The Conversation

The federal government has announced a new National Energy Guarantee focused on electricity reliability, after deciding not to implement a clean energy target. Alan Pears, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University Anna Skarbek, CEO at ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University Dylan McConnell, Researcher at the Australian German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Animals that evolved in cold parts of the world usually have lighter skin. If a light-skinned animal has blood vessels close to the surface of their ear skin, this will make the ears look pink. Wayne Iwan Lee Davies, Adjunct Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia Shaun Collin, Winthrop Professor/WA Premier's Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences and the Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The outgoing Threatened Species Commissioner has downplayed the importance of land clearing as a threat to Australia's plants and animals. But it's the biggest threat, and magnifies the others too. Brendan Wintle, Professor of Conservation Ecology, University of Melbourne, University of Melbourne Sarah Bekessy, Professor, RMIT University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The National Energy Guarantee promises to make electricity supply more reliable, cheaper and less polluting. Michael Hopkin, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation Madeleine De Gabriele, Deputy Editor: Energy + Environment, The Conversation Wes Mountain, Deputy Multimedia Editor, The Conversation Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The new policy will put the onus on electricity retailers to cut emissions while guaranteeing reliability. And while the scheme isn't perfect, it offers a rare opportunity for bipartisanship. David Blowers, Energy Fellow, Grattan Institute Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The amount of atmospheric energy available to thunderstorms will increase in response to climate change, putting the tropics and subtropics at risk of being lashed with more intense storms. Martin Singh, Lecturer, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Is Australia undervaluing its most valuable natural asset by only charging $6.50 a day to visit the Great Barrier Reef? And would it help if tourists were asked to pay more? Michael Vardon, Visiting Fellow at the Fenner School, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Increased sightings of endangered species doesn't mean it's recovering – but that's the argument being made by the native forest logging industry. David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

While Tony Abbott's London climate speech has been widely criticised, research suggests his views have long had a sympathetic ear in Australia's coal heartland. Vanessa Bowden, Associate Lecture in Social Enquiry, University of Newcastle Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

As the Clean Energy Target fades away, perhaps a Dispatchable Reliable Energy Target will be innocuous enough to pass the Liberal party room and the Senate. Alan Pears, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

New data from a NASA satellite show in unprecedented detail the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Future satellites should even be able to detect the signatures of individual power stations. Pep Canadell, CSIRO Scientist, and Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Alex Held, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Cathy Trudinger, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO Peter Rayner, Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne Vanessa Haverd, Research Scientist, Carbon Water Observatory, CSIRO Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Australia's species, like this green python, are remarkable and need far better protection. Euan Ritchie, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University Dale Nimmo, ARC DECRA Fellow, Charles Sturt University Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University Geoffrey Heard, Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology and Management, Charles Sturt University Megan C Evans, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Environmental Policy, The University of Queensland Tim Doherty, Research Fellow, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

How do you determine the financial benefit of cutting a tree down, versus leaving it standing? Environmental accounting offers some insight. Heather Keith, Research Fellow in Ecology, Australian National University David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Michael Vardon, Visiting Fellow at the Fenner School, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Talk of the government preparing to 'walk away' from the Clean Energy Target proposal is unnecessarily cynical. Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Home buyers across Australia could face higher energy bills because of a loophole that allows builders to sidestep energy efficiency requirements.

Since the early 2000s, all new homes built in Australia have to meet minimum thermal performance standards. In about 70% of cases, these homes are accredited using star ratings under the federal government’s Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS). Most new houses have to meet a minimum 6-star rating. The higher the rating, the more energy-efficient the home.

Besides the star rating system, there are three other ways to meet the thermal efficiency standards, including one known as Verification Using a Reference Building (VURB),, which awards a pass or fail rather than stars. It was designed to allow houses with alternative building techniques to comply with the standards.

But some builders are using this approach to accredit houses that fall well short of the 6-star standard under the NatHERS system – a tactic that is legal under the current system.

One consulting engineering firm, Structerre, which is active in Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, has advertised that it has saved builders thousands by adopting the pass/fail approach under VURB. Structerre declined to comment for this article.

A Structerre advertisement showing how a double storey residential building originally rated 4.5 stars using NatHERS and using the VURB pathway was able to meet energy compliance without adding cavity insulation or upgraded glazing. Structerre website

By using VURB, builders can forego installing items that would ordinarily be needed to gain a minimum 6-star rating, such as cavity insulation or upgraded glazing.

Upgrading a home from a 4.5-star rating to 6 stars can typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. It is even more expensive for double-storey homes on narrow blocks with sub-optimal orientation.

Energy uncertainty

It is hard to say exactly how much higher energy bills would be in a home that falls below 6-star standard, because of the many other factors that influence bills. But major Australian house builder BGC Residential estimates that people with a 4-star or 5-star rated home could pay about 30% more than people living in a 6-star home.

A CSIRO study of more than 400 Australian houses built in the past 10 years found that higher-rated homes saved significantly on winter heating costs.

However, a study of 10 homes in Perth found significant variation in energy use between homes with the same rating.

The picture is complicated further by a phenomenon known as the takeback effect, in which some people in energy-efficient homes actually increase their energy consumption.

Misleading standards

Michael Bartier, executive general manager of BCG Residential, one of the first companies to adopt NatHERS 6-star rating as a standard building practice, said the use of loopholes could harm the industry’s reputation and cost buyers money.

“My concern is that there are a large number of homes built in the past 12-18 months that have not achieved the NatHERS 6-star rating, without the owners’ or customers’ knowledge. These homes could be rated as low as 2.7 stars and suffering poor thermal performance, costing the owners significantly more in heating and cooling energy costs and affecting final resale value,” he said.

While universal certificates are generated for homes found to comply with NatHERS, making them easier to track, it’s hard to tell how many homes have been signed off with VURB, as recording is not mandatory for those homes.

Some industry insiders are concerned that, without public scrutiny, the use of this loophole will increase.

A better picture

CSIRO, which owns the software used for NatHERS ratings, has developed a database of new homes’ energy ratings across Australia.

It currently has data for most homes built since May 2016, and is aiming to make its data available to the public. Some preliminary data are shown in the map below.

Average star rating for homes built since May 2016, in a selection of Australian climate zones. It does not show all homes, and in particular does not show homes that met compliance using the VURB pathway. Data courtesy of CSIRO.

Click on the zones to see the average star ratings.

There are more drawbacks besides the potential impact on energy bills. The National Construction Code states that home thermal efficiency standards are also important for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2013, Australia’s residential and commercial buildings were responsible for almost a quarter of the nation’s greenhouse emissions.

Several groups have warned about the use of the VURB pathway, including CSIRO, state governments, and the federal Department of the Environment and Energy. But it is unclear whether these warnings will catch the eye of home buyers.

The Australian Building Codes Board is reviewing the system (it is open for public comment until February 2018), and plans to “strengthen the technical provisions” in the 2019 version of the National Construction Code.

Saskia Pickles 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.

Tonight former Prime Minister Tony Abbott will be in London to give a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, titled “Daring to Doubt”, in which he will reportedly argue that climate policy is “shutting down industries”. (It’s not clear if he’s bought carbon offsets for the 10 tonnes of carbon that a return flight to the UK will release into the atmosphere.)

Whatever talking points and soundbites he presents will inevitably be interpreted as yet another salvo in the Coalition’s ferocious and interminable war over energy and climate policy.

Read more: Two new books show there’s still no goodbye to messy climate politics

The venue is the same one where Abbott’s mentor John Howard U-turned on his earlier climate policy U-turn. In a 2013 speech, Howard disparagingly declared that “one religion is enough”, despite having belatedly pledged in 2006 to introduce an emissions trading scheme, only to lose to Kevin Rudd the following year.

Who are the GWPF anyway?

The Global Warming Policy Foundation was set up in 2009 by Nigel Lawson, who in the 1980s served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (the UK equivalent of treasurer) in Margaret Thatcher’s government, but is arguably more famous these days as Nigella’s dad.

The foundation was founded just days after the first so-called “Climategate” emails were leaked. But after complaints, in 2014 the UK Charity Commission rejected the notion that the organisation provides an educational resource, concluding that:

The [GWPF] website could not be regarded as a comprehensive and structured educational resource sufficient to demonstrate public benefit. In areas of controversy, education requires balance and neutrality with sufficient weight given to competing arguments.

Ahead of the Commission’s report, the Global Warming Policy Forum was born as the organisation’s campaigning arm, free from the regulations that govern charities.

Despite its loud demands for crystal-clear transparency about climate science, and its repeated claims that scientists are swayed by big fat grants, the GWPF is oddly cagey about its own funding. In a 2012 BBC Radio programme, Lawson said he relied on friends who “tend to be richer than the average person and much more intelligent than the average person”. An investigation by the website DeSmog has dug up some more information.

More recently the GWP Forum has been in the news because it appointed a pro-Brexit oil company boss to its board and because in August Lawson appeared on BBC Radio to attack Al Gore, accusing the Nobel prizewinning climate activist of peddling “the same old claptrap” and adding: “People often fail to change and he says he hasn’t changed, he’s like the man who goes around saying ‘the end of the world is nigh’ with a big placard”.

Read more: A brief history of Al Gore’s climate missions to Australia

Lawson wasn’t done. He also claimed that “according to the official figures, during this past 10 years, if anything, mean global temperature, average world temperature, has slightly declined”.

Factcheckers were quick off the mark, and the BBC was chided by, among others, Professor Brian Cox (a year on from bringing his graph to Q&A to try to educate the British-Australian politician Malcolm Roberts).

Days later Lawson admitted that his figures were not from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but from a meteorologist who works for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded by Charles Koch.

Abbott the weathervane

Anyway, back to Abbott. Digging around in the archives throws up some amusing surprises about him, as befits a man who has been making headline since 1977. In 1994 an environmental campaign to recreate Tasmania’s Lake Pedder found an unusual ally in the newly minted Member for Warringah, who wrote an article in The Australian that plaintively asked:

If we can renovate old houses and old cars, rejuvenate works of art, recreate forgotten languages and restore degraded bushland, why can’t we rehabilitate the site of a redundant dam?

Abbott seems not to have been particularly exercised by climate policy during the first decade of his parliamentary career. But once the issue hit the top of the political agenda, Abbott was – in his own words to Malcolm Turnbull – “a bit of a weathervane”.

He helped convince Howard to agree to some sort of ETS proposal during the ultimately futile bid to fend off Kevin Rudd in 2007. In July 2009, in a front-page story in The Australian headed “Abbott – we have to vote for ETS”, he was quoted as saying:

The [Rudd] government’s emissions trading scheme is the perfect political response to the public’s fears. It’s a plausible means to limit carbon emissions that doesn’t impose any obvious costs on voters.

However, by September 2009, with Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership on the rocks (remember Godwin Grech?), Abbott made a fateful trip to Beaufort in rural Victoria, and discovered that the room loved him saying “climate change is absolute crap”. The weathervane had made an abrupt about-face.

As Paul Kelly notes in his 2014 opus Triumph and Demise, then-Senator Nick Minchin was crucial in convincing Abbott that there was no serious electoral price to be paid in opposing Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Turnbull was on the ropes, and Abbott won the leadership ballot by one vote. As David Marr recounts, the party was almost as stunned as the nation. “God Almighty,” one of the Liberals cried in the party room that day. “What have we done?”

The ensuing years need no extended recap, though two points are worth mentioning. The first is the admission by Abbott’s former chief of staff Peta Credlin that the “carbon tax” that was going to be the end of the world… wasn’t a carbon tax.

The second is that former environment minister Greg Hunt recently rebutted the claim that backbenchers prevented further cuts to the Renewable Energy Target under Abbott’s prime ministership.

Backed into a corner

The upshot is that Abbott has, as Philip Coorey recently observed, totally painted himself into a corner on energy and renewables.

Mind you, it may not matter that much to him, given that his apparent aim is not to “do a Rudd” and return to the helm, but simply to drive a wrecking ball through Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership – with climate and energy policy as collateral damage.

Read more: Coal and the Coalition: the policy knot that still won’t untie

As Abbott accepts another pat on the back from a roomful of climate deniers in London, we may wonder how long business interests in Australia will tolerate his wrecking, undermining and sniping. There is bewilderment and dismay at the destabilising effect on policy.

Among the business lobby, BHP has evidently forced the departure of Brendan Pearson as head of the Minerals Council in protest at the council’s similarly backward stance. That much is within their gift. But with regard to the Coalition government, those businesses can do little but despair at the handful of recalcitrant MPs who have nominated climate policy as the ditch in which they will die, in service of the culture war.

The hot air just doesn’t seem to be letting up, any more than our hot summers will in the future.

Living in a single-storey unit can lead to much higher air conditioning costs. Author provided

With rising temperatures, surging power prices and an ageing population, there are challenging times ahead in terms of looking after our most vulnerable elderly citizens.

But my research suggests that residential aged care facilities are not well regulated in terms of providing safe indoor temperatures, especially during hot summer months.

Heatwaves have caused more deaths in Australia over the past 200 years than floods or cyclones. People over 75 are more at risk of temperature-related health issues, and some are even more at risk than others. The most vulnerable groups include women, people living alone, people on low incomes, and people with existing health or mobility issues.

Vulnerable subgroups of elderly population. Wendy Miller

By mid-century, more than 2 million Australians will be aged 85 or over, and more than a quarter of these are likely to find themselves living in residential aged care facilities. These communities, often resembling retirement villages, cater to the needs of older people with varying levels of care needs in terms of their health, mobility and independence.

Aged care homes are strongly regulated by national laws governing their terms of occupancy, fees, fire safety procedures, and service costs such as electricity bills. But this regulation does not seem to extend to thermal comfort.

Population distribution of older people. Derived from Australian Demographic Statistics June 2014, ABS Comfortable buildings

My research team has been investigating how buildings at an aged care community in southeast Queensland impact on internal temperatures and occupant electricity bills. Residents in this community are aged 80 or older and most live alone. We measured inside and outside temperatures in 11 apartments and evaluated the electricity bills of all 110 apartments. We also inspected the design and construction of the buildings.

On average, residents used only 80% of the monthly electricity assumed by the Queensland government for low-energy-consumption households. Actual monthly electricity bills (excluding metering and connection charges) ranged between 1% and 6% of the 2015 aged care pension rate.

Read more: How to keep your house cool in a heatwave

Next, we examined the 20 apartments with the highest electricity bills. Eighteen of them were directly exposed to the roof – that is, they were either in a single-storey apartment building or on the upper floor of a two-storey building.

Electricity bills also seemed to be linked to the weather. In some units, winter and summer bills were 60-70% higher than the corresponding bills in autumn and spring. In the most extreme cases, summer electricity bills were four to five times higher than at other times of year. Some units required winter heating, while others did not.

This huge variation in electricity bills suggests that building quality plays a part in determining how much residents have to spend to stay cool in summer. To find out, we next compared the temperatures inside two identical, unoccupied units – one on the ground floor and one directly above – during a run of hot summer weather.

The ground floor unit had a more consistent internal temperature and a lower maximum temperature in every room (bedroom, bathroom and kitchen/living room). What’s more, all rooms in the ground floor unit had a greater proportion of time in the comfort zone of 20℃ and 26℃, and never got hotter than 28℃.

Temperature comparison of lower floor (left) and upper floor (right) apartments. Wendy Miller

This doesn’t mean that air conditioning wouldn’t be required, but it does mean that cooling costs for the ground floor unit would be significantly cheaper than for the unit directly upstairs.

Building quality – the absence of ceiling insulation in this case – is impacting on the internal temperatures of these apartments and on the occupants’ electricity bills. It’s an important issue considering that air conditioning is typically the biggest factor in these communities’ energy costs.

Impact of heat and housing on elderly people and society. What do we need to do about this?

This is not an accusation of wrongdoing by the developers and managers of aged care communities. But our results do highlight a serious issue in our approach to energy, buildings and health, especially the increasing heatwave risk to our growing elderly population.

With that in mind, a few questions need answering:

• Are building regulations really protecting the health and safety of older people?

• Why isn’t building quality considered as part of the healthcare plan of older Australians?

• Why do we rely so much on air conditioners to pump heat out of the building, instead of first doing what we can to limit the heat getting into our buildings in the first place.

• Why do governments try to control electricity prices but virtually ignore energy efficiency?

• Why aren’t buildings included in the current discussion about the electricity network, reliability and security?

• Why do we continue to focus on subsidising pensioners’ electricity bills, instead of tackling the problem at source by improving the buildings they live in?

• Are the buildings constructed now going to be fit for purpose in the changing climate?

• Will poor-quality buildings end up being stranded assets in the future?

We have a disconnect between our building quality, energy system, electricity costs and the well-being of our elderly citizens. This does not make Australians safe and secure – something that anyone in aged care would surely wish to be.

Wendy Miller receives funding from the Australian Research Council to examine housing innovation and sustainability. No funding was received from the management of the aged care community that was the subject of this research. This community, however, does provide our research team with access to their buildings and energy data.

AAP/David Mariuz

This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: a mid-latitude cyclone that hit South Australia on September 29 and set in train a series of events that is still playing itself out.

The events include:

• an extraordinary attack on renewables by federal government ministers;

• a steadfast pushback by the South Australian government to continue its renewables roll-out;

• the offer of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build the largest battery storage facility in the world in South Australia and;

• the Finkel Review.

In one sense, the Finkel Review was a response to the government’s concerns about “energy security”. But it also managed to successfully respond to the way energy policy had become a political plaything, as exemplified by the attacks on South Australia.

New research on the media coverage that framed the energy debate that has ensued over the past year reveals some interesting turning points in how Australia’s media report on climate change.

While extreme weather events are the best time to communicate climate change – the additional energy people are adding to the climate is on full display – the South Australian event was used to attack renewables rather than the carbonisation of the atmosphere. Federal MPs hijacked people’s need to understand the reason for the blackout “by simply swapping climate change with renewables”.

However, the research shows that, ironically, MPs who invited us to “look over here” at the recalcitrant renewables – and not at climate-change-fuelled super-storms – managed to make climate change reappear.

The study searched for all Australian newspaper articles that mentioned either a storm or a cyclone in relation to South Australia that had been published in the ten days either side of the event. This returned 591 articles. Most of the relevant articles were published after the storm, with warnings of the cyclone beforehand.

Some of the standout findings include:

• 51% of articles were about the power outage and 38% were about renewables, but 12% of all articles connected these two.

• 20% of articles focused on the event being politicised by politicians.

• 9% of articles raised climate change as a force in the event and the blackouts.

• 10% of articles blamed the blackouts on renewables.

• Of all of the articles linking power outages to renewables 46% were published in News Corp and 14% were published in Fairfax.

• Narratives that typically substituted any possibility of a link to climate change, included the “unstoppable power of nature” (18%), failure of planning (5.25%), and triumph of humanity (5.6%).

Only 9% of articles discussed climate change. Of these, 73% presented climate change positively, 21% were neutral, and 6% negative. But, for the most part, climate change was linked to the conversation around renewables: there was a 74% overlap. 36% of articles discussing climate change linked it to the intensification of extreme weather events.

There was also a strong correlation between the positive and negative discussion of climate change and the ownership of newspapers.

The starkest contrast was between the two largest Australian newspaper groups. Of all the sampled articles that mentioned climate change, News Corp was the only group to has a negative stance on climate change (at 50% of articles), but still with 38% positive. Fairfax was 90% positive and 10% neutral about climate change.

Positive/negative stance of articles covering climate change by percentage.

Given that more than half of all articles discussed power outages, the cyclone in a sense competed with renewables as a news item. Both have a bearing on power supply and distribution. But, ironically, it was renewables that put climate change on the news agenda – not the cyclone.

Of the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% “negative” and blaming them for the power outages.

In this way, the negative frame that politicians put on renewable energy may have sparked debate that was used to highlight the positives of renewable energy and what’s driving it: reduced emissions.

But perhaps the most interesting finding is the backlash by news media against MPs’ attempts to politicise renewables.

19.63% of all articles in the sample had called out (mainly federal) MPs for politicising the issue and using South Australians’ misfortune as a political opportunity. This in turn was related to the fact that, of all the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% supporting MPs’ attempts to blame them for the power outages.

In this way, while many MPs had put renewables on the agenda by denigrating them, most journalists were eager to cover the positive side of renewables.

Nevertheless, the way MPs sought to dominate the news agenda over the storm did take away from discussion of climate science and the causes of the cyclone. Less than 4% of articles referred to extreme weather intensifying as a trend.

This is problematic. It means that, with a few exceptions, Australia’s climate scientists are not able to engage with the public in key periods after extreme weather events.

When MPs, with co-ordinated media campaigns, enjoy monopoly holdings in the attention economy of news cycles, science communication and the stories of climate that could be told are often relegated to other media.

With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.

Disclosure

David Holmes received funding from Monash University to conduct this research.

Scott and his team at the geographic South Pole, January 18, 1912. National Library of Australia

On February 11, 1913, the world woke to the headline “Death of Captain Scott. Lost with four comrades. The Pole reached. Disaster on the return”. A keenly anticipated, privately funded scientific venture “off the map” had turned to tragedy.

Previous reports had described the polar party of the British Antarctic Expedition striking out confidently just 2.5º latitude from their objective: the geographic South Pole. The journals and letters recovered from the bodies, however, told a tale of heartbreak and desperation: the explorers were shattered to find themselves beaten to the pole by Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen, and weakened terribly during their journey back to base.

Of the five men in Captain Robert F. Scott’s party, Petty Officer Edgar Evans was the first to die, while descending from the high-altitude Antarctic Plateau. Then, while searching in vain on the vast Ross Ice Shelf for the dog sleds ordered to speed their return to base, Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates realised that his ever-slowing pace was threatening the others, and famously walked out into a blizzard with the parting words: “I am just going outside and may be some time.”

Pushing on with limited supplies, the remaining men (Scott, Dr Edward Wilson and Henry “Birdie” Bowers) found themselves trapped by a nine-day blizzard. All three wrote messages to friends and loved ones while waiting, until eventually their food ran out on about March 29, 1912.

Why did they really die?

Their deaths were put down to the fickleness of Antarctic weather, bad luck or, most controversially, poor leadership on the part of Scott.

But my new research, published in the journal Polar Record, has uncovered new evidence about this ill-fated journey. I have identified major contradictions in the testimony of Scott’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Edward “Teddy” Evans, who survived the expedition after being rejected from Scott’s party.

Was Scott scuppered by Evans?

Evans’s actions raise the possibility that he played a role in the deaths of the five men. Furious at not being included in the attempt on the pole, Evans was returning to base when he collapsed with scurvy. Evans was the only expedition member to develop scurvy, most probably due to his refusal to eat fresh seal meat, a known preventive measure.

His companions Tom Crean and William Lashly heroically saved Evans’s life, a tale made famous in no small measure by expeditioner Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s classic book on the expedition, The Worst Journey in the World.

Foul play over food?

Buried in the British Library, I found a crucial piece of evidence about Evans’s trip back to camp. Seven pages of notes detail meetings held in April 1913 between Lord Curzon, president of the Royal Geographical Society, and Scott’s and Wilson’s widows, both of whom had read their late husbands’ diaries and correspondence.

According to the notes, Kathleen Scott reported that:

Scott’s words in his diary on exhaustion of food & fuel in depots on his return… It appears Lieut Evans – down with Scurvy – and the 2 men with him must on return journey have entered & consumed more than their share.

Several days later, also according to the meeting notes, Oriana Wilson described how:

…there was a passage in her husband’s diary which spoke of the “inexplicable” shortage of fuel & pemmican [sledging ration] on the return journey… This passage however she proposes to show to no one and to keep secret.

Closer examination of diary entries suggest that the food in question went missing from a depot at the southern end of the Ross Ice Shelf. Letters from the time indicate that Curzon immediately shut down the inquiry he was planning to hold. It is not unreasonable to assume that Curzon’s interpretation of events was that Evans was dangerously ill and if he had not taken the food would have also died.

But the account of exactly when Evans fell down with scurvy changed over time. Returning to civilisation in 1912, Evans described in a letter how he was stricken when he was 300 miles from base, a distance confirmed by media interviews from the time.

But by the following year, this figure had changed to 500 miles, a distance also reported in the book Scott’s Last Expedition. This would put the onset of his sickness at the southern end of the Ross Ice Shelf, precisely where the food appears to have gone missing.

Unwittingly, Cherry-Garrard published a substantially embellished version of Lashly’s sledging diary in The Worst Journey in the World, in which Evans’s sickness was shifted one week earlier to align with the public timeline.

Overall, the evidence strongly suggests that Evans took the cached food when he had not yet succumbed to scurvy, possibly because of his anger at having been sent back early and forced to drag his sledge with just two men. The timing of the various pieces evidence suggest that his story was later changed to fit with the idea that he took the food because he was ill.

Disturbingly, Scott’s order to Evans to send the dog sled teams to the southern end of the Ross Ice Shelf does not appear to have been communicated either, fatally slowing the polar party’s return.

Writing from his deathbed, Scott warned: “Teddy Evans is not to be trusted over much, though he means well.”

Given the evidence, this was arguably a generous statement.

Chris Turney receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is the author of 'Iced In: Ten Days Trapped on the Edge of Antarctica' (published by Citadel), 'Shackled' (Penguin Books Australia) and '1912: The Year The World Discovered Antarctica' (Text Publishing).

Sydney is facing 50℃ summer days by 2040, new research says. Andy/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Australia is hot. But future extreme hot weather will be worse still, with new research predicting that Sydney and Melbourne are on course for 50℃ summer days by the 2040s if high greenhouse emissions continue. That means that places such as Perth, Adelaide and various regional towns could conceivably hit that mark even sooner.

This trend is worrying, but not particularly surprising given the fact that Australia is setting hot weather records at 12 times the pace of cold ones. But it does call for an urgent response.

Most of us are used to hot weather, but temperatures of 50℃ present unprecedented challenges to our health, work, transport habits, leisure and exercise.

Read more: Health Check: how to exercise safely in the heat

Humans have an upper limit to heat tolerance, beyond which we suffer heat stress and even death. Death rates do climb on extremely cold days, but increase much more steeply on extremely hot ones. While cold weather can be tackled with warm clothes, avoiding heat stress requires access to fans or air conditioning, which is not always available.

The death rate in heat ramps up more rapidly than in cold. Data from Li et al., Sci. Rep. (2016); Baccini et al., Epidemiol. (2008); McMichael et al., Int. J. Epidemiol. (2008), Author provided

Even with air conditioning, simply staying indoors is not necessarily an option. People must venture outside to commute and shop. Many essential services have to be done in the open air, such as essential services and maintaining public infrastructure.

Roughly 80% of the energy produced during muscular activity is heat, which must be dissipated to the environment, largely through perspiration. This process is far less effective in hot and humid conditions, and as a result the body’s core temperature begins to climb.

We can cope with increased temperatures for short periods – up to about half an hour – particularly those people who are fit, well hydrated and used to hot conditions. But if body temperature breaches 40-42℃ for an extended time, heat stress and death are likely. In hot enough weather, even going for a walk can be deadly.

Air conditioning may not save lives

We expect air conditioning to take the strain, but may not realise just how much strain is involved. Shade temperatures of 50℃ mean that direct sunlight can raise the temperature to 60℃ or 70℃. Bringing that back to a comfortable 22℃ or even a warm 27℃ is not always possible and requires a lot of energy – putting serious strain on the electricity grid.

Electricity transmission systems are inherently vulnerable to extreme heat. This means they can potentially fail simply due to the weather, let alone the increased demand on the grid from power consumers.

Power cuts can cause chaos, including the disruption to traffic signals on roads that may already be made less safe as their surfaces soften in the heat. Interruptions to essential services such as power and transport hamper access to lifesaving health care.

Myopic planning

It’s a dangerous game to use past extremes as a benchmark when planning for the future. The new research shows that our climate future will be very different from the past.

Melbourne’s 2014 heatwave triggered a surge in demand for ambulances that greatly exceeded the number available. Many of those in distress waited hours for help, and the death toll was estimated at 203.

Just last month, parts of New South Wales and Victoria experienced temperatures 16 degrees warmer than the September average, and 2017 is tracking as the world’s second-warmest year on record.

Preparing ourselves

Last year, the Australian Summit on Extreme Heat and Health warned that the health sector is underprepared to face existing heat extremes.

The health sector is concerned about Australia’s slow progress and is responding with the launch of a national strategy for climate, health and well-being. Reinstating climate and health research, health workforce training and health promotion are key recommendations.

There is much more to be done, and the prospect of major cities sweltering through 50℃ days escalates the urgency.

Read more: Climate policy needs a new lens: health and well-being

Two key messages arise from this. The first is that Australia urgently needs to adapt to the extra warming. Heat-wise communities (or “heat-safe communities” in some states) – where people understand the risks, protect themselves and look after each other – are vital to limit harm from heat exposure. The health sector must have the resources to respond to those who succumb. Research, training and health promotion are central.

The second message is that nations across the world need to improve their efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, so as to meet the Paris climate goal of holding global warming to 1.5℃.

If we can do that, we can stave off some of the worst impacts. We have been warned.

Dr Liz Hanna has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to study health effects of climate change - heat. She is immediate Past President of the Climate and Health Alliance.