Tag: methane

ScoMo’s Climate Plan to Save the Planet

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Image: twitter@GeorgeBludger, reposted from 2018 because it is so clever.

It occurred to me, having just volunteered to work for three different community groups, that what I need, apart from worrying about the Australian government’s failed policies on Covid, climate change and refugees, not to mention bushfire risk mitigation, is a Plan.

I use the capital letter deliberately as it seems that is what our peerless leader, Scotty from Marketing, wants us to do. His Plan (well, actually it’s not his Plan) should be called a Process because after all, that is what the National Party agreed to support. As we know, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and his country party cohorts emerged from days of climate talks to announce with fanfare great that it had ‘agreed to support a process’ to meet the government’s bare minimum target of zero net emissions by 2050.

Australia’s emissions are still among the highest in the world on a per capita basis, well behind similar developed countries.

At the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this week, PM Scott Morrison somehow wangled his way into the discussions. It’s not that long ago (December 2020), that he was snubbed by a United Nations climate conference in London hosted by the UK and France.

British PM Boris Johnson had invited Morrison to speak at the December 12 summit but reneged. Selwin Hart, the special adviser to UN Secretary-General António Guterres on climate action, said at the time Australia had ‘not met the threshold needed to speak’.

But given a platform at COP26 (after pledging to meet zero net emissions by 2050), Morrison gave an optimistic speech, claiming that Australia’s emissions could fall by 35% by 2030. Greens leader Adam Bandt described the speech as ‘cringeworthy’, saying it contradicted statements made in Australia. The national climate plan (NDC) merely reaffirmed the formal 2030 target of 26-28% set by former PM Tony Abbott, he said.

“Australia is also siding with Russia and China to block global action on the climate crisis, refusing to phase out coal and gas, the leading causes of global heating,” he added.

The Guardian said Morrison’s 2050 plan lacked modelling, with almost a third of the abatement task comprised of cuts via unspecified “technology breakthroughs” and “global trends”, while a further 20% will be achieved through offsets.

To be fair, Morrison has been thwarted by climate change resistance from his Coalition partner, the National Party. The Plan may or may not be influenced by trade-offs demanded by the Nationals (which has a rural support base), regarding the issue of methane emissions.

Michelle Grattan wrote in The Conversation that Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor had rejected the US push for a 30% reduction of methane emissions by 2030.

For city folk, methane is a global warming gas produced by cows burping and farting. Morrison backed his Minister, saying the government never had any intention of agreeing to the (methane) reduction.

Veteran finance commentator Alan Kohler has had a bit to say about climate change and the urgent need to keep temperature increases below 1.5 degrees celsius. As he wrote in The New Daily a few months ago, precise risk analysis of global warming is difficult because ‘feedback loop tipping points’ are unknown and unpredictable.

“It’s known that with 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming, the combination of permafrost melt in Siberia, wildfires in the world’s forests and warming of the ocean will release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“(This) means a feedback loop could take the temperature to 2.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures – and perhaps beyond – no matter what we do.”

Kohler is good value, in that he often exposes seemingly turgid reports that no-one else has looked at and translates them into plain English.

For example, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) issued a draft prudential practice guide on climate change which included 4 degrees of warming as one of its two “scenarios” for banks to use in their future planning.

“A 4 degree rise in the average global temperature would make large parts of the planet uninhabitable and lead to the total collapse of the banking system. No need for any planning,” Kohler commented.

“The other APRA scenario was for 2 degrees of warming or less, consistent with the Paris Agreement of December 2015, which should happen if all countries meet their Paris pledges (which they haven’t).”

Successive Australian governments have been terrified about drafting tough new laws to support carbon reduction. This is a country which cleared vast swathes of forest and scrub to establish pastoral land and open-cut coal mines. We have allowed fracking, built a vast network of gas pipelines, supported offshore oil drilling and relied on coal-fired power stations for much of our energy.

We also export millions of tonnes of coal to countries which have dirtier power stations than ours. We have exacerbated the global crisis rather than mitigating the effects of carbon emissions.

We here at FOMM HQ reckon we have been hearing about climate change, greenhouse gases and global warming since we became conservationists in the 1960s. She Who Taught Geography says she was aware of it when studying at university in the late 60s. We were called ‘tree huggers’ then and probably still would be now, despite knowing what we know.

So here in Australia, 50 years later, we are still in rampant denial about what rising carbon dioxide levels have done to the planet.

It’s no new thing. Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted in 1896 that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the planet’s ground temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth’s atmosphere to global warming.

By the 1990s, a consensus emerged among scientists that greenhouse gases were deeply involved in most climate changes and human-caused emissions were bringing discernible global warming.

Unhappily, many people are climate change deniers. Just like those who subscribe to Covid-19 vaccine conspiracies, they defy the majority opinion of the world’s scientists.

Perhaps they were not paying attention when some of the world’s biggest fund managers started selling off their fossil fuel investments circa 2016. The latest local example of this was the State’s biggest investor, Queensland Investment Corporation, which manages State employees’ superannuation.

The topic of fossil fuels and divestment (selling oil, gas and coal stocks) was also debated at COP26. The pro-investment argument is that 80% of the world’s energy is still sourced from fossil fuel and a sudden rush for the turnstiles is unlikely.

Fossil fuel opponents understand how divestment can turn the tide quickly by shutting down fossil fuel ‘sponsorship’ (sometimes known as ‘greenwashing’).

Yet another conference, then, where world’s leaders (average age 60), left COP26 without doing anything meaningful.

The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin’s stark message this week is that from 1990 to 2020, the warming effect on our climate by long-lived greenhouse gases, increased by 47%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of the increase. The numbers are based on monitoring by the World Meteorological Organisation’s Global Atmosphere Watch network.  As WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas said: “We are way off track.”

If I make it to 2050, I can imagine 102-year-old me, spilling jelly and custard on my vintage Homer Simpson T shirt muttering: “Meh” (having been moved in a dinghy to a nursing home on high ground).

Unfortunately, ‘meh’ (shorthand for callous indifference), is the attitude of far too many people who won’t see 2050. They have all obviously forgotten climate activist Greta Thunberg’s fiery speech at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic,” she said. “I want you to feel the fear that I feel every day and I want you to act. Our house is burning.”

More reading: Seven years ago!!!

 

Bushfires, Methane and the Climate Crisis

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Nature’s resilience – regrowth in the fire-ravaged Cunningham’s Gap. Photo Laurel Wilson

You’d think those with an interest in promoting the climate crisis would have made more of James Murdoch quitting the family media business.

While there is much to be wary of when considering Murdoch Jnr’s defection, he did make it crystal clear that he and his wife Kathryn disagreed with News Corp’s climate agenda. The first real signs of family business friction emerged last year. James accused News Corp of promoting climate denialism during its coverage of last summer’s Australian bushfires.

University of Sydney professor Rodney Tiffen’s thorough examination of James Murdoch’s chequered history points out that it was James who first persuaded Rupert Murdoch (in 2006) to embrace the climate change cause. While Rupert soon drifted away, James remained committed. Tiffen makes a trenchant point, that Rupert’s conversion had little impact on the company’s journalism:

“Its upper editorial echelons contained a large number of climate denialists, and Rupert seems to have never made any effort to change their views.”

This is an interesting read if you want to be reminded of James Murdoch’s role in the UK phone hacking scandal and management of News Corp’s global satellite TV business.

Despite the claims about climate denialism within News Corp, its Australian flagship has kept up with the topic. You won’t be able to read about it unless you subscribe, but Erin Lyons filed a story on July 29 from a Senate inquiry headlined ‘Unequivocal link between extreme bushfires and climate crisis’.

I note with interest the use of language officially adopted by The Guardian to describe climate change as a ‘crisis’.

Lyons quoted Bureau of Meteorology chief executive Dr Andrew Johnson who said a rise in global emissions was driving up temperatures, which was likely to increase the risk of bushfires.

“Bushfires are starting earlier and ending later. There’s a climate signal in that,” he told the panel. “How that plays out in the future will very much depend on how humanity responds.”

Lyons followed up next day with a story about firefighters and bushfire survivors calling for the fossil fuel industry to pay for the damage.

Almost on cue, the weather map showed the first signs of an early bushfire season, with large swathes of central Western Australia painted red for danger. In southern California, not all that far as the crow flies, the northern summer’s first forest fire forced thousands to flee their homes south of Los Angeles. Here we go again: “There’s always been bush fires.” (Climate change deniers drag out last year’s talking points). No, it’s because of the dangerous build-up of methane in the atmosphere. (Ed: He said, interpreting science, which is a danged dangerous thing for a journalist to do).

The thing is, such is the media pre-occupation with COVID-19 and the risks to Australian (and global) economies, the topic of climate change barely gets a look in. Allow me to fill in the gaps and maybe do a bit of fact checking while I’m here.

My attention was dragged back to this subject when reading a four paragraph filler in The Guardian about methane. Animal farming and fossil fuels have driven levels of the greenhouse gas to the highest on record, it stated. The Guardian cited the Methane Budget study, published by Earth System Science Data, which stated that discharges of methane gas have risen about 9% on the 2000-2006 average, to 600 million tonnes a year.

It’s no easy task, quantifying methane emissions, which occur naturally in wetlands and inland water sources, but also from biofuel, waste, coal mining, oil and gas production and agriculture. A global team of more than 90 researchers from 70 institutions contributed to this latest update. Ironically (well, I think it’s ironic), melting permafrost contributes to the release of methane.

The increase of atmospheric methane is important, in that its global warming potential is estimated to be up to 34 times higher than CO2 (over 100 years). That’s why you will see large-scale industrial plants like oil refineries burning off methane (converting it to CO2). Besides, methane build-up within an industrial complex can be quite lethal because of its explosive nature. Major oil companies including Shell and Exxon made commitments several years ago to cut methane emissions by up to 15%. (I read that 2018 report in The Australian, while fruitlessly searching the database to see if it had published anything about the Methane Budget study). The most recent reports involving methane were to do with the explosion at the Moura coal mine.

As we were saying at the outset, James Murdoch’s resignation from the board of News Corp came with a statement in which he castigated the chairman (Dad) and the company over its climate change denialism. It’s not so much about bias as choosing which stories to cover (and when) .

While the Methane Budget study might be deemed by editors of mainstream tabloids to be ‘boring as batshit’, nevertheless its key findings were reported by outlets including the ABC, Washington Post, The Guardian, the Straits Times, Nature and quality monthlies that report on science. There is a good analysis by carbonbrief-org where the key points can be grasped by the lay person. Methane is often ignored in climate change discussions, despite having a more deleterious effect than CO2 (more carbon per molecule) – thanks Dr John.

One thing I missed on the first read through was that South East Asia and Oceania were in the top three regions for recording increased methane emissions. Global methane emissions were 1875 parts per billion at the end of 2019 – two and a half times higher than pre-industrial levels.

Why this topic caught my attention was an awareness, given a wetter winter than usual (building up fuel loads), that we could be heading into an early bushfire season. This was the case in 2019, with the first reports of serious bushfires alerts emerging in early August.

Those engaged in fire fighting know why bushfires are getting earlier and nastier. A report by volunteer firefighters published in the University of Melbourne’s Voice magazine in early 2015 flagged a few warnings about bush fire prevention. It also cited the role of bushfires in escalating the release of methane and CO2 into the atmosphere.

The study authors found that levels of carbon and greenhouse gases released in Eucalypt wildfires could be reduced by fuel reduction burning, or planned burns conducted prior to the bushfire season in high risk forests.

“The results of these actions could inform land management decisions as well as government policy regarding planned burning. Also, it could enable more accurate estimations of the contribution that bushfires make to Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.”

As we head into the spring of 2020, I can but offer this insight on the left and right of politics, still bickering about hazard reduction burning (and whether it works or not). What was that about Rome burning?

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