Gippsland Climate News

I have written about Inverloch artist Ray Dahlstrom’s work before.  For the last 10 years this work has highlighted the problems of climate change, acid oceans and other aspects associated with mankind’s burning of fossil fuels. The different series are progressively entitled ‘Black Saturday’ (Ray’s family were burnt out at Steeles Creek in 2009), ‘Your Carbon Footprint’, ‘Acid Ocean’ and recently Ray has embarked on a ‘Climate Change’ series, an example of which is the image above.

The works vary from landscape style to abstract. The ‘Black Saturday’ paintings tend to the former whilst the new series can be described as abstract. The ‘acid ocean’ paintings are semi-abstract. They depict the skeletons of dead fish being replaced by jellyfish in a dark, sombre range of blue green colours. This series was part of his show entitled ‘Jellyfish and Chips’ held in Prahran a few years ago, and culminates in his painting ‘Mendusozoa Mayhem’ where the sea is depicted as crowded with a horrible swarm of jellyfish. Whilst some aspects of the series may not be scientifically accurate they certainly convey the mood of a dark future for us if we continue the era of fossil fuels for much longer.

The ‘Carbon Footprint’ series generally have images of symbolic burning or burnt leaf embers, outlines of footprints or a mixture of both. I have a Dahlstrom original from this series on my lounge room wall on which Ray has inscribed “your responsibility, your carbon footprint”. The almost obligatory footprint outlines are there, with an added touch of carbon with charcoal being added in parts, on a colour background suggestive of fire and smoke.

His website promotion states that “In recent times, Ray’s work has been affected by the dramatic influences of climate change on the environment.” Ray notes: “My art should have something to say about the effect of climate change on the environment. It’s OK to create pretty pictures, but it’s more important to me now to get people thinking about the big issues which affect all of our futures.”  For his full story go here. For a slide show of selected paintings go here.

It is pleasing that one of the four completed works in the new series has already sold. The other pieces ‘Antarctic Melting’, ‘Red Dust Rising’ and ‘Capricorn Burning’ are all in a similar style. More power to his brush and progress in his task to get us thinking about the biggest issue mankind has ever faced.

 

 

As noted previously I have been a renewable energy fan for most of my life. As part of that interest I joined the Alternative Technology Association (ATA) in the early 1980s when I first installed a ‘stand-alone’ wind powered system at my home. I have remained a member (with a few missing years in the late eighties and/or the early nineties when I was broke) since then. As I was living in a remote location the most important aspect of the ATA then and now, was their quarterly journal/magazine ReNew (originally called Soft Technology).

For approaching 40 years this journal has been both my main resource and inspiration. With wide ranging topics on all aspects of renewable energy, energy efficiency and stories of what others are doing across Australia. ReNew has regular columns on letters, new products, recent news and occasional book reviews. My favourite column is by well-known commentator Alan Pears who in each issue offers sage advice on a multitude of related topics from energy efficiency to climate change. If only the pollies would listen.

The current issue (No.142) has a solar panel price guide, some DIY advice for renters including constructing cheap and easy curtain pelmets, using the sun for heating and improving grid stability with the use of renewables. There is also an article on achieving 100% renewables by 2030, a subject I hope to write a separate blog on in the near future. Also of great assistance was the recent issue on batteries (No.141) which is guiding me in a major, near future, purchase.

The renewable energy revolution has been a long time coming. When building my house in 1980 I opted for a wind generator system as the price of solar panels was then prohibitive. My first solar panels (2 X 30w) installed in 1986 were still very pricey.  At this time I naively believed that in 10 years solar panels would be so cheap I could cover the roof with them. In this case I was a little premature (by 30 years) but that moment has now arrived.

Of recent years I have discovered that a close friend and a contributor to ReNew John Hermans of Clifton Creek  is also a long term member of the ATA. John has been a strong advocate of renewable energy long before the need for replacing our fossil fuel energy and transport became obvious with the threat of climate change. It should be remembered that renewable energy is not the complete global warming solution as after we have stopped burning fossil fuels we still need to draw down the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to suitable levels. But it is a good start. So is ATA membership and a subscription to ReNew.

 

I have not left the ‘Bay’ out of the header, as in Venus Bay (named in 1798 after the ‘evening star’ by George Bass) in South Gippsland. I am referring to the companion planet of Earth, sometimes also called the ‘morning star’ that has, because of its size, an atmosphere and a greenhouse effect. In fact Venus has experienced a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ where the average temperature of the planet is over 400 degrees C where solids or earth such as lead are in liquid form and the planet’s atmosphere is mainly composed of carbon dioxide – identified as the main greenhouse gas on Earth.

Recently I tweeted a brief review of episode 2 of Stephen Hawking’s Favourite Places. The review noted:

“NASA explains that for up to 2 billion years of its early history, Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures. However, due to its position to the sun, the planet’s water eventually evaporated. With no water left on its surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere and led to a runaway greenhouse effect that created Venus’ present hellish conditions” and “‘This is what happens when greenhouse gases are out of control’, Hawking said, implying that our own planet could also meet the same fiery fate. He then [amusingly] quipped, ‘Next time you meet a climate-change denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus; I will pay the fare.’”

The atmosphere of Venus was the subject of early study by James Hansen who has often been called the ‘father of climate science’. Hansen applied his models of the Venutian atmosphere to Earth and has been warning of the threat of global warming since 1988. Amongst his many other achievements he is the author of Storms of My Grandchildren (Bloomsbury, 2009) is a founder of Citizens Climate Lobby and  advocate of the ‘fee and dividend’  alternative to the carbon tax.

Whilst the planet most Gippslanders can see in the early mornings and evenings is otherwise seemingly remote its importance in this context is that it verifies the science of the greenhouse effect and shows why it is necessary to act to curb our carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible. It is another way of looking at the greenhouse effect that I have not described before.

 

Basically demand response is the act of responding to fluctuations in energy demand in relation to the supply of power over brief periods of time. Currently this is almost exclusively either related to disruption in the conventional power system where supply drops for some reason or there are extremely hot summer afternoons where power consumption soars when we all turn on our air-cons. The conventional power source is unable to supply this extra electricity causing or threatening black-outs in some areas. By paying a sufficient number of consumers to stop consuming power, supply and demand can be balanced and grid operations maintained without disruptions.

An example of this was recently carried out with our power supplier Powershop called “Curb Your Power”  and this is how it worked. Firstly we accepted an invitation from them to participate in their demand response program. They then contacted us by text about one hour previous to requiring us to reduce our energy consumption by at least one third between the hours of 3.30 to 5.30pm. Before 3.30pm I wandered around our unit turning off all the unnecessary power consumers including the major one – the air con – but left 2 ceiling fans running as it was quite warm. Other power consuming actions such as cooking and clothes washing were deferred. A few days later the retailer rewarded us, and all other participants, with $10 on our account and conducted a survey to find out how we responded.

It later transpired that there was a power outage in the Lindenow area stretching across to places north of Bairnsdale – in this case over 1000 customers were blacked out – although the cause of this is not known. However we were experiencing hot weather and both our fans and air con were in operation when the request to reduce power consumption was received.

The demand response (sometimes called ‘negawatts’) process is simple. Sign up to a demand response program with your retailer and supply contact details to them. Then reduce your power consumption by a significant amount at the time and for the duration they request. Assuming this was successful your account will later be credited.

Almost certainly this was a trial run for our retailer as well. The next step is a refinement of smart meters (plus some computer software?) to calculate exactly how much power was reduced so that participants can be rewarded for that amount. Home batteries can extend this by selling power for an appropriate tariff when demand is high and buying it when the price is low or negligible thus helping to balance the system. This is a story I hope to elaborate on when we eventually have our battery installed.

 

The current opinions and priorities of Gippslanders are clearly shown by the Sustainability Victoria commissioned opinion poll on climate change in our region. The priorities from the top are public health 62%; jobs 62%; cost of living 55%; roads & transp. 50%; education 48% with climate change a lowly 21% languishing at the bottom!

A Sustainability Victoria employee described the survey as “the social research is far beyond an opinion poll.  It is robust enough for results to be utilised in scientific literature. It is independent delivered with a sample size significant enough for the results to represent the wider population, and representative of all demographics (gender, age, education level, income, etc.).” We conclude that the poll is reliable and that few Gippslanders realise all these aspects of our lives are affected in some way by human caused climate change.

Some of these aspects already threaten our way of lives or, in other words, are a public health matter. Extreme weather effects our health, whether it is the heat stress of heatwaves or the physical threat of bushfires and floods to our lives and property. Farmers during periods of extended dry face mental stress as do other workers whose jobs are put at risk by the clean energy disruption. These are but a few examples of climate change’s direct or indirect effects on public health problems.

On the up side there are numerous reasons why we should rapidly change from dirty to clean energy. The Morwell open cut fire for instance was responsible for more fatalities than those caused by all the terrorist acts in Australia in over a century. The major industries, and thus employers, in the Gippsland region – logging and fossil fuel – are all operating on borrowed time. Others aspects such as jobs are being eroded by the disrupting solutions to climate change. Renewable Energy is a job boom area but jobs appear to be leaving the Latrobe Valley for elsewhere.

With regards the other high polling priorities in the survey the cost of living is affected in many ways. A few examples include insurance going up to cope with the damage costs of extreme weather events and the creeping costs to us all of the privatised (and heat stressed) power industry. With roads and transport climate change means fossil fuel transport must be phased out and replaced by improved public transport, electric vehicles and eventually autonomous or self-driving cars. And it is the apparent lack (or inadequacy) of science and logic in our education system that means the connection between climate change and all aspects of our lives is not made.

The alternatives to acting on climate change are stark. Supporting or voting for the reaction perhaps may defer the inevitable – the end of coal fired generation and the logging industry – for a year or two. But in doing so, many of the opportunities that accompany the disruptive change will be lost. I hope to examine these aspects of public opinion in Gippsland in more detail at a later date.

Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) recently released a fact sheet on bushfires and health in Australia. The following are excerpts from that publication relevant to all Gippsanders. Note for references go to the original.

“Extreme fire weather has increased in Australia over the last 30 years. Our fire-prone continent is at particular risk from the impacts of climate change, and we are experiencing more extreme heat events, an increase in severe fire danger days and a longer fire season…The south-east and south-west of the country is especially vulnerable to bush fires. Modelling of weather projections across these areas show increasingly hot and dry conditions for longer periods over the coming decades.

Destructive fires generally occur when a period of hot dry weather with strong winds follows a season of high rainfall that has created a large fuel load. Accidental ignition, lightning or arson can start a fire which spreads rapidly, becomes fast moving and difficult to control. The health impacts of bushfires can be severe and long lasting, but can be reduced through bushfire prevention, preparation and education…

“Bushfires can have profound and devastating consequences. They can also place significant pressure on communities that will only worsen with climate change.

“Climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of bushfires in Australia, exposing more people, especially the most vulnerable, to sickness and death. There will be increasing demands on our communities, fire-fighting resources and health services.  An urgent response is required to protect communities and human health…

“People exposed to radiant heat while fighting fires are vulnerable to heat stress from very hot and dry conditions, potentially compounded by the necessary use of heavy protective clothing. Heat stress occurs when the body is unable to reduce its temperature adequately. Heat related illness can be mild to severe. Early signs of heat stress may include dizziness, weakness or fatigue. More severe illness may progress to include confusion, altered behaviour, hot dry skin, vomiting or rapid breathing. The most severe form of heat stress is heat stroke, which can be fatal.

“Doctors for the Environment Australia calls for: • Urgent action to mitigate climate change, by reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including our usage and reliance on fossil fuels. Australia’s GHG   mitigation policies are currently inadequate to limit warming to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and need to be revised. • A nationally coordinated approach to the health impacts of climate change, including preventing and managing the health impacts of bushfires.  This could include strengthening community and health care capacity to cope with bushfires, including improved education and training of health care workers, and raising public awareness of the acute and long-term health effects of bushfire smoke. • For those affected by bushfires, recovery plans and adequate funding should be put in place to cope with long- term health effects.

At a recent ‘do’ at the East Gippsland Art Gallery I was discussing climate change (as is my want) with an acquaintance. I was telling him about the recent survey done for Sustainability Victoria and how a substantial proportion of Gippslanders, at least in part, attributed climate change to natural causes. “Isn’t it all volcanoes?” he asked leaving me momentarily flabbergasted. “No” I assured him “the contribution of volcanoes is insignificant”, and picking a number out of the air “less than 5%”. On later checking a reliable source I found that the human contribution of CO2 was 100 times more than volcanoes.

The source of this myth is not hard to find. In our local library are 2 copies of climate change denier, geology professor and mining company director Ian Plimer’s Heaven + Earth. Plimer has constructed a detailed tome arguing that all warming is natural, and paradoxically that the planet is not warming. (Apparently Plimer made a bet that 2015 would not be a warmer year than 2008. He lost a paltry £1000 on this matter.) He also downplays the role of the greenhouse effect confusing us with arguments about the carbon cycle. Volcanic emissions, for instance, are part of the natural carbon cycle.

The arguments made by Plimer are debunked by Prof. Ian Enting in detail here. Enting noted that Plimer’s claims of undersea super volcanoes were not supported by evidence gathered by the American Geological Survey. His damning critique includes claims of plagiarism, ‘cherry picking’ of evidence, misrepresentations and ‘numerous internal inconsistencies’. Perhaps our library should also carry a copy of Enting’s Twisted: the distorted mathematics of greenhouse denial.

I am reminded of the apt quotation of Walter Scott “O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”.  As a director of three “mining companies ultimately owned by Gina Rinehart” it can be seen that Plimer is an intellectual propagandist of these vested interests. Of most interest to us is Lakes Oil – a company wanting to exploit CSG and use the fracking process in onshore Gippsland.

 

(published Bairnsdale Advertiser 17.11)

I wish to reply to Mr. Douglas McKeown’s November 10 letter to the Bairnsdale Advertiser denying the scientific wisdom of carbon emissions impacting climate change. This denial is almost understandable given the strident misinformation and the wilful discrediting of science peddled by vested interest groups of all hues in this country and around the world.

Who are [some of] the cheer leaders and champions of this misinformation? Donald Trump …has pulled the US out of the ‘Paris Accord’ but the separate states are going their own way developing a renewable energy structure…big business in the US and here are normally dedicated to survival and profit. They have enough future vision to…[support] Renewable Energy…

Ex PM, Tony Abbott…referred to man-made climate change science as crap. But Tony Abbott is an acknowledged wrecker of ideas who, by his own admission, [has been] a bit loose with the truth in order to gain a vote or two. He leads a far right ‘we know better’ faction who are committed to mining and the use of fossil fuels with little regard for the consequences to our future generations. Ex One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts…from a mining background [is another]…

Mr. McKeown’s assertion that climate scientific studies are out of man’s control…[is] another piece of misinformation. 97% of scientists believe…the climate science…  As part of studying climate to perfect forecasting for the benefit of agricultural industries, the fishing industry or flight matters the Bureau of Meteorology has for many years carried out upper atmospheric sampling and research…But, the BOM is not the only climate research institution around…

The vision of the Global Monitoring Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration based in Denver Colorado states that a society that has access to and uses the best possible information on atmospheric constituents that drive climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and baseline air quality.

With the use of balloons, aircraft and land-based observatories these scientists study the presence of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, CFC’s, hydrocarbons, sulphur gases, aerosols and solar and infrared radiation. The scientists are aware of what they call the Carbon Cycle whereby the carbon circulates between the upper atmosphere, the terrestrial biosphere, (our land), and harmful absorption into the ocean…

Isotopes are the key in differentiating between naturally occurring carbon dioxide and human induced CO2. All the other gases referred to above are man-made. However, each form of carbon has its own isotopic fingerprint and although they are the same element, they both have a different mass. I would have thought that this information constituted ’empirical evidence’ but there we go.

The master scriptwriter may have laid out a beautiful plot which I am sure includes enough evidence that allows us to exercise an open mind. I am also sure if there was a reasonable scriptwriter he would not have plotted in the systematic fouling of this beautiful nest we call the Earth.

 Wet Bulb Temperatures and an Uninhabitable Earth.

By far the most popular blog of the year attracting substantial International attention. At wet bulb temperatures (when high temperatures and high humidity combine) in the high 20s unprotected humans start dying. At 35 degrees wet bulb no human can survive more than a few hours without artificial cooling. We are already well on track to make large parts of the earth uninhabitable.

The recent survey commissioned by Sustainability Victoria came up with the startling statistic that more than 70% of Gippslanders consider that climate change is at least partly the result of natural causes. More so 11% think the warming is entirely natural. Locally, East Gippsland Shire Councillor Ben Buckley has espoused this cause for some time. But it is a recipe for inaction and both Ben and the majority of Gippslanders are in this instance wrong.

The evidence for global warming is overwhelming. A recent US government report measured 9 different indicators of this including warming oceans, land and sea surface temperatures and sea level rise. The evidence in turn came from 28 different databases. See here. This warming is directly the response of humanity burning fossil fuels on an increasingly grand scale since the industrial revolution.

How do we know this? The basic physics of the greenhouse effect tells us that if we increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere the planet will warm. The steady increase of these gases has been measured for more than 50 years. Testing of the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere indicates combustion of fossil fuel origin – verifying the obvious.

Could the basic physics be wrong? Most unlikely. The theory of the greenhouse effect is approaching 200 years of age. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increasing the planet’s temperature (scientists use the term ‘climate forcing’) has been known for 120 years. The greenhouse effect has stood the test of time.

Natural change implies that the planet is heating up from increased radiation from the sun, either by increased activity in the sun or by some small alteration in the earth’s inclination or rotation. It should be mentioned that the warming (or cooling) engendered by these natural changes takes place over long periods – in geological time. The warming we are currently experiencing by comparison is taking place in an instant on this time scale.

Satellite measurements prove that extra radiation from the sun is not the cause of our current global warming. If the source of the extra energy was from the sun the upper atmosphere (Stratosphere) should be warming. In fact it is cooling. As the graph above indicates the energy from the sun has shown a slight cooling this century. The conclusion from this is that planet should be cooling. More details on this can be found here.

The message is clear. Climate change is a threat to human existence. It is a threat we have caused ourselves. We must therefore act now on as many fronts as possible. In Gippsland that initially means a rapid (and just) transition from coal fired power plants and destructive logging to renewable energy and other sustainable practices.