5 October 2016. The Military and Climate Security Budgets Compared. Fifteen of the sixteen hottest years ever recorded have occurred during this new century, and the near-unanimous scientific consensus attributes the principal cause to human activity. The U.S. military’s latest National Security Strategy says that climate change is “an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water.” What they don’t say is that the overall balance of U.S. security spending should be adjusted to fit that assessment. And we know less about how much we are spending on this urgent threat than we used to, since the federal government hasn’t produced a climate security budget since 2013. In this new report, Combat vs. Climate, the Institute for Policy Studies steps in to provide the most accurate climate change security budget currently available, drawing data from multiple agencies. And it looks at how these expenditures stack up within our overall security budget. Then, the report ties the military’s own assessment of its urgent threats to a budget that outlines a “whole of government” reapportionment that will put us on a path to averting climate catastrophe. This is our status quo: As global temperatures hit one record after another, the stalemate in Congress over funding to respond continues. Climate scientists warn that, as in Syria, unless the global greenhouse gas buildup is reversed, the U.S. could be at risk for conflicts over basic resources like food and water. Meanwhile, plans to spend $1 trillion to modernize our entire nuclear arsenal remain in place, and projected costs of the ineffective F-35 fighter jet program continue to climb past $1.4 trillion. Unless we get serious about moving the money, alarms from all over about the national security dangers of climate change will ring hollow. Access article here. Access report here.
Tag Archives: Extreme Events
4 October 2016, The Conversation, South Australian blackout: renewables aren’t a threat to energy security, they’re the future. In the wake of South Australia’s wild weather and state-wide blackout, both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg have emphasised the importance of energy security. Turnbull stated that the blackout was a wake-up call, suggesting that reliance on renewables places very different strains and pressures on a grid than traditional coal-fired power. The assumption that these politicians and others are working off is that South Australia’s wind industry has reduced the state’s energy security. But do these politicians really know what energy security means in a modern energy landscape? The baseload question. Baseload power is an economic term that refers to power sources that consistently generate electrical power, therefore meeting minimum demand. The minimum demand for electrical power from an electrical grid is referred to as the baseload requirement. The underlying assumption is that the only way of supplying baseload electricity demand is by means of power stations, such as those fired by coal, that operate at full power all day and night. This is a widely held belief in Australia. A former Australian industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, claimed at a uranium industry conference that the only serious alternative way that baseload power can be produced is by hydro and nuclear. But this is not entirely true. In 2014 South Australia got 39% of its electricity from renewable energy (33% wind plus 6% solar). Consequently, the state’s coal-fired power stations have become redundant. Read More here
29 September 2016, Renew Economy, Coalition launches fierce attack against wind and solar after blackout. The Coalition government launched a ferocious attack against wind and solar energy after the major South Australian blackout, even though energy minister Josh Frydenberg and the grid operators admit that the source of energy had nothing to do with catastrophic outage. Frydenberg, however, lined up with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, independent Senator Nick Xenophon and a host of conservative commentators, including Andrew Bolt, Alan Moran, the ABC’s Chris Ullmann, and Fairfax’ Brian Robins to exploit the blackout to question the use of renewable energy. Frydenberg used the blackout to continue his persistent campaign against the renewable energy targets of state Labor governments in South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, saying that the blackout was proof that these targets were “unrealistic.” He made clear that he wanted the states – South Australia and Queensland which are pushing for 50 per cent renewable energy, and Victoria 40 per cent – to abandon their schemes and conform to the federal target, which has target of about 23.5 per cent renewables. The federal scheme effectively ends in 2020, while the state based schemes provide longer term investment signals by providing a 2025 and 2030 time frames. “These states are pursuing these unrealistic targets ,” Frydenberg told ABC’s AM program. “My job is to try and get these states to the table … only the Commonwealth, with 23.5%, is a realistic target.” His comments were later repeated by Turnbull,who accused state Labor governments for imposing “ideological” renewable energy targets, describing the South Australian blackout as a “wake-up call” to focus on energy security. (It should be noted that South Australia’s wind fleet was built via the federal target, which is a bipartisan policy between the Coalition and Labor. It has a state target, but it is aspirational only, it has no particular state measures). Turnbull said there was “no doubt” that the “extremely aggressive” shift to renewables had strained the electricity network. Read More here
29 September 2016, Climate Home, No, South Australian blackouts were not caused by renewables. Media and political claims that province’s high proportion of wind energy is to blame for power outages are completely unfounded. When the sun is shining and the breeze trims the blades of the turbines, it’s easy to forget that Australia remains a country with a deep native suspicion of renewable energy. How else to explain the extraordinary, unfounded response to a traumatic Wednesday for South Australians when a huge storm ripped through state and all the lights went out? Before residents’ power was even returned politicians and journalists were lining up to suggest, with no evidence, that South Australia’s high concentration of renewable energy was in some way to blame for the crisis. The nation’s papers of note were quick to find cause where there was none. By early evening on Wednesday, while people were still trying to negotiate their way home through the darkened Adelaide streets, The Age ran with a story titled ‘South Australia pays the price for heavy reliance on renewable energy’. That story had the ignominy of being republished by the British Global Warming Policy Foundation, a well-known purveyor of crank science. Later the Age had topped the piece with the apologetic caveat: “This analysis was written in the immediate aftermath of the blackout. For more recent updates, please click here”. The next morning, dangling unexplained within The Australian’s front page story on the blackouts was an oblique reference to the fact that the state has a large proportion of renewable energy. The Daily Mail ran with “Are the GREENS responsible for South Australia’s blackout?” None of these stories produced any evidence that the blackout and the 40% of its electricity South Australia gets from wind were related. Meantime, ElectraNet, the company that runs the state’s distribution network said the disruption had happened because four transmission lines were down and another 23 towers had been damaged. But by then, certain politicians had worked out that this was a golden opportunity to tar by insinuation. Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce told ABC radio: “With the strong reliance on wind power, there is an exceptional draw that’s then put on the network from other sources when that wind power is unable to be generated.”Read More here