Queensland’s floods are so huge the only way to track them is from space.

Many parts of Queensland have been declared disaster zones and thousands of residents evacuated due to a 1-in-100-year flood. Townsville is at the epicentre of the “unprecedented” monsoonal downpour that brought more than a year’s worth of rain in just a few days, and the emergency is far from over with yet more torrential rain expected.

Monitoring the whereabouts of floodwaters is vital for protecting infrastructure.

Such monumental disruption calls for emergency work to safeguard crucial infrastructure such as bridges, dams, motorways, railways, power substations, power lines and telecommunications cables. In turn, that requires accurate, timely mapping of flood waters.

For the first time in Australia, our research team has been monitoring the floods closely using a new technique involving European satellites, which allows us to “see” beneath the cloud cover and map developments on the ground.

Read the piece from The Conversation by Professor Linlin Ge from the University of New South Wales - “Queensland’s floods are so huge the only way to track them is from space.”

Keep it in the ground’: what we can learn from anti-fossil fuel campaigns

From the fossil fuel divestment movement to the Stop Adani campaign, in recent years we’ve seen a wave of climate activism that directly targets fossil fuels — both the infrastructure used to produce, transport and consume them, and the corporations that finance, own and operate that infrastructure.

Former Liberal Party leader John Hewson at an event
 protesting Adani’s Carmichael Mine in October 2018.

What makes targeting fossil fuels so attractive for activists, and can we learn anything from them?

Climate change became a topic of mainstream international concern in the early 1990s. For the first two decades of international climate cooperation, until the failed Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, the international environment movement embraced a more “technocratic” approach.

 Professionally-staffed environment groups made technical arguments aimed at persuading politicians and the public to adopt global climate treaties, national greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and complex market-based policy mechanisms such as emissions trading schemes.

Read the piece from The Conversation by a PhD Candidate in Political Theory from the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Fergus Green - ’Keep it in the ground’: what we can learn from anti-fossil fuel campaigns."

This Hurricane Season, Puerto Ricans Are Imagining a Sustainable Future

Nine months after Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean island faces another potentially devastating hurricane season, while much of its infrastructure and land still remain in tatters.

A man grows vegetables in a hydroponic farm in
 his Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, home in 2018. 

The Category 5 hurricane that ripped through the Caribbean last fall not only caused nearly 5,000 deaths, but also exposed the fragility of the island’s social, political, and economic underpinnings. The truth behind Maria’s devastation and the United States’ laggard response to the hurricane lies in centuries of colonial exploitation—first by Spain and then by the United States—and in its perpetual subjugation to the whims of American elites.

Read the story from The Nation by Celia Bottger - “This Hurricane Season, Puerto Ricans Are Imagining a Sustainable Future.”

Can We Innovate Our Way Out of an Impending Water Crisis?

Water, particularly in the Western United States, has always been inextricably linked to the economy. Historical investments in infrastructure like the Hoover Dam and the California Aqueducts have been used to create whole new industries and the communities to support them. 

WaterStart was created in 2013 in response to
 two of the biggest global events to impact
 Nevada: the financial downturn and climate change.

However, today these communities are under serious pressure from rapidly growing populations, dwindling federal investments in new infrastructure and the impacts of climate change via 18 years of ongoing drought.

For most Americans, water is something we “solved” a long time ago. “Water crisis? That’s like the California Drought, lead pipes in Flint Michigan or the dams breaking in New Orleans, right?”

Few of us would think of the Great Recession as a water crisis. Yet for communities trying to respond to more than a decade of drought while their tax base evaporates, many utility operators and city officials were — and are — in crisis management mode. Further loss of revenue caused by mandatory conservation has only exacerbated the situation.

Read the Medium story by Nate Allen - “Can We Innovate Our Way Out of an Impending Water Crisis?”

Sea Level Rise Is Accelerating: 4 Inches Per Decade (or More) by 2100

The rate of sea level rise is accelerating so fast that some coastal communities could confront an additional 4 inches per decade by the end of the century—a growing concern now confirmed by thorough measurements from space.

Rising sea levels increase the risk of storm surge flooding in coastal cities
like Charleston, South Carolina, shown here after Hurricane Matthew. 

At that rapid pace of change, vulnerable communities might not be able to keep up. Storm surges will increase erosion and damage homes, businesses and transportation infrastructure in some areas. In other places, seawater will intrude on freshwater aquifers. In South Asia and the islands, people will lose the land where they live and farm. And the changes will arrive much faster than they do today.

Scientists have been warning about this speed-up for many years based on computer climate simulations. A new study released Monday confirms the modeled trend with a detailed analysis of satellite observations spanning a quarter of a century.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Bob Berwyn - “Sea Level Rise Is Accelerating: 4 Inches Per Decade (or More) by 2100.”

Question about private car's 'Kodak moment' goes unanswered

Privately owned vehicles owe their success to an energy-rich infrastructure.

The energy demands of privately owned vehicles were discussed by a trio of speakers during a recent webinar.

The speakers - Dr Thomas Becker from the BMW Group, Christian Hochfeld from Agora Verkehrswende, and Dean Taylor from Southern California Edison - each had some exciting things to say about both hybrid electric vehicles and those which were purely electric.

The autonomous electric pod need to be
a common sight in our communities.

All were excited about the potential of the electric car, in all its iterations and how it will be linked to smart systems allowing it to play a role in helping level out the electricity supply in community grid systems.

And, beyond that, being linked to traffic flow systems, the self-driving car will quickly adjust to find the quickest and less congested journey for the passengers.

A question about whether or not we should have been discussing the private car’s “Kodak moment” went unasked as hundreds about the private electric car were preferred to one that challenged what is in a sense the status quo.

Although there were observations about the sharing of vehicles to reduce numbers on our road network, there appeared to be an underlying assumption that the discussion was really about privately owned individual vehicles.

Ideally, we should be considering what are still electric vehicles, but pods which are not individually owned, but are used by the public, on demand, and responsive to an instruction from smartphones, or similar devices.

A standardised pod, backed by a sophisticated electrified public transport system, would need a much smaller, simpler and cheaper to build road network and a person’s residence would not need any garaging or charging facilities as the pod would be recharged when it returned to its base.

When a person wanted to travel from A to B, they would summon a pod on their smartphone, it would arrive within minutes, complete the journey and either return to its base or complete another nearby movement.

Maintenance of the pods would be attended to at a central location.

The pod marks the end of the privately owned car, electric or otherwise, and a serious disruption to what exists that is critical and needed because of our worsening carbon emissions. 

Beyond that, the public pod is about equality, an urgent need in our rather lopsided society.

Adani mine needs $1bn public funding to go ahead, Barnaby Joyce says

The Adani Carmichael coalmine needs $1bn of government funds for a rail line because it is “a tipping point issue” to get the mine going, Barnaby Joyce has said.

Acting Prime Minister, Binary Joyce -
Adani rail $1bn "a tipping point issue."

The Nationals leader has given a full-throated defence of subsidising the mine, telling Radio National that Australians should support it because they are “citizens of the world” and warning those that oppose fossil fuels “if you live with the butterflies, you will die with the butterflies”.

Joyce, who is currently acting prime minister as Malcolm Turnbull is in India, where he has met mining magnate Gautam Adani, was asked about proposals to give a $900m concessional loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility for a rail line from the Adani mine to the port.

Joyce has previously supported the loan, although environmental groups warn it does not meet the criteria for the fund.

He called it a “great idea”, claiming it would open up the Galilee basin as a coal precinct, provide electricity in India and create 3,000 direct and 10,000 indirect jobs.

Read Paul Karp’s story on The Guardian - “Adani mine needs $1bn public funding to go ahead, Barnaby Joyce says.”

(It’s because I am a “citizen of the world” that I oppose the Adani Carmichael coalmine as anyone who is as Mr Joyce argues we should be, then we understand that people are vastly more important than short term profit - I refuse to legitimise his weepingly sad ideology and if Australia has a $1bn too spare, it should be applied to ensuring our public energy system is moved as quickly as possible to renewable energy. The public piggy bank should not be plundered to further enrich the already rich - Robert McLean)

Cyclone the size of Debbie could be catastrophic for Gold Coast, modelling shows

A cyclone the size of Debbie could have catastrophic consequences on the Gold Coast, new modelling has shown, as climate change pushes cyclones further south and puts tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure at risk. 

A cyclone the size of Debbie could have
catastrophic consequences on the Gold Coast,
new modelling has shown, as climate change
 pushes cyclones further south.

Actuaries, who predict and model scenarios for banks and insurers, have warned properties could become "uninsurable" as premiums rise to meet environmental challenges. Debbie devastated northern Queensland and swept floods into NSW which caused $1 billion in damage, forced 30,000 people to evacuate and took two lives. 

Under modelling compiled by Deloitte's principal actuary Sharanjit Paddam and James Cook University, a shift in the cyclone-prone region of just three degrees would cause winds in excess of 260km/h to hit the Gold Coast and stretch as far as Brisbane, where many homes and towers do not meet cyclonic safety standards. 

The "sting in the tail" of ex-Cyclone Debbie battered the Gold Coast this week with winds half as strong as those that hit Bowen and Proserpine, along with torrential downpours.  

Read Eryk Bagshaw’s story in today’s  Melbourne Age - “Cyclone the size of Debbie could be catastrophic for Gold Coast, modelling shows.”

Australia’s first Local Government Solar Farm Achieves Milestone

The first solar panel table was put into place today on the Sunshine Coast Solar farm at Valdora.

The energy from the large-scale solar farm being built in Queensland will provide all the electricity for Sunshine Coast Council infrastructure when it is completed mid-next year. It will be the country’s first large-scale solar farm managed by a local government.

Sunshine Coast Council mayor Mark Jamieson said the $50 million project will save ratepayers more than $22 million after cost over the next 30 years. The 15 megawatts energy that will be produced will be an offset for all of the council’s energy use within the Sunshine Coast Area.

57,000 panels will be installed across 24 hectares of a 49-hectare site and it will be Queensland’s biggest solar farm and the 5th largest in Australia.

Read the Solar Trust Centre story - “Australia’s first Local Government Solar Farm Achieves Milestone.”

The privately owned car is dead, now it is the electric, public pod

The driverless, electric Google controlled,
public pod just must be how we get
 about  in the future. The private car is dead.

Privately owned cars, driverless, electric or otherwise, are a problem for a clutch of reasons.

Removing the need for a car to be piloted by a human will not erase, at all, the global carbon dioxide emissions associated with road transport or the infrastructure from which it is supported.

The trouble arises from the fact that motor vehicles are privately owned and so are used only by an individual, or his or her family or those who work for whatever company that owns the vehicle, for transport and so has limited use.

The vehicle, despite its limited use (it’s driven 20km before work, parked all day and then driven home at the end of the day) still consumes an identical amount of energy, resources and space as a car used non-stop, with the difference being the amount of fuel used.

Most privately owned vehicles are grossly inefficient, both in terms of cost and their impact on our environment.

Many people still have ideas and values rooted in the 20^th Century and difficulties arising from climate change, worsened by the fascination we have for a privately owned motor vehicle, demand that we shift, faster than quickly, into this century.

The 20^th Century illustrated to us that technology could resolve any human difficulty and while that became startling obvious in the post-World War Two quarter century, many of us have intellectually remained mired in that golden innovative era.

Well, we have the technology and if we were to apply it today we could create and build a public transit system that would make the privately owned, driverless electric car as about relevant today as the dinosaur

The only thing that stands between us and the creation of a sophisticated, efficient and fast public transit system is our imagination and the desire of corporations for profit.

It is our consumptive behaviour and the intent by corporations in securing profit and growth is another barrier between what exists and a sophisticated and efficient public transit system that can be, and must be, driverless, electric cars that are public and so available to and used by everyone.

A privately owned, and so anarchic car is the real problem.

Read Aisha Dow’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Driverless cars could make Melbourne congestion worse.”

A Realizable Renewable Energy Future

Advocates urged the adaption
 of renewable energy nearly
20 years ago "with all due speed".

The renewable energy conversation is complex and sometimes convoluted, but from all this hot air emerges one reality: it can be done.

In 1999 the magazine “Energy” wrote a piece - “A Realizable Renewable Energy Future” – and in conclusion said:

“The question for our time is whether governments should subsidize building, manufacturing, and implementing renewable energy technologies, or should governments instead develop and build CO2 sequestration technologies. By developing and implementing renewable energy technologies and manufacturing capabilities, we would build a sustainable energy infrastructure to carry us well into the next millennium. We should embark upon this path with all due speed.”

Revelling in contradictions, Tony goes from 'crap' to mud

Canberra is governed by a bunch of people who seem to revel in contradictions.

Tony Abbott considers climate change "crap"
and now his antics may make his name mud.
 

The governing Liberal/National Party has unstitched most of Australia’s climate change mitigation infrastructure, but at the same time, almost, has released a grim prognostication for climate change and it impact on Australia.

The report, “Climate Change in Australia” was funded by the Department of the Environment through the NRM Planning for Climate Change Fund with co-funding from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.

The contradiction being forced upon Australians is so blatant it’s insulting – in one breath PM Tony Abbott says climate change is “crap” and through official government bodies alerts us to remarkably difficult times that are only just years away.

Infrastructure costs are what gives our "Infrastructure Prime Minister' a leg up

Tony Abbott wants to be known at the “Infrastructure Prime Minister”.

Oddly, and in a strange turn of events, it was infrastructure costs that catapulted him and the Liberal/National Parties into power.

Mr Abbott and his coalition cohorts constantly blamed the Labor Party introduced carbon tax for the massive increases in power costs, when it was actually the unrestrained investment on infrastructure in their infrastructure that ignited the massive rises in power costs.

Cost increases attributed to the much maligned carbon tax were miniscule compared, while the real driver of cost increases was a huge investment by power companies on their respective infrastructures.

In a story headed: “Power Corrupts” The Monthly tells us how network companies lined their pockets and drove electricity prices through the roof.

Searching for future energy sources

Many ideas, some seemingly sensible others rather hard to get you head around, are being explored in the hope of resolving future energy shortages.

What will the energy of tomorrow be like?

Beyond finding the energy of the future, the hope is that such a discovery might in some way mitigate climate change.

The Guardian, in a story headed: “Turning carbon dioxide emissions into chemicals, fibres and jet fuel”, discusses the fact that scientists are using the principles of photosynthesis to turn CO2 emissions into useful products.

Some ideas being considered are wonderfully exciting, but they overlook, pretty much entirely, that the introduction of some form of new energy source would only work when backed with an infrastructure system.

To replace our oil-based energy system, even if we went to all electric vehicles, including personal cars, the replacement of existing infrastructure would cost billions of dollars.

Trio of senior economists question Abbott's climate change plans

The Tony Abbott-led coalition government is determined to dismantle any of Australia’s infrastructure aimed at mitigating climate change.

Maybe what Labor under Julia Gillard had set up wasn’t perfect (what is?), but it was at least a start in addressing what is the greatest challenge mankind has ever faced.

Mr Abbott was elected last year on the premise that he would be Australia’s “infrastructure Prime Minister”.

Well, it seems he will be known for that, but as one who tore it apart, rather than building it up.

Mr Abbott’s ambitious are contrary to the advice and thoughts of a trio of Australia’s senior economists and just this week the Sydney Morning Herald reported on that counter view in a story headed: “Economists back carbon pricing as effective tool against climate change”.

Energy gives and energy takes away

Energy built this and energy is tearing it apart.

Our misuse of energy is the root cause of climate change and now arising difficulties from that dilemma are poised to disrupt our energy supplies.

The unfolding threats are discussed in a Huffington Post story headed: “Climate change poses major threat to energy infrastructure, Agency warns”.

Oil refineries, drilling platform, fuel pipelines, barges and railways are all vulnerable to significant weather pattern changes.

“In other words, all the infrastructure Americans rely on to heat their homes, power their lights and fuel their trains, trucks and cars is becoming more and more exposed to failure in a changing climate,” the Huffington Post reports.

What will it 'cost' before the world takes notice?

How “much” will it take to have people take notice of climate change?

The cost of dealing with global warming in terms of lives lost and injury, the replacement and repair of damage houses and other buildings and the replacement or repair of infrastructure nearly broke $200 billion in 2012.

However, that doesn’t appear to be enough as the climate change skeptics still strut around the world declaring all is well, and for them, and for the moment, it is.

The alarming mounting costs of climate change are discussed in Climateprogress story headed: “Global damage from extreme weather and other disasters set to break $200 billion a year”.

'Infrastructure PM' or "destruction PM?'

Opposition leader,
Tony Abbott -
infrastructure
Prime Minister?

A massive upgrade of our public transport infrastructure is the least we can do to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

However, the leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, wants to be known as the “infrastructure PM” taking Australia in precisely the wrong direction and deeper into the climate change embrace.

As the “infrastructure PM, Mr Abbott wants more roads and associated facilities to enhance the wealth of private enterprise and let those of us who depend upon public transport to wrestle with a vastly inadequate and crumbling edifice.

Tristan Edis wrote in Climate Spectator in his story headed: “Abbott’s infrastructure tunnel vision” that the Opposition leader’s 21^st century vision seems singularly focussed on 20^th century roads.

“I would like to think that should we win the election, I will be known as an infrastructure prime minister, because we need the infrastructure of the 21^st century if we are going to have the prosperity, if we are going to have the productivity Australian people need,” Mr Abbott said.

This might be America, but Australia stands in the same queue

Just some of the damage of 'Superstorm
Sandy' as week after the event.

This is America and not Australia it might be argued, but like the flow of money around the world which appears unrestricted, climate change knows no boundaries.

A story in Mother Jones headed: “Flood, Rebuild, Repeat: Are We Ready For Another Superstorm Sandy Every Other Year?” helps us understand the numbers, or the economics, of climate change.

The economics of climate change induced damage appear at first glance as contrived and cherry-picked to simply support arguments for climate change, but they are not.

Rather, they are real, they are numbers that refer to infrastructure, they are numerical additions that equate with the lives of millions; they are the cost, the real cost, of ignoring the realities that humanity has changed the world’s climate.

Climate change a threat to State infrastructure

The realities arising from our changing climate were discussed today on the front page of the Melbourne Age.

A story headed: “Climate threat to state assets” considered the increased threat to Victoria’s vital public infrastructure as climate change intensifies.

The State infrastructure considered is valued at $126 billion and includes properties belonging to government departments, national parks, hospitals, universities and galleries.

“Between 2002 and 2010 more than 70 per cent of the authority’s losses were due to climatic events with two-thirds resulting from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires”.