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‘Urgent and clear need’ to limit temperature rises to protect key sites from warming, rising seas and harsher weather

Some of the world’s most famous heritage sites – from the Statue of Liberty and Venice to the Galapagos Islands – could be irreversibly damaged by climate change, a report has warned.

Historic and natural world heritage sites are already feeling the brunt of increasing temperatures, with rising seas, erosion and storms hitting Orkney’s neolithic coastal treasures and important tropical coral reefs being “bleached” by warmer seas.

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In a rare move to shun tourism profits for environmental protection, 10 popular dive sites have been shut down in a bid to slow a coral bleaching crisis

Thailand has shut down 10 popular diving sites in a bid to slow a coral bleaching crisis, an official said Thursday, in a rare move to shun tourism profits to protect the environment.

The tropical country’s southern coastline and string of islands are home to some of the world’s most prized white sand beaches and scuba sites, and the booming tourism industry props up Thailand’s lagging economy.

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A halt is called to the deployment of a new, expandable "room" on the International Space Station when it fails to open up as expected.

Increase fuel efficiency of heavy good vehicles that cause a quarter of Europe’s traffic carbon emissions to meet climate targets, says clean corporate alliance

An alliance of companies including Ikea, Nestle and Heathrow airport have called on the EU to pass new laws cutting truck emissions within two years, to meet promises made at the Paris climate conference.

Heavy duty vehicles make up less than 5% of Europe’s road traffic but chug out a quarter of the sector’s carbon emissions – more than airplanes – and their fuel efficiency has hardly changed in two decades.

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Stone rings thought to be created by Neanderthals have been found in France

A collection of zoological wonders from May 2016, featuring brave new rhinos, brand new pandas, earthworm engineers and more

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Author and passionate lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov once said: ‘Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.’ His scientific drawings and watercolours of butterflies have now been collected into one volume, Fine Lines

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On climate change, is Trump uninformed, or playing his voters?

Donald Trump has consistently expressed his conspiratorial and misinformed beliefs that global warming is a hoax.

Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee - I'm in Los Angeles and it's freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!

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The Royal Navy is investigating claims the wreckage of a British submarine lost during World War Two has been discovered off the coast of Sardinia.

Environmental protection order the first use of Queensland’s new chain-of-responsibility laws

An environmental protection order has been issued against Linc Energy’s former chief executive Peter Bond.

It is the first time the Queensland government’s new chain-of-responsibility laws have been put into use and comes after creditors on Monday unanimously voted to place Linc into liquidation.

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The sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse has landed in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, after a near-17-hour flight.

HS2 is an over-priced, gold-plated project and will fail in many of its objectives a group of transport experts warns.

Ancient air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice. The Ellsworth Mountains Project

The unfortunate manner in which the latest phase of restructuring of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has played out has raised questions about Australia’s scientific capability and our ability to meet international responsibilities.

Faced with a budget cut of A$115 million, some 275 staff have apparently been identified for redundancy (though the final number may be as high as 317). Many of them are scientists contributing to long-term sea, air and climate science programs. The restructure is geared towards focusing CSIRO’s attention on the question, as framed by chief executive Larry Marshall, of “how can we find solutions for the climate we will be living with?”

The problem is that the programs at threat form the backbone of national and international research efforts. Virtually all of them are critical for helping us mitigate and adapt to future climate.

In 1979, the great scientist Carl Sagan wrote:

We live in an extraordinary age. These are times of stunning changes in social organisation, economic wellbeing, moral and ethical precepts, philosophical and religious perspectives, and human self-knowledge … Had we been born fifty years later, the answers would, I think, already have been in.

Australian scientists do indeed live in extraordinary times, but not necessarily for the best of the reasons. We may be living through a remarkable period of discovery, but recent events are a timely reminder that we must all work harder to manage the precious resources available to science if we’re not to threaten decades of investment and hard work.

Global response

The cuts have been met with very public protests, including those by former US vice-president Al Gore and the World Climate Research Program.

The most public of all staff to be earmarked (so far) for redundancy is Dr John Church. He is arguably the world’s leading expert on global sea level rise, a role that is more important than ever for adapting to the effects of climate change. It’s a decision so extraordinary it was even reported in The New York Times.

The facilities at risk from CSIRO cuts are used by research teams around the world.

The threat to close the “Ice Lab” involves a facility unique in the world for analysing ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice, helping understand future climate-carbon feedbacks.

The Tasmanian Cape Grim atmospheric station is crucial for monitoring greenhouse gas levels in the southern hemisphere. Only last week it confirmed CO₂ concentrations now exceed 400 parts per million, likely the last location on the planet to do so.

And just last month, CSIRO staff (of which Dr Church was a senior author) led a Nature Climate Change article showing anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have dominated global sea level rise since 1970. This is crucial work for understanding the source(s) of sea level rise. Such work can inform major infrastructure projects such as Brisbane Airport’s new runway, which is being constructed four metres above minimum required standards to accommodate future coastal flooding.

A wider problem

The funding gap CSIRO faces is a story common to many in the scientific community. Some sectors in the 2016 budget continue to enjoy some funding increases, such as the A$200 million for Antarctic science and A$100 million for Geoscience Australia.

But others have experienced cuts, most notably the Australian Research Council. The ARC has received a further 10% cut on the back of a succession of cuts over recent years.

Putting aside the effect on staff morale and the observation that government science spending has a strong multiplier effect on economic growth, the shortfall of funding in some quarters has immediate implications for how we best co-ordinate our efforts as a community.

Targeted, industry-focused projects are an essential part of a thriving scientific culture in Australia. But the threatened erosion of public science and the loss of capacity in areas of expertise CSIRO has taken decades to build represent a loss to all.

While the recent focus has been on climate science, there are salutary lessons from events of recent months if we are to minimise the impact on this research field and others in the future.

Where to from here?

Like any sector, science needs stability. The cuts have to stop and ideally reverse. If we keep trimming budgets, there will come a point where whatever capacity we have will only be a token effort.

The recent announcement that a CSIRO climate change centre will be established with 40 staff in Hobart is most welcome, but details are sketchy. A major concern regarding all these decisions are how these cuts and developments align with the efforts of the rest of the community.

Reports that the Bureau of Meteorology and Australian Antarctic Division learnt of the proposed cuts in capacity only after the decisions had been made are remarkable if true.

If a realignment of priorities in an institution is to take place, we need to make sure that these decisions are made with wider consultation and as much lead-in time as possible so the scientific community can make the best of a bad situation.

Recently, the Australian Academy of Science announced a welcome, urgent review of national climate science capability. (If you’re part of the community, submissions must be made by June 5, so hurry.)

Announcing cuts that have implications for others without discussion doesn’t help science, it only stifles findings. I hope the CSIRO climate change science centre has been developed in consultation with others and the 40 staff identified are the number truly required.

We need to make sure everyone is talking to one another. Only last week, the CSIRO released its Australia 2030 report, modelling various scenarios for Australia’s future. One scenario is called “weathering the storm”, in which geopolitical instability increases, driven by climate change and regional conflicts.

Faced with this situation, CSIRO suggests that “the energy market relies on tried and tested energy sources such as coal rather than further developing the potential of renewables”.

To suggest under future climate change we should continue to exploit fossil fuels is a remarkable statement from a national scientific body.

We may be half-way to the great leaps in knowledge Sagan prophetically described by 2030, but our understanding of the planet and how we mitigate and adapt to change has to be better co-ordinated as a community. We need to do a lot better.

Chris Turney receives funding from the Australian Research Council and undertakes research with colleagues in CSIRO. He is co-ordinator of the international Earth's Past Future Program (http://earthspastfuture.com/) and a director of CarbonScape (http://carbonscape.com/).

Male and female set free as part of five-year trial to monitor the impact of England’s only wild population of the mammals

A new pair of beavers has been released into a river in Devon to boost the genetic diversity of England’s only wild population of the mammals.

The male and female were set free on the river Otter as part of a five-year trial monitoring the impact of Eurasian beavers, a species hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago in the UK, on the surrounding landscape, wildlife and economy.

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Malcolm Turnbull’s $150m pledge to boost agriculture in northern Australia comes under fire from conservationists

Malcolm Turnbull has promised to spend $150m on dams in Queensland as part of a plan to double the agricultural output of northern Australia – but which would dump thousands of tonnes of pollution on the Great Barrier Reef, according to conservationists.

The prime minister committed $130m to one dam near Rockhampton and a further $20m to feasibility studies for 14 others across the state.

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Sandy, Bedfordshire Ash dieback threatens a tree that is unwittingly generous at both ends of the season

A line of trees on the green, their fresh bright leaves glazed with sunlight, take from the east and give nothing to the west. Oaks, sycamores and chestnuts bathe their crowns in the mid-morning rays and cast dark shadows on the ground, as wide as the trees are broad, as long as they are tall, with dappled haloes all around. The beeches are worst of all, offering the land beneath no chink in their green armour. No wonder so little grows under the canopy of a beech wood, a crowd of overlapping umbrellas giving shelter, blotting out the light.

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Civil society organizations and Peru government institutions say United Cacao is operating illegally, but the company denies it

Two indigenous Shipibo men from Peru’s Amazon - Sedequías Ancón Chávez and Robert Guimaraes Vasquez - paid a rare visit to the London Stock Exchange (LSE) earlier this month. The reason? To present a letter addressed to Marcus Stuttard, Claire Dorrian and Umerah Akram from the LSE’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) urging the AIM to investigate, suspend and bar a company called United Cacao Limited SEZC - as well as amend its rules and “exact more active oversight” in general.

“The nature of the crimes which the company stands accused are an important matter for AIM to address,” the letter states. “Allowing companies listed on AIM to raise capital to violate other countries’ national laws jeopardizes the “integrity and reputation” of the market, which is grounds for suspension of a company’s trading, according to AIM Rules.”

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ALZHEIMER'S DEBATE: The protein that has been implicated as the cause of Alzheimer's disease, beta amyloid, fights microbial infection, a new study in animals has found.

Shareholders at Exxon Mobil AGM reject most proposals but voted in favour of a resolution that could see a climate activist elected to the board in the future.

CSIRO has the know-how to develop commercial-scale green energy, with a clear plan and enough money. CSIRO, CC BY

On Friday, the Coalition made a low-key announcement of its new Low Emissions Technology Roadmap. To be developed by the CSIRO, it will aim to “highlight areas of growth in Australia’s clean technology sector”.

Unveiled jointly by the industry and science minister, Christopher Pyne, the environment minister, Greg Hunt, and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, the plan asks the CSIRO to identify the most promising ways to reduce emissions and to come up with plans to accelerate the development and commercialisation of Australian technologies such as solar panel components.

With the election campaign in full swing and announcements coming thick and fast, some will obviously get more airtime than others. Still, it was surprising to see this one quietly released on a Friday afternoon, given the seniority of the ministers involved, not to mention the importance of both renewable energy and greenhouse emission reductions as issues in this election.

It’s also not immediately clear what is actually involved in developing a “technology roadmap” like this. It might conceivably follow a model previously developed at the US Sandia National Laboratories, which identified three key elements:

• preliminary activity, which involves defining the project’s precise scope

• developing the roadmap, by deciding which technologies to include and defining specific targets for their development

• follow-up, by working out how the plan is actually going to be implemented.

The announcement in itself has kick-started the first of these three stages. CSIRO has been given the lead for the second element. But it is the third stage – the actual implementation – where roadmaps typically lose their way. Many governments have set roadmaps in the past, only for successive ones to choose different objectives and therefore move down a different path.

The key for any roadmap to deliver its intended outcome is the successful implementation of its proposals. The policy and, crucially, the funding committed to the project will determine whether the ultimate objectives are met.

Pay to play

In the announcement’s press release, Pyne said the roadmap would “achieve a large-scale technology transformation”. But looking at the steps above, this will require policy and investment in those technologies that are to drive the transformation process.

While this announcement supports previous policy pledges, notably the A$1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund uneviled two months ago, will this be enough to drive the crucial third stage of the roadmap: developing commercial-scale clean energy generation to the level required to make serious inroads into emissions reduction?

In the past Australia has tended to adopt the cheapest available energy technologies, particularly given that much of the electricity sector is moving from public to private-sector ownership.

Will this change now? Frydenberg’s statement that “the Coalition is committed to a technology-neutral approach to energy policy” would suggest that it may not.

With the minimal growth in electricity demand over recent years, new generation on a large scale will need to be more economical than existing assets, or else policy measures should be put in place to make the new technologies competitive.

Part of the Coalition’s plan, as also stated by Frydenberg, is to ”help identify opportunities for Australian businesses to be involved in the global energy supply chain, with the potential of creating new industries that create new jobs and growth in Australia”. History has shown that while Australia has been a very innovative nation, much of the technology developed here tends to move offshore.

Pyne added that “by 2018 Australian solar technology will be embedded in over 60% of the world’s [photovoltaic] panels”. But how much of this global supply chain has created jobs and growth in Australia?

Hunt also stated that the roadmap will help Australia meet its greenhouse emissions target, which calls for a 26-28% reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. But 2030 is not that far away, and the process of drawing up roadmaps, developing technologies and then commercially deploying them takes time. Support for existing mature technologies, such as solar and wind energy, must be continued in the meantime.

While existing agencies such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation support these technologies, ongoing funding is a constant subject of debate within the government. These bodies will jointly administer the new Clean Energy Innovation Fund, but if this new roadmap is to be a success, ARENA’s funding must continue beyond its currently planned expiry date of 2022, and the CEFC needs a longer business plan than the current one which runs to 2019.

In the meantime, it pays to think carefully about the initial phase for the roadmap: defining its precise scope. According to the announcement, the areas to be considered include “renewable energy, smart grids, carbon capture and storage, electric vehicles and energy efficiency” – all areas in which CSIRO has existing research programs. As such, it is well placed to understand the challenges, the investment needed, and realistic time frames for implementation. All of these need to be identified and quantified precisely, given that the plan only spans a few years.

Introducing innovative technology into an existing sector, which is already working, will always draw resistance, particularly from the operators (as well as equipment manufacturers, maintenance companies and fuel suppliers) of existing generation assets. But, of course, decisions about electricity generation have much wider effects than just the provision of energy.

The need to reduce emissions affects every aspect of how we will live our lives in the future. No major political party disputes the need to move from existing technology to a clean energy future. But policy, with sufficient financial backing, needs to be put in place now and supported by successive governments to have any chance of hitting the deadlines we face.

Craig Froome does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.