Josh Frydenberg responds to Age Editorial

Australia's emissions

Josh Frydenberg.

Your editorial, "Dismal record on climate change" (19/1) was a misleading account of Australia's emission reduction performance. Our emissions today are the lowest on a per capita and GDP basis in 28years. 

Renewables investment is the highest on record, with the Clean Energy Council hailing an "unprecedented wave of investment”.

Absolute emissions in the last quarter came down in the electricity sector by 1.8per cent and across the economy by 0.6per cent, the biggest quarterly drop in the last four years.  The latest data indicates we'll overachieve our 2020 target by 294million tonnes, a 30per cent or 70million tonne improvement on the year prior. One million tonnes of carbon abatement is the equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road for a year.

Contrary to your claim, we do not need to count the 128million tonne surplus from the first Kyoto period to achieve our 2020 target; on the current numbers, we can achieve it without it. As for the 2030 target, the abatement task ahead of us has fallen 122million tonnes over the year and around 60per cent in the past two years.

Josh Frydenberg, Minister for the Environment and Energy 

Government must address emissions reduction in any moves to save Great Barrier Reef

As claims and counterclaims swirl about the health of the Great Barrier Reef, it can be difficult to know what to believe. A good starting point is listening to Terry Hughes, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and listed last year by the journal Nature as one of the 10 people who matter most in science.

Professor Hughes, who regularly surveys the reef, last week stunned his Twitter followers by saying 49 per cent of shallow corals had died after two summers of bleaching.

This figure was given preliminary endorsement by Russell Reichelt, the chief executive of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. He noted there had also been an increase in cover in the south in recent years, but added: "It is difficult to say this without sounding like I don't think the problem is serious. I certainly do.”

If anything, serious is an understatement. The loss of half of the reef's shallow water corals is a global-scale catastrophe. It may have potentially serious ramifications in the years ahead for about 70,000 people who rely on the reef for their livelihoods.

Read the Editorial in today’s Melbourne Age - “Government must address emissions reduction in any moves to save Great Barrier Reef.”

Allan presents some actual facts to counter AFR's 'alternative facts'

Northcote’s Allan O’Neil has written in response to an Australian Financial Review Editorial and although the letter was published online it was thought to too late for publication in the AFR’s hard copy.

Alan wrote:

The Weekend AFR’s editorial on our “energy crisis” has bought hook, line and sinker some very convenient untruths. It blames the tightness of the domestic gas market solely on moratoria imposed by the Victorian, NSW and NT governments and then in the next sentence blames problems in the electricity market on “ever-larger volumes of intermittent renewables being fed into the grid with incentives provided by the same governments”.

The only material financial subsidy for new large scale renewable generation over the past decade and a half has been the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target, in place since 2000. None of the State/Territory governments mentioned has operated any scheme providing similar subsidies.

As for the tightness in the gas market, your editorial also claims that “the gas feeding the Gladstone LNG plants was developed against the prices and volumes it could fetch on international markets”. This might be true if the only gas feeding those projects was sourced from the Queensland coal seam gas (CSG) fields developed by the project proponents to back their capacity investment in the Gladstone LNG facilities. However it is widely known in the industry that those new CSG developments have been slower and higher in cost to develop than assumed, and that the LNG consortia, caught short for supply, have been sourcing significant volumes from already developed gasfields across the south-eastern states that had previously been supplying only domestic users.

The Gladstone LNG facility.

The impact of state government gas moratoria has been at most marginal, given the relative volumes of previously “domestic” gas hoovered up by the LNG consortia, and any new gas which might now have been available from fields developed in the absence of those moratoria. In Queensland, Shell and PetroChina hold a reported 9,000 PJ of already discovered but undeveloped gas not subject to any moratorium. To argue that a cheaper way to relieve pressure on gas supply would be to explore for, assess, develop, process and transport currently undiscovered gas in less prospective regions like onshore Victoria, in preference to large already discovered resources like Shell’s, seems completely fanciful.

The real “problem” in the gas market therefore seems to be the (un)readiness of domestic users to pay the same prices that the LNG consortia have been prepared to pay in order to fill their supply gap.

The real problem in the electricity market has of course been the partisan craziness, ideology, and blame-gaming that has characterised climate-change policy at Federal level for the last decade, and shows few signs of abating. Editorials like the AFR’s, based less on facts and more on “fake truths”, don’t help any of this.

We trust our family and friends more than science - The Age

I

t is odd and disconcerting that many people in this highly educated and sophisticated nation still hold tight to non-scientific theories about climate change, preferring to fashion their views on gut instincts or the misguided utterings of political heroes. Would we dare to appraise Einstein's theory of relativity by using these same dubious sources?

Yet a five-year study of Australians' attitudes, published by the CSIRO, indicates about one-fifth of the population still does not believe climate change is happening. And, of the 80 per cent that have accepted the overwhelming scientific evidence, it seems less than half believe climate change is due to the influence of humans on the environment. Of the respondents who said they did not believe climate change was happening, most nominated their friends and family as their trusted sources – not scientists or other experts.

Read the Editorial in today’s Melbourne Age - “Political climate failed our view of science.”

Shepparton News says weather is a 'Wake-up call'

A

n Editorial in today’s Shepparton News headed – “Weather wake-up call” – points directly toward the implications and complications of climate change and while encouraging people to educate themselves, it doesn’t actually mention climate change.

Today’s Editorial said:

Victoria is already burning and it is only October: springtime.

Last month Earth experienced its hottest September since records began in 1890.

Australia’s written records began in 1910, and our country has been warming since 1950.

Daytime maximum temperatures have increased by 0.8^oC since 1910, overnight minimum temperatures have warmed by 1.1^oC and sea surface temperatures by 0.9^oC.

According to future climate projections, winter and spring rainfall is expected to decrease by up to 15 per cent.

These figures all point to a serious change in our climate, and if it continues we will suffer more droughts which will only bring financial strain and heartache to our farmers and general community.

While the temperatures may be creeping up gradually, the results could be severe for regional areas like ours, and experts have been warning that we need to look at some emission-friendly energy-saving solutions.

Obviously, this needs to be done on a global scale and some countries are embracing renewable energy with gusto.

Take China for example, which is leading the renewable energy infrastructure change, and Denmark cracking the world record for gaining almost 40 per cent of its energy from wind.

Where does Australia fit in to this?

The Climate Council believes s we are among the worst offenders for greenhouse gas emissions in the world with the highest coal consumption per capita of any country on earth.

We cannot control the entire country, but at least we can and should be looking locally.

Many local organisations are tackling the issue from various angles, and as citizens we need to choose an approach that is right for us.

Whether it is solar panels for renewable energy systems, educating ourselves on the cause and effects, or monitoring our own carbon footprint – there are measures we can take.

The recent dramatic change in weather patterns is the best wake-up call we can get, and in a fire-prone region we should be hyper aware of the unseasonably warm weather.

News this week of the fire-fighting helicopter deployed to Shepparton earlier than normal to provide quick response in emergencies is comforting, but should also be viewed as another sign that we all need to take action.

Well done to the Melbourne Age

Well done to the Melbourne Age – in an editorial headed: “Action on climate is a duty above politics”, it argues that science is being sacrificed in the name of politics.

The world wonders, but 'Climate change is here and now'

The world, well not everyone, continues to hesitate and wonder about the significance of climate change, but USA Today has used an editorial piece to clear away the cobwebs.

It says climate change is here and now – its editorial says exactly that through it headline: “Climate change is here and now”.

It argues that a mounting body of evidence illustrates that climate change is neither distant nor theoretical – it is here and now.