Federal budget: Half-a-billion dollars for the Great Barrier Reef

The Turnbull government will deliver the largest single environmental protection package in Australian history by committing half a billion dollars to protect the Great Barrier Reef from climate change and pollution.

The Great Barrier Reef, the largest living structure on the planet.

The investment, to be detailed in the May budget, will aim to shore up support in key Queensland seats ahead of an election in the next year, as the Coalition tries to balance environmental concerns with its pro-mining jobs focus through the Adani coal mine.

Read the story by Eryk Bagshaw from The Age - “Federal budget: Half-a-billion dollars for the Great Barrier Reef.”

(Don’t fall for this, it is political and rhetorical trickery. If the Federal Government was serious about saving the Great Barrier Reef it would tell Mr Adani to take his money, return to India and leave the coal he was so anxious to exploit in the ground. Climate change is the main player in the destruction of the reef and if Mr Frydenberg and his coalition counterparts were serious in their intentions to save the reef they would make climate change mitigation its first priority and that means an immediate shift from the use of any fossil fuels - Robert McLean)

As climate shifts, Cincinnati mayor boosts solar investments

Cincinnati may seem an unlikely location for the nation’s largest city-owned solar array. But when Mayor John Cranley announced last year that he intended to create just that, the plan was in many ways a natural fit. Over the past decade, the Ohio city has taken increasingly aggressive steps to decarbonize its energy supply – and it’s seeing impressive results.

February 2018 flooding in downtown Cincinnati. 

Unusual weather patterns have added new urgency to these efforts.

“Over the last few years we’ve seen a surge in major storm events that’s triggered a rash of stormwater related issues – sewer backups, flash flooding, landslides,” said Oliver Kroner, who works in the city’s Office of Environment and Sustainability. “We’ve even had some river flooding just over the last couple of weeks for the first time since 1997.”

Last year, the city spent $50 million responding to storm-related issues.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story by Sarah Wesseler - “As climate shifts, Cincinnati mayor boosts solar investments.”

‘World's largest' solar and wind hydrogen plant proposed for regional SA

A new solar and wind hydrogen plant, which has been dubbed the largest in the world, has been proposed for Crystal Brook in South Australia's Mid North.

Neoen's new hydrogen plant will combine wind power and solar generation.

The Labor Government has committed $25 million in grants and loans to renewable energy company, Neoen, to finalise plans and — pending development approvals — commence construction of a Hydrogen Superhub.

The French company also owns and operates the Hornsdale Wind Farm in Jamestown, SA, the site of the Tesla lithium-ion battery.

If approved for construction, the site will create up to 260 jobs during the planning and construction phase, with 40 ongoing positions once the site is operational.

Read Tom Rohde’s ABC News story - “‘World's largest' solar and wind hydrogen plant proposed for regional SA.”

Use solar panels and batteries to put the power back in your hands

Australia's power bills have been rising, and represent one of the largest threats to household budgets.

Peter Youll with his Tesla battery, which has
 paid for itself before the warranty ran out.

From 2008 to 2016, power prices in Victoria and NSW more than doubled; in the 2017 September Quarter Consumer Price Index, the single biggest increase was electricity, which jumped 8.9 percent.

In response, many Australians are reducing reliance on or leaving the electricity grid and looking to solar power and other technologies to cut their power bills.

Peter Youll and Michael Peters are two ordinary Australians who wanted to make a change, not only to their power bills but for the climate.

Read Cole Latimer’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Use solar panels and batteries to put the power back in your hands.”

The Rocky Mountains' Largest Glaciers Are Melting with Little Fanfare

WIND RIVER RANGE, Wyo. — Here at the roof of the Continental Divide, one of the Rocky Mountains' largest glaciers is in retreat.

Wyoming’s Wind River range.

A new world is emerging in the wake of the receding ice. In a vast, glacially carved basin, where towering spires of granite dominate the skyline, a small colony of stunted Engelmann spruce has taken up residence in a pile of rocky debris, some 500 feet above the tree line. Bees flit among the yellow mountain asters dotting the boulder field at the glacier's base. Grass grows along a stream where there was, until recently, only snow and ice.

“It's a different place today,” Darran Wells, an outdoor education professor at Central Wyoming College, observed from a research camp near the base of the Dinwoody Glacier on a recent evening. A regular visitor to the glacier over the last two decades, Wells offered a succinct take on its evolution over his nightly meal, a dehydrated serving of shepard's potato stew with beef.

Read the Scientific American story - “The Rocky Mountains' Largest Glaciers Are Melting with Little Fanfare.”

Largest fire in Los Angeles' history burns on city's outskirts, homes evacuated

The city of Los Angeles is under siege from a bushfire which the city's mayor has described as the largest in its history.

A crew with Cal Fire battles a brushfire on
the hillside in Burbank, California, on Saturday. 

The fire, which is burning in the La Tuna area in the north-east of the city, has consumed about 2000 hectares of brush in the San Fernando Valley's Verdugo Mountains.

Only 10 per cent of the fire is contained, officials say.

Around 700 homes have been evacuated, roughly 550 of them from the Burbank and Glendale areas, which are adjacent to the fire.

Read Michael Idato’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Largest fire in Los Angeles' history burns on city's outskirts, homes evacuated.”