Most of government's Direct Action budget goes on trees

Questions have been raised about the
 government's long-term
commitment to the emissions reduction fund.

More than half a billion dollars has been spent in the latest auction under the Turnbull government's Direct Action climate change plan, with the vast majority of the money committed to tree projects.

The results mean that about two-thirds of the $2.55 billion set aside under the government's climate change policy to pay farmers and business to cut greenhouse gas emissions has now been handed out.

In the third auction of the emissions reduction fund – a central plank of the Direct Action scheme – about 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide savings were bought from 73 projects at an average price of $10.23 a tonne.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Turnbull government's latest Direct Action climate auction spends up big on trees.”

(Boosting the world’s tree stock in a bid to counter climate change is legitimate, but it is a tiny part of the overall need if the world is to respond to this dilemma in a constructive way.

Trees are important, rather critical, but they are a simplistic and ultimately a small contributor to what is needed if the world community is to make any serious inroads on counteracting climate change.

Trees have a feel-good sense about them in that they are emotive and conveniently avoid the need for governments to make any serious governance decisions that will impact on peoples’ lifestyles. We need more than action on trees – Robert McLean.)

Great Barrier Reef suffers as ocean temperatures rise

Most of the Great Barrier Reef
has suffered bleaching.

Scientists surveying the mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef say only 7 per cent of Australia's environmental icon has been left untouched by the event.

The final results of plane and helicopter surveys by scientists involved in the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce has found that of the 911 reefs they observed, just 68 had escaped any sign of bleaching.

The severity of the bleaching is mixed across the barrier reef, with the northern stretches hit the hardest.

 Overall, severe bleaching of between 60 and 100 per cent of coral was recorded on 316 reefs, almost all of them in the northern half of the barrier reef. Reefs in central and southern regions of the 2300 kilometre Great Barrier Reef have experienced more moderate to mild affects.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - "The Great Barrier Reef: 93% hit by coral bleaching, surveys reveal.”

'Is this the end for The Great Barrier Reef?' asks Tom Arup

Tom Arup.

The Great Barrier Reef is often described as the largest living thing on the planet, but swimming over the coral reefs around Heron Island it is the little things that you notice.

Like the way the parrot fish gnaw at the bright coloured reefs for algae. Or how the fire coral shimmers in sunlight.

‘Bleaching does not necessarily lead to death. If water temperatures drop in time corals can start rebuilding their algae and recover within months.’

Heron Island has been lucky. It has been spared from the devastating mass coral bleaching unfolding elsewhere on the reef.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age -  “Is this the end of the Great Barrier Reef?”

Bushfire incidence in Australia is on the rise.

Bushfire incidence in Australia is on the rise.

The number of bushfires in Australia is on the rise - up 40 per cent since 2007 - local scientists have found.

In a new research paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, scientists from CSIRO and University of Tasmania also say the increasing bushfire frequency indicates a major climatic shift - though the research does not directly ascribe the rise to human-caused global warming.

The research team studied NASA satellite data from 2007 to 2013 to determine the number of bushfires, to try and develop a system to forecast where they might breakout.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Australian bushfires on the rise, new research finds.”

Analysis shows Australia's greenhouse gases will continue to rise beyond 2020

Australia's national greenhouse gas emissions are set to keep rising well beyond 2020 on current trends, with the projected growth rate one of the worst in the developed world, a new analysis has found.

An assessment of recent government emissions data, carried out by the carbon consultancy firm RepuTex, says that in the 2014-15 financial year Australia's carbon pollution rose for the first time in almost a decade when compared to the previous year.

From there they say separate government forecasts, also released late last year, show Australia's emissions are on track for a further 6 per cent increase to 2020.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Australian emissions rising towards historical highs and will not peak before 2030, analysis finds.”

Australia under fire in Paris for its negotiating trickery

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ustralia is under fire at the Paris climate talks amid concern it is taking advantage of overly flexible rules to claim greenhouse gas emissions are falling when they are actually on the increase.

Alliance of Small
Island States.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull drew applause from fellow leaders at Monday's summit opening when he declared that Australia would ratify the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol - the existing climate treaty that applies to some industrialised countries only.

Australia is relying on its negotiating teams securing a definition of emissions that allows the country to count a reduction in deforestation towards its target.

However, delegates from a grouping called the Association of Small Island States expressed concern that the definition would in reality allow Australia to increase its industrial emissions by 2020 to about 11 per cent above 2000 levels while still being able to claim it is meeting its target of a 5 per cent cut in that period.

Read the story by Tom Arup and Peter Hannam in today’s Melbourne Age - “Paris UN Climate Conference 2015: Turnbull's Kyoto pledge generates angst.”

Scientists link extreme weather to climate change

S

cientists have linked climate change to several extreme weather events that hit Australia last year, including city melting heatwaves, record hot spring temperatures and the sweltering conditions that greeted the G20 meeting in Brisbane.

They are part of a series of new studies – published in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society – examining the emerging scientific area of extreme weather "attribution"

It explores the causes of disasters and unusual events across the globe in 2014, including six in Australia.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “How climate change influenced Australia's extreme weather in 2014.”

Australia's climate goals behind that of other industrialised nations

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ustralia is behind other industrialised nations in having policies in place that can meet its promised 2030 target to cut greenhouse gases, a new assessment of its international climate change pledge has found.

The analysis by the global project, Climate Action Tracker, says with only the Abbott government's direct action scheme and the renewable energy target installed at the national level, Australia is on track to fall short of its 2030 pledge and will in fact see emissions rise by the end of the next decade.

Earlier this month the government committed Australia to cutting emissions by 26 to 28 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 as part of its pledge ahead of a major United Nations climate conference in Paris later this year.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Australia does not have plans in place to meet 2030 climate goal, assessment finds”.

Victorian government backing is cash, not just hot air

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ew Victorian wind farms will get financial backing from the Andrews government as part of a push to encourage renewable energy in the state.

Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews - his
government is back wind farms.

On Friday Premier Daniel Andrews will release a government "road map" for the renewable energy industry, which is expected to include a minimum state target and some solar initiatives.

As part of the announcement there will be a commitment for the government to buy "renewable energy certificates" as a way to encourage some new wind energy projects to be built Victoria.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Age - “Victorian government to back new wind farms as part of renewables plan.”

Searching for climate change finger prints on extreme weather

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 heatwave strikes the city. Temperatures rise well over 40 degrees for several consecutive days.

David Karoly  - part of a global network
 trying to find the fingerprints of
 climate change on extreme weather.

Train tracks buckle. Trees wilt. Lives are at risk.

Sure, summers in the city are typically hot. But this seems a little more intense than most, and something similar happened just last year.

Is this climate change?

That's the question increasingly being asked by communities around the world as droughts, heatwaves and floods bring devastation to their door.

For a long time, climate scientists had been hesitant to answer. Weather is hostage to natural variability, making it chaotic and therefore difficult to separate out what role climate change is playing in a single extreme event from all the other noise in the system.

Read Tom Arup’s Age story - “Looking for the fingerprints of climate changes on today's extremeweather”.

Global climate pledges buy as just eight months of 'safety'

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ew global pledges to cut greenhouse gases have delayed by just eight months the moment when the world is expected to breach a threshold that keeps global warming at safer levels, the world's leading energy agency has found.

In a new report the International Energy Agency has warned collective emissions targets, along with the energy plans in those countries yet to set out new goals, puts the world on track by 2040 to release more than the total greenhouse gases than can be allowed and still have a strong chance of keeping global warming below two degrees - a threshold known as the carbon budget.

That is just eight months later than previous forecast, despite a new spate of targets and plans currently being pledged by countries, the agency said on Monday morning.

Countries have agreed to keeping global warming below two degrees through the United Nations. It is a goal that many scientists say would stave off the worst impacts of climate change, such as ever worsening droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Read Tom Arup’s Sydney Morning Herald story - “New climate pledges only buy eight more months before climate tipping point”.

Wind farms 'ugly and detrimental' to health according to Tony Abbott

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ony Abbott has declared wind farms “ugly and detrimental” to our health.

The question must asked as to when the Prime Minister last took the time to look at anyone of our fire breathing coal-fired power plants or bothered to truly consider the world-wide damage to human health caused by the fuel they rely on.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Environment Editor, Tom Arup said, “Perhaps energised by one of his famous morning rides, Prime Minister Tony Abbott hit the radio on Thursday morning and emphatically declared wind farms were ugly, noisy and much worse.

“It was a revealing interview in which he laid out his personal views on the renewable energy technology and his desire to stop its rollout.

“In doing so he generated an angry response from renewable energy supporters and set off one of those social media backlashes you hear so much about, Arup wrote.

Read the story - “Prime Minister Tony Abbott blows hot air over wind farms”.

'Slow down' didn't actually happen - NOAA

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Tom Arup.

 much discussed "slow down" in global warming did not actually happen and the heating up of the planet has continued apace since the turn of the century, a new assessment by the lead United States meteorological body has found.

Scientists from the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have instead pointed to biases in thousands of global temperature observations as a reason why the rise in global temperatures was thought to have slowed over the past 15 years.

They say once more complete data was included a new assessment of global temperatures found warming since 2000 was matching the pace of the later half of the 20th century, a period widely regarded as seeing significant human-caused global warming.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “US meteorological body finds global warming 'slow down' did not happen”.

Discuss climate at G20 forum - Ross Garnaut

Ross Garnaut at last night's
 University of Melbourne lecture.

Climate change needs to be among discussions at his year’s G20 forum according to economist and expert climate policy analyst, Professor Ross Garnaut.

The Melbourne based economist, who was an adviser to the former Labor Government, argued for the G20 discussions when answering a question from the floor after a public lecture at the Carillo Gantner Theatre at the University of Melbourne last night.

Age environment editor, Tom Arup, reported on the lecture in a story headed: “Climate hope in China coal turnaround: Ross Garnaut”.

Arup wrote: “The international goal of halting global warming at 2 degrees is now within reach because China has slowed the growth of its coal use, despite continuing to economically develop, climate policy expert Ross Garnaut says”.

Professor Garnaut said, according to Arup’s story, that the fall in the emissions intensity of Chinese economic growth was the result of new development policies pursued by Beijing over the past six years, which could serve as a model for other developing nations.

World not 'ready' for climate change

The world has done effectively nought to mitigate the causes of climate change and although those relatively simple steps would have been easily accommodated within the global budget, we now face adaptation, a significantly different and more expensive process.

Age environment editor. Tom Arup, again warns his readers today about the inadequacy of our response.

Writing in a story headed: “World ill-prepared for climate change” Arup says that rich and poor countries alike are unprepared for what is ahead.

The damaging changes ahead, he says in referring to detail in leaked reports from final draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will be significant and the benefits few.

Tom Arup braves the wrath of the 'responsible men'

Tom Arup deserves our praise.

As the environment editor at The Age in Melbourne, Tom frequently writes about issues and matters that our “responsible men” would not appreciate seeing published.

Today, Tom has written, in a story headlined: “Fire at Morwell reignites brown-coal debate” about the rather shaky future of Victoria’s massive brown coal reserves.

Tom has gone to lengths to explain the history of brown and black coal, its importance to the Victorian economy, how the belief of carbon capture and storage, the supposed saviour of the coal industry, yet unproven and un-costed, while renewable energy is tested, costed proven and ready to go.

It is unlikely that Tom works in an actual hostile environment, but he would most certainly encounter hostility when researching stories about accessing our energy needs from different sources, breaking the grip that the fossil fuels industry presently has on society.

Beneath the Wisteria friend, Prof Kate Auty, has resigned

Professor Kate Auty.

Beneath the Wisteria friend and Victoria’s Sustainability Commissioner, Professor Kate Auty, has resigned.

Prof Auty, who was the MC at Shepparton’s “Slap Tomorrow – A Wake-Up Call” forum in June last year, was to end her term as commissioner in June this year, but has told the government she will stand down at the end of this month, having achieved all she had wanted.

Melbourne Age environmental editor, Tom Arup, reported on Prof Auty’s sudden departure in a story headed: “Environment boss quits, drops bucket”.

She left amid a debate about terms used to describe what is happening because of our damage climate.

Prof Auty believes the term “climate change” describes the human impact on what is happening in the world and yet the Victorian State Government had directed that public servants use “climate variability”.

Call to protect and enrich state's natural resources

Prof Kate Auty.

Robust insistence that government become directly involved in protecting and enriching the state’s natural resources comes from Victoria’s Environmental Commissioner, Prof Kate Auty.

Tabling her 2013 “State of the Environment” report, Prof Auty, reflecting on her role as Victoria’s second Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability, said there was a ‘unique’ role for independent statutory bodies.

“As we all become more critically of the fact that the ecosystem services not only sustain our way of life, but are integral to every facet of our wellbeing, the need for independent integrated ecosystem services and ecological processes reporting is imperative”, she noted in the ‘perspective’ to her report.

Age environment editor, Tom Arup, wrote about the “State of the Environment” report in a story published today headed: “Victorian environment report suggests consideration of congestion tax, more buses”.

The full report is “Victoria: State of the Environment”.

Readers wait to learn "the most important news'

Readers had to wait until arriving at Page 12 of today’s Melbourne Age before they could read “Global heat headed for a record”.

What was the most important story of the day was “buried” back in the paper beneath important, but not as important, news about findings relating to child sex offenders, the usual cacophony of political news (after all it had been the first day of parliament sitting under the new coalition) and the sale of a former PM’s Altona home.

Page 6 did carry a story about moves to end Australia much maligned carbon tax that was headlined, “Labor falters in bid to slow carbon vote”.

However, it was not until Page 12 that readers discovered, courtesy of Tom Arup, that global temperatures are almost half a degree above the long term average so far in 2013.