Feed aggregator
Week in wildlife: amorous ladybirds and an adopted hawk - in pictures
An unlucky zebra and the UK’s first pair of breeding night herons are also among our pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...SENG Vic News August 2017
London should lead in showing electric cars will not tackle air pollution
The government’s new strategy does not go far enough in recognising fewer vehicles, not just cleaner ones, are the answer
With more and more of the world’s population living in cities, we need to get urban transport right. That means making sure that people and goods can move around easily and cheaply. It also means ensuring that city transport systems don’t damage people’s health, as diesel and to a lesser extent petrol are currently doing in London and other UK cities.
Electric cars are not the answer to air pollution, says top UK adviser
Prof Frank Kelly says fewer not cleaner vehicles are needed, plus more cycling and walking and better transit systems
Cars must be driven out of cities to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis, not just replaced with electric vehicles, according to the UK government’s top adviser.
Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit.
Continue reading...Climate change to blame for Australia's July heat
Winter hasn’t felt too wintry yet in much of Australia. Most of us have have had more sunshine, higher temperatures, and less rainfall than is normal for the time of year. In fact, Australia just had its warmest average daytime maximum temperatures for July since records began in 1910.
This July saw the warmest average maximum temperatures on record across Australia.
Bureau of Meteorology
The north and centre of the continent saw the biggest temperature anomalies as Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland experienced record warm daytime July temperatures. Only the southwestern tip of Western Australia and western Tasmania had slightly below-average daytime temperatures.
Southern Australia was again very dry as the frontal systems that usually bring rain remained further south than usual.
Read more: Winter heatwaves are nice … as extreme weather events go.
For most of us, warm and dry winter conditions are quite pleasant. But with drought starting to rear its head and a severe bushfire season on the cards, some cooler wetter weather would be helpful to farmers and fire services across the country.
What caused the unusual warmth?Often when we have warmer winter weather in Australia it is linked to El Niño conditions in the Pacific or a positive Indian Ocean Dipole. Both of these Pacific and Indian Ocean patterns tend to shift atmospheric pressure patterns in a way that brings more stable conditions and warmer, drier weather to Australia.
This year, however, neither El Niño nor the Indian Ocean Dipole is playing a role in the warm weather. The sea surface temperature patterns in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are close to average, so neither of these factors is driving Australia’s record warmth.
A clear human fingerprint
Another factor that might have influenced the July heat is human-caused climate change.
To assess the role of climate change in this event, I used climate model simulations and a standard event-attribution method. I first evaluated the climate models to gauge how well they capture the observed temperatures over Australia during July. I then computed the likelihood of unusually warm July average maximum temperatures across Australia in two groups of climate model simulations: one representing the world of today, and another representing a world without human influences on the climate.
I found a very clear signal that human-induced climate change has increased the likelihood of warm July temperatures such as the ones we’ve just experienced. My results suggest that climate change increased the chances of this record July warmth by at least a factor of 12.
July heat is on the riseI also wanted to know if this kind of unusual July warmth over Australia will become more common in future.
I looked at climate model projections for the next century, and examined the chances of these warm conditions occurring in periods when global warming is at 1.5℃ and 2℃ above pre-industrial levels (we have had roughly 1℃ of global warming above these levels so far).
The 1.5℃ and 2℃ global warming targets were decided in the Paris Agreement, brokered in December 2015. Given that we are aiming to limit global warming to these levels it is vital that we have a good idea of the climate we’re likely to be living in at these levels of warming.
I found that even if we manage to limit global warming to 1.5℃ we can expect to experience such July heat (which is record-breaking by today’s standards) in about 28% of winters. At 2℃ of global warming, the chances of warm July temperatures like 2017 are 43% for any given year.
More Julys like this are on the way as the globe heats up.
Andrew King, Author provided
Given the benefits of fewer and less intense heat extremes over Australia at lower levels of global warming, there is a clear incentive to try and limit climate change as much as possible. If we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and hold global warming to the Paris target levels, we should be able to avoid the kind of unusual warmth we have seen this July becoming the new normal.
DisclosureAndrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.
Another attack on the Bureau, but top politicians have stopped listening to climate change denial
Has the Australian climate change debate changed? You could be forgiven for thinking the answer is no.
Just this week The Australian has run a series of articles attacking the Bureau of Meteorology’s weather observations. Meanwhile, the federal and Queensland governments continue to promote Adani’s planned coal mine, despite considerable environmental and economic obstacles. And Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions are rising again.
So far, so familiar. But something has changed.
Those at the top of Australian politics are no longer debating the existence of climate change and its causes. Instead, four years after the Coalition was first elected, the big political issues are rising power prices and the electricity market. What’s happening?
Read more: No, the Bureau of Meteorology is not fiddling its weather data.
A few years ago, rejection of climate science was part of the Australian political mainstream. In 2013, the then prime minister Tony Abbott repeated a common but flawed climate change denial argument:
Australia has had fires and floods since the beginning of time. We’ve had much bigger floods and fires than the ones we’ve recently experienced. You can hardly say they were the result of anthropic [sic] global warming.
Abbott’s statement dodges a key issue. While fires and floods have always occurred, climate change can still alter their frequency and severity. In 2013, government politicians and advisers, such as Dennis Jensen and Maurice Newman, weren’t shy about rejecting climate science either.
The atmosphere is different in 2017, and I’m not just talking about CO₂ levels. Tony Abbott is no longer prime minister, Dennis Jensen lost preselection and his seat, and Maurice Newman is no longer the prime minister’s business advisor.
Which Australian politician most vocally rejects climate science now? It isn’t the prime minister or members of the Coalition, but One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts. In Australia, open rejection of human-induced climate change has moved to the political fringe.
Roberts has declared climate change to be a “fraud” and a “scam”, and talked about climate records being “manipulated by NASA”. He is very much a conspiracy theorist on climate, as he is on other topics including banks, John F. Kennedy, and citizenship. His approach to evidence is frequently at odds with mainstream thought.
This conspiratorial approach to climate change is turning up elsewhere too. I was startled by the author list of the Institute of Public Affairs’ new climate change book. Tony Heller (better known in climate circles by the pseudonym Steven Goddard) doesn’t just believe climate change is a “fraud” and a “scam”, but has also promoted conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school massacre. This is a country mile from sober science and policy analysis.
So where is the Australian political mainstream? It’s not denying recent climate change and its causes, but instead is now debating the policy responses. This is exemplified by political arguments about the electricity market, power prices, and the Finkel Review.
Read more: What I learned from debating science with trolls
While this is progress, it’s not without serious problems. The debate may have rightly moved on to policy rather than science, but arguments for “clean coal” power are at odds with coal’s high CO₂ emissions and the failure thus far of carbon capture. Even power companies show little interest in new coal-fired power plants to replace those that have closed.
The closure of the Hazelwood power station was politically controversial.
Jeremy Buckingham/flickr
History repeating?
Have those who rejected global warming and its causes changed their tune? In general, no. They still imagine that scientists are up to no good. The Australian’s latest attacks on the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) illustrate this, especially as they are markedly similar to accusations made in the same newspaper three years ago.
This week, the newspaper’s environment editor Graham Lloyd wrote that the BoM was “caught tampering” with temperature logs, on the basis of measurements of cold temperatures on two July nights at Goulburn and Thredbo. For these nights, discrepant temperatures were in public BoM databases due to automated weather stations that stopped reporting data. The data points were flagged for BoM staff to verify, but in the meantime an amateur meteorologist contacted Lloyd and the Institute of Public Affairs’ Jennifer Marohasy.
In 2014, Lloyd cast doubt on the BoM’s climate record by attacking the process of “homogenisation,” with a particular emphasis on data from weather stations in Rutherglen, Amberley and Bourke. Homogenisation is used to produce a continuous temperature record from measurements that may suffer from artificial discontinuities, such as in the case of weather stations that have been upgraded or moved from, say, a post office to an airport.
The Tuggeranong Automatic Weather Station.
Bidgee/Wikimedia Commons
Lloyd’s articles from this week and 2014 are beat-ups, for similar reasons. The BoM’s ACORN-SAT long-term temperature record is compiled using daily measurements from 112 weather stations. Even Lloyd acknowledges that those 112 stations don’t include Goulburn and Thredbo. While Rutherglen, Amberley and Bourke do contribute to ACORN-SAT, homogenisation of their data (and that of other weather stations) does little to change the warming trend measured across Australia. Australia has warmed over the past century, and The Australian’s campaigns won’t change that.
In 2014, the government responded to The Australian’s campaign by commissioning the Technical Advisory Forum, which has since reviewed ACORN-SAT and found it to be a “well-maintained dataset”. Prime Minister Abbott also considered a taskforce to investigate BoM, but was dissuaded by the then environment minister Greg Hunt.
How will Malcolm Turnbull’s government respond to The Australian’s retread of basically the same campaign? Perhaps that will be the acid test for whether the climate debate really has changed.
Michael J. I. Brown receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and has developed space-related titles for Monash University's MWorld educational app.
UK needs bottle deposit scheme to cut plastic litter in oceans, says thinktank
Green Alliance calls for making retailers take back bottles and cans to significantly reduce plastic pollution in seas
Plastic marine litter could be cut significantly if the government adopted a bottle deposit scheme as part of five key actions to tackle pollution of the oceans, a green thinktank has said.
The single most effective action to reduce plastic pollution in the seas would be a container return scheme along the lines of those run in large parts of Europe, north America and Australia, according to a new analysis by Green Alliance. In such schemes, a small tax is added to recyclable and reusable containers at the point of sale, which consumers can reclaim by returning them.
Continue reading...An otter pops into the marina for lunch
Plymouth, Devon A busy harbour is not a place you’d expect to find much in the way of wildlife, so that bubble trail in the water is intriguing
This is a place of arrivals and departures, a centuries-old harbour where few stop for long. From hosting the steamships and trans-Atlantic liners of the past to today’s colossal cross-channel ferries, Plymouth’s historic Millbay dock has served the comings and goings of countless travellers.
On work lunch breaks I regularly walk beside the innermost basin, now transformed into a marina as part of the area’s regeneration. Solid harbour walls designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel provide shelter for luxury yachts neatly berthed along wooden pontoons.
Continue reading...Penny drops for Turnbull: Consumers are being gouged on energy
Cheap coal power? Only in an imaginary world
GE, Engie to build 119MW wind farm in South Australia
Coal lobby hits peak denial on battery storage, renewables
The death of “alternative energy”
Alphabet (Google) turns to molten salt to store clean energy
Energy Unlimited – 4 steps to 100% renewables
Device could make washing machines lighter and greener
Phase in new carbon pollution standards for cars two years early: ClimateWorks
Colonies expand for the treetop emperor
Dedicated searches have revealed a rare butterfly back in its former Kent stronghold and gaining other territories
Britain’s most charismatic and elusive butterfly, the purple emperor, has a habit of turning up unannounced. This powerful, treetop, butterfly lives at low densities in the landscape but has been spotted in many new places thanks to the combination of a fine mid-summer and some astonishingly thorough searches by devotees.
Related: Interesting times for lepidopterists
Continue reading...Public support for fracking in the UK at record low, official survey reveals
Government research finds drastic drop in people backing drilling for shale gas since the study was launched in 2012
Public support for fracking has reached a record low, according to the latest government research.
A survey by the Business and Energy Department showed just 16% supported the controversial process of shale gas extraction, down from 21% last year and the lowest since the study was launched five years ago.
Continue reading...Armoured tank-like dino used camouflage to hide
Pages
