Author: Peter Gardner

About four years ago I wrote a fairly detailed paper looking at a range of scenarios for the Gippsland coast and sea level rise. I added a postscript in May 2014 outlining possible abrupt changes if any volcanic activity under the Antarctic ice occurred. The paper considered both the possibilities of subsidence due to the lowering of the Gippsland basin aquifer and the various effects of climate change – sea level rise, increased severity and frequency of storms and storm surges. The worst case scenarios predicted were an outcome of ‘business as usual’. This state of affairs continues with big coal still the main influence in politics and with Exxon and others still removing oil and gas offshore in the Gippsland basin.

Whilst it is still ‘early days’ so far none of the predictions have materialised. There has been no measurable subsidence anywhere on the coast and sea level rise continues at a rate of about the world average – 3.5mm per annum – hardly discernible in the short to medium term. Nor have any of the storms and floods predicted occurred, or as far as I am aware, any severe erosion along the coast. As well as this the totals in the tables are substantial overestimates due to an error in my method of calculations with regards the rate of change of sea level rise and they may be one third or more too high. On the other hand it is possible that at some specific locations the rate of subsidence I have used is an underestimate. The purpose of the different scenarios is to give you a rough idea of the future, not to say what exactly will happen or when.

There are a number of problems with applying all these variables to our coast. Will the changes be abrupt or gradual? Will the rate of doubling of the amount of sea level rise be fast – about every ten to twenty years – or slow with the latter meaning the sea level rise will be just discernible over a lifetime and manageable in human terms? There are also other factors which may influence outcomes – the ‘unknown unknowns’. It is also unlikely that any subsidence will be general or uniform but may be severe in specific localities. Where it may occur is critical and combined with sea level rise subsidence at or near Golden Beach, for instance, would threaten the Gippsland Lakes system.

As well sea level rise varies substantially around the earth and the figures we use are global averages. The oceans slosh around the earth and they have measurably warmed round our coast. Whilst it easy to come to a conclusion that in a paper like mine if you can find one or more errors in it then it is all bull. However the general thrust is still valid even with allowances for subsidence and possible overestimations in my tables. The latest worst-case indicators are for sea level rise of up to 2.5 metres by 2100. Not too far off my own predictions.

Recently a ‘friend’ shared an article from a climate change denier on my facebook page and called it ‘real science’. Somewhat bemused I asked what he meant by ‘real science’ and after a quick scan of his quite detailed and complicated article on the ‘carboniferous age’ added that the article was suspicious and concluded that the findings were wrong. In his case the ‘real science’ is that which he wanted to believe – a case of wishful thinking.

Everyman and his dog can have a blog or webpage on the net (yours truly included) to promote their views and hopefully facts. This means there is a vast range of accessible material from the factual, valid and important to the lies, distortions, misinformation (alternative facts?) obscure information and even an array of conspiracy theories. The misinformation on climate change is part of a process, often deliberate, to ‘muddy the waters’ creating confusion and doubt. What then constitutes ‘real science’ and does ‘real science’ exist?

I am not qualified to answer this question. What I do know is that science is not fixed and that there is often debate in the scientific community about various aspects of a phenomenon. Every aspect of a statement, claim or experiment must be verifiable or repeatable. Climate science covers an array of disciplines and in general the findings of these various fields complement one another. Before a paper is published in a journal it usually goes through a rigorous process of peer review where various aspects of it are examined by relevant experts in their fields and suggestions, alterations and even rejections are made. The journal itself should be the product of a creditable organisation or university and its high standing is dependent on the continued veracity of the papers it publishes.

As a layman I am working at a very basic level to try to clarify and simplify the problem for ‘Joe Blow’. Everybody has an opinion on the weather and often confuses it with climate. We are all weather experts with our anecdotal accounts. Possibly we have been influenced by a criminal media campaign originating with vested interests such as Exxon. Also the idea that a harmful and threatening climate change is not happening fits comfortably with our beliefs and hopes for the future.

But the question of whether you ‘believe’ in climate change is absurd. It is either happening or not. Why do we have an opinion on climate science but leave flying, heart surgery, the workings of our computers and mobile phones and a vast array of other complicated practices to the experts and do not question them?  The public perception that there is a debate about climate change is false. In the specialised climate science community – that is those that know what they are talking about – more than 97.5% accept the fact of human induced global warming. I suspect the real figure is even higher.

 

The gist of a conversation on global warming by local farmers at a party was recently relayed to me by a friend. Those concerned (all people I know and one or two I may have taught) stated that it was ‘good thing’ as they were having the best run of seasons they have had for a very long time. Some of it – perhaps a lot – may have been ‘tongue in cheek’ or the usual party banter. However there can be no doubt that, combined with good stock prices, the rainfall for much of east Gippsland and in this case the  Tambo Valley has been at least average and sometimes very much above average for the last five years, giving their statements an element of truth. Especially as an expected dry spell in an El Nino year did not materialise.

The problem with all this is that they are confusing weather and climate. If we examine the climate beyond the last five years we find that it is the dry spells, with the occasional severe drought, that was common. The El Nino year of 1983, when the Tambo was bone dry for miles, was perhaps more representative of our climate, which helps make last year such an exception. Or 1998 when in April following dust storms, small sand dunes formed in the lee of the Ensay hills to be followed by the June floods. Much of the first decade of this century was dry with our two big, one in 100 year, bushfires.

The variability of rainfall, where and when it is going to fall, is the most difficult of all things to predict. We all have probably experienced a summer thunderstorm where a few miles down the road from a downpour the country is dry. With each degree of warming around the world there is 7% increase in moisture in atmosphere, which means a corresponding increase of the same amount in global rainfall. Where it is going to fall is the problem. Science predicts that this rainfall will probably come in less days of rain but with heavier events.

Another aspect of this is the pervasive influence of the Murdoch media and in particular some of their populist commentators who appear to know more about climate than those who have made lifetime studies of various aspects of it. Also as many farmers are rusted on to the Nationals (the old country party) for their political representation so too are they rusted on to News Corp as a source of information. In this their trust is misguided.

It is easy to ‘muddy the waters’ of one of the most complicated, if not the most complicated, subjects on earth. This is a job News Corp does thoroughly despite the fact that every day half a dozen peer reviewed papers are published in scientific journals somewhere around the world verifying some aspect of climate change. For the man in the street the answer should be simple – earth’s temperature is dependent on greenhouse gases, increase them and the temperature rises and vice versa. We have been increasing the main greenhouse gas – carbon dioxide – since the start of the industrial revolution. Therefore the earth is getting warmer (and measurably so) whatever the President of the USA, one or two obscure Nobel Prize winners, News Corp and a few renegade and/or mercenary scientists say.

The reality is that Global Warming has been happening very gradually all our lives whilst the normal fluctuations of weather and seasons continue. Prof Will Steffen of the Climate Council stated that for the “last 40 years earth’s temperature has never been equal to or below the twentieth century average.” Such a figure is statistically impossible without human caused warming.

I recently picked up a copy Mark Lynas’ High Tide: the truth about our climate crisis (Picador, New York, 2004) in an op shop. This was a different approach to the problem of climate change. Whilst using available scientific data to back his case the main thrust of the book was for him to visit sites around the globe where the effects of climate change were clearly visible.  Lynas has interesting accounts of the melting permafrost in Alaska with buckled roads and distorted buildings, sea level rise in Tuvalu where at high tide the water comes up through the floors of buildings and the disappearance of a glacier in Peru. Of particular interest was the divided politics of an Alaska heavily dependent on oil reserves – similar to a Gippsland dependent on coal and oil. Curious to see what Lynas had done since this publication a net search revealed a number of more recent publications including Six Degrees (2008).

The search also revealed that Lynas was one of a small group of activists advocating nuclear energy as the solution to global warming.  This group includes the most famous climate scientist James Hansen whose book Storms of my Grandchildren (Bloomsbury, London, 2009) I have on my shelves and whose ‘Fee and Dividend’ policy I promoted in a recent election as an alternative to a carbon tax. But due to my upbringing in the cold war and the age of the nuclear bomb I have always been suspicious of nuclear energy and in 1983 my first foray into politics was as a candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party in Gippsland. Since 2008 when I became increasingly focused on climate change I have modified my opposition to nuclear energy to the extent that I now accept operating and relatively safe nuclear plants as being ‘carbon neutral’.

But the ‘nuclear versus renewables’ is a harmful debate in that it detracts from the urgency of climate mitigation. The Fukushima tragedy for instance has meant that Germany, the renewable energy leader in Europe, has been phasing out nuclear energy plants before brown coal. To help clarify some of these issues I turned to my ‘bible’ -Barrie Pittock’s Climate Change: turning up the heat (CSIRO, Melbourne, 2005). Pittock notes that nuclear energy provides about 7% of the world’s energy but emphasises public concern over nuclear accidents like Chernoble in 1986 (his publication preceded Fukushima) and lists a number of criteria that are obstacles to any widespread adoption of nuclear power. These include safeguards against nuclear weapons proliferation, economic competitiveness and ‘heightened fears of terrorism’. In particular he noted the following:

“Another consideration is the energy payback time for nuclear reactors. The large materials investment in the building of a nuclear power station, such as in concrete and steel, requires large energy input. This leads to what are called ‘embedded emissions’. Thus the pay-back time before there is any net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, may be several decades for each reactor, and longer if hundreds of reactors are to be built over the next fifty years.”(p.173)

For those concerned about the ‘climate emergency’ and those getting on in years like myself ‘fifty years’ is far too long. Nor can we wait for the ‘holy grail’ breakthrough to safe and abundant ‘fusion’ energy. The answer must be the rapid adoption of renewable energy and in particular solar – safe, dependable and installable now.

 

 

The following is a brief submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Resilience of Energy Infrastructure in a Warming World.

I write in support of localised power generation, micro-grids, battery storage and the need for concerted action on climate change. Between 1982 and 2012 I lived in a house with a stand-alone power system. Initially this system was powered by a reconditioned wind-lite generator which was eventually replaced by solar panels. The storage was composed of heavy, expensive, deep cycle lead acid batteries.  Almost all of the materials used in this system have been obsolete for some time, although as far as I am aware it is still functioning. The recent advances in solar and battery design and their reduction in cost is nothing short of miraculous.

Since moving to a retirement unit in town 4 kilowatts of solar panels were put on a roof reconditioned with reflective paint. Initially it was planned to use gas for cooking and hot water but it was decided to remain an all-electric house adopting energy efficient practices where possible and when affordable. These included electric heater to reverse cycle air con, electric hot water to heat pump and electric stove to induction cooktop. Now that our solar subsidy is gone we plan to purchase a substantial battery coupled with software to maximise the return on energy sold to the grid.

I have always been a strong supporter of decentralised power and renewable energy, but since 2008 almost entirely motivated by the climate emergency we appear to be in. It is apparent now that our current climate extremes are performing closely to the predictions of the CSIRO and others in the late 80s. There is a pressing need for global emissions of greenhouse gases to be stabilised and then eventually reduced to something approaching pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide. The first major step in this process is the replacement of all fossil fuel energy sources, including gas, with clean renewable energy. These include wind, solar and battery storage with other possibilities including tidal, wave, pumped hydro and geothermal in a decentralised system with micro grids.

There are only four possibilities with regards climate change – that it is happening or not and we either act or do nothing. Since scientific evidence is overwhelming that it is happening this leaves us with just two options. Of these “do nothing” is the path to catastrophic consequences. To paraphrase the noted barrister Julian Burnside “If we can’t fix climate nothing else matters”.

 

Was the news last week about the threatened closure of the Heyfield timber mill real? The media release from company was obviously designed to pressure the State government to secure future timber supplies. However our native forests as a natural resource cannot be continually mined – even in a world free from the pressures of climate change nothing lasts forever. It is clear our forests have been over-logged. The days of a single monster log on a timber truck are already a distant past. How can governments guarantee something that is not there? The company is now pressing for a guaranteed supply of timber – almost the same as guaranteeing profit – and holding over the government the threat of 250 job losses.

Work has always been important anywhere in the bush. 250 jobs is a big number and the potential loss of employment is always a big news story. But as an industry in decline timber milling has been losing jobs for some time. The Heyfield company got some of its logging concessions over the last 30 years by buying up small timber mills in the region including Ensay North, Bruthen and Benambra and then closing them down. In each of these instances not only the workers but the small towns suffered.

The problem with logging is that it is a carbon intensive operation and it is becoming increasingly obvious that all native forests should be preserved and protected! The jobs now in the industry should be transferred to those doing the protecting and necessarily be employed by the state. Climate change means that all this should happen as soon as possible. The forests are far more valuable as they stand. Timber must be now be sourced from plantations. Any retrenched worker should receive a decent redundancy package with the prospect of employment in the forest protection industry.

Occasionally proposals are made to prop up the logging industry by using biomass from state forests and falsely promoting the energy from such operations as renewable. There is also research indicating logging may be increasing the severity of bushfires. Both these issues are clearly related to climate change on which I will blog at a later date.

Part of the answer to the question of jobs and forests should be to place a value on the stored carbon in our native forests on both state and private land and to protect that store as much as possible. Another part must be employing workers to protect that store. Two of the major employers in Gippsland – the timber industry and brown coal – are in structural decline. This decline will be accelerated as the need to act on climate change becomes more urgent.

Unpublished Letter to the Age

Dear Sir,

Thanks for your front page headline today outlining the true cost of brown coal operations and the cost of rehabilitating the Hazelwood mine and power station (Age 20.1). However your article made no mention of possible savings off this rather exorbitant bill by adopting solutions that make use of the Latrobe Valley and the Hazelwood mine infrastructure.

Elsewhere the Hazelwood owner Engie has been advertising for expressions of interest for the development of large scale solar pv stations. They could start with one of the proposals to line the Hazelwood pit walls with solar cells and other appropriate localities in the district.

Instead of filling the open cut with expensive water from the Morwell River they might prefer to examine the opportunities for a pumped hydro plant exploiting the height difference between the pit bottom and the Hazelwood pondage (or some other nearby source) as suggested by the University of Melbourne Energy Institute.

They may also prefer to spend some of the funds saved from shelving their lake proposal on creating a pilot geothermal plant exploiting the warm rocks beneath the blanket of coal such as was proposed by the defeated ALP candidate for Morwell in the 2010 State Election.

Finally the power station should be left as is, with minimal disturbance, saving some $300 million at least. Perhaps it could be used to house flywheels to help balance the power load as renewable energy moves towards 100% of our power supply. Another suggestion is that it becomes a museum to the Age of Brown Coal – one that drove the state’s economy for a century but is now an albatross around our necks.

All this requires foresight, co-operation, agreement and certain amount of dedication between the interested parties – Engie, the State government, the Union and the local community. We can only hope that common sense prevails and that a ‘just transition’ occurs in the valley over the next 20 years.

 

 

There are many parts of the earth we cannot live on without artificial support including the oceans, the poles, mountaintops and deserts. In a recent blog I suggested that many parts of the now inhabited earth areas will be made uninhabitable when the wet bulb temperature approaches 35 degrees (see below). The wet bulb temperature is explained here.

In a paper  published in 2010 Steven Sherwood of the University of NSW, stated: “prolonged wet-bulb temperatures above 95 degrees (Fahrenheit) would be intolerable after a matter of hours…The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan… Although we are very unlikely to reach such temperatures this century, they could happen in the next…Wet-bulb temperature estimates provide upper limits on the ability of people to cool themselves by sweating and otherwise dissipating this heat. In order for the heat dissipation process to work, the surrounding air must be cooler than the skin, which must be cooler than the core body temperature. The cooler skin is then able to absorb excess heat from the core and release it into the environment. If the wet-bulb temperature is warmer than the temperature of the skin, metabolic heat cannot be released and potentially dangerous overheating can ensue depending on the magnitude and duration of the heat stress.”

Sherwood’s reference that we were unlikely to reach wet bulb temperatures until next century may have been referring to large areas being made uninhabitable by this process. But in May 2016 Robert Scribbler reported that in places near the India Pakistan border the dry bulb temperatures topped 50 degrees and nearer the coast approached the crucial wet bulb temperature of 35 degrees. These temperatures caused a substantial number of heat stress casualties and fatalities across northern India. Pakistan had similar high wet bulb temperatures in 2015 with similar outcomes.

Approximately 40% of earth’s population – more than 3 billion people – live in the tropics. Likewise about one third of Australia lies within this highly vulnerable area. With each degree climate change warms the earth there is 7% more moisture in the atmosphere. Those areas where highest wet bulb temps have so far been recorded are in the tropics or adjacent to it. A worst-case scenario map (above) by Huber accompanied the Sherwood article.

There is a problem in examining this aspect of warming in isolation and not allowing for all the other climate induced changes happening simultaneously including sea level rise, heatwaves, population movements, crop failures, droughts and many other, some as yet unrecognised, consequences. In the worst-case scenario the Australian continent, including Gippsland, becomes uninhabitable. Meanwhile there is currently a push for a new coal fired power generator in the Valley. That is a sign of madness.

Our governments, both State and Federal, are persisting with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects despite the fact that any use of coal, especially brown coal, is moribund in a world of worsening climate change. The latest proposal is to burn and turn brown coal into hydrogen and ship it to Japan.  This is another attempt by government, in a long drawn out saga, to save the dying brown coal industry. It illustrates that governments – both politicians and bureaucrats – either do not take the threat of climate change seriously and/or do not understand the basic science.

Another local project of this kind is CarbonNet which has been around since 2009. It is supported by Canberra and Spring St, promoted by the Earth Resources department, and is a continuing exercise in another futile attempt at CCS. The (feasibility?) project involves capturing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from the Valley generators, compressing it into a liquid, transporting this liquid offshore and injecting it deep underground in the Gippsland basin. There are a large number of problems with a project of this nature including the fact that the actual capture of the CO2 is inefficient so a substantial proportion of the greenhouse gas is still emitted to the atmosphere. Also a substantial amount of extra energy is required to capture, compress, and transport it. Almost certainly it fails any economic criteria but most of all any power generators in this scenario will still emit large amounts of CO2.

The coal to hydrogen proposal is another attempt at CCS which governments have been throwing money at for a long time without any tangible result. To satisfy any credible climate change criteria the process involved should be CO2 neutral. As far as I am aware there is no brown coal use that satisfies this criteria with one or possibly 2 exceptions – using the coal as a fertiliser and burning it in pyrolysis generators. With regards the latter one assumes that the scientists and engineers have examined this option in detail and found it was not feasible. In theory at least the pyrolysis process should be carbon negative. Financially supporting CarbonNet (and the current hydrogen proposals?) by governments is an example of ‘good money after bad’ showing our taxpayer funds at work in another ‘dead end’.

The Latrobe Valley is approaching a critical period. Hazelwood will soon be closing. Governments are funding the unnecessary (CCS) and the absurd (see Hazelwood Barramundi ) and appear paralysed to act in any meaningful way. On top of this it now appears that there may be labour problems at Loy Yang. Where, oh where, is the ‘just transition’, or even a modicum of fairness in the treatment of ordinary people?

 

 

A copy of Climate Change: what everybody needs to know (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2016) by Joe Romm has recently been purchased by the East Gippsland Shire Library. The book is a basic primer on climate change for the general public and is recommended. It is structured around ninety-seven questions divided into 7 chapters and a Preface.

The chapters include Climate Science Basics, Extreme Weather and Climate Change, The Role of Clean Energy and Climate Change and You. The Preface begins with the question ‘Why you need to know about climate Change?’ and after dealing with it in some depth concludes “In the coming years, climate change will become a bigger and bigger part of our lives. It is literally the story of the century, and, for better or worse, you and everyone you know will increasingly become part of that story. Here is what you and your family need to know to navigate your future.” (xxi)

The Climate Science Basics chapter commences with the obligatory ‘What is the greenhouse effect and how does it warm the earth?’ and includes “How does deforestation contribute to warming?” and “Why does the rate of warming appear to vary from decade to decade?” The answers are succinct – seldom more than a page or two long and are sometimes illustrated with graphs or maps.

Much of the material I am familiar with but the chapter on Extreme Weather and Climate Change is of personal interest as it is this aspect that is affecting us now. Questions such as “What is the difference between weather and climate?”, “In a warming world why do some winters seem unusually severe?”, “How does climate change affect heatwaves?” and “How does climate change affect wildfires?” are all relevant and applicable to Gippsland today.

Romm concludes with the question “Do we still have time to preserve a liveable climate?” and is relatively optimistic (though perhaps now less so with the election of Donald Trump after publication) about humanity’s ability to solve the problem. I have refrained from quoting Romm’s answers to the questions and you will have to borrow or buy the book to do so. If the latter it will be money well spent. This book will be particularly helpful to any of those local journos who after an unseasonal fall of snow or a few cold days think climate change is, in the words of a recent prime minister, crap!

*Joe Romm has PhD in physics and has been a regular writer and blogger on climate change for many years. His blog is published regularly here.