on the Great Barrier Reef and on climate targets. An Adani spokesman was quoted by the Brisbane Courier-Mail as saying: “The company is in a position to resume some of the development and other works on its projects within months of a mining lease being granted.” However, the Axis Capital report (an excerpt of which appears above) quoted Adani management as saying that no capital expenditure is planned for the Galille Basin mine this financial year – and none would be likely in future without “visibility of revival in global coal prices.” Given that the outlook for global coal prices is poor, this suggests that there will be no investment in Galilee, and underscores the difficulty it will have in attracting finance for a project that analysts says will not be economic. Even the conservative International Energy Agency said late last year that it did not expect carmichael and other projects in the Galilee Basin to be built. “It is not likely that the above listed projects will be operational by 2020, if ever,” it said in its latest medium term coal outlook.Read More here
4 February 2016 Global Footprint newsletter article , If an acre of forest burns up in flames, what’s the cost? Zero, was FEMA’s reply in 2013. The Federal Emergency Management Agency rejected California’s request for a federal “major disaster” declaration and funding after the devastating Rim Fire, because it only knew how to put a price tag on man-made structures. The 400 square miles of forests that had been reduced to ashes and charred stumps—including part of Yosemite National Park—couldn’t translate into dollar amounts.How times have changed. Two weeks ago, the state of California was named one of the 13 winners of the National Disaster Resilience Competition by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Rockefeller Foundation. California won more than $70 million to help fund several disaster preparedness projects in communities affected by the Rim Fire. What happened? As extreme weather events have become more frequent due to climate change, decision-makers are realizing that conventional project assessments won’t do, and that building strong, resilient communities requires drastically innovative approaches. In a first for a federal agency, the HUD Office of Economic Resilience, in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, mandated that nature be a key element in the design of development projects submitted to the $1 billion competition. HUD required all applicants to use a more complete benefit-cost analysis developed by Earth Economics, a close partner of Global Footprint Network. It is exactly the kind of approach that Global Footprint Network and Earth Economics called for in July in our State of the States Report, which found the United States demands twice the resources that its ecosystems can regenerate. It is also similar to the approach that Global Footprint Network piloted with the state of Maryland when developing our Net Present Value Plus tool. Read more here
3 February 2016, The Guardian, We’re drowning in cheap oil – yet still taxpayers prop up this toxic industry. Those of us who predicted, during the first years of this century, an imminent peak in global oil supplies could not have been more wrong. People like the energy consultant Daniel Yergin, with whom I disputed the topic, appear to have been right: growth, he said, would continue for many years, unless governments intervened. Oil appeared to peak in the United States in 1970, after which production fell for 40 years. That, we assumed, was the end of the story. But through fracking and horizontal drilling, production last year returned to the level it reached in 1969. Twelve years ago, the Texas oil tycoon T Boone Pickens announced that “never again will we pump more than 82 million barrels”. By the end of 2015, daily world production reached 97m . Instead of a collapse in the supply of oil, we confront the opposite crisis: we’re drowning in the stuff. The reasons for the price crash – an astonishing slide from $115 a barrel to less than $30 over the past 20 months – are complex: among them are weaker demand in China and a strong dollar. But an analysis by the World Bank finds that changes in supply have been a much greater factor than changes in demand. Oil production has almost doubled in Iraq, as well as in the US. Saudi Arabia has opened its taps, to try to destroy the competition and sustain its market share – a strategy that some peak oil advocates once argued was impossible. Read More here