Graham Readfearn: Australia's Department of Defence concerned about climate change threat multipliers

Climate change will 'exacerbate existing problems': Defence

by Graham Readfearn, ABC Australia, Environment, September 11, 2013

As first responders and humanitarian assistance providers, the armed forces will be busy in a climate changed future. Credit: Australian Defence Image Library

See also

• Related Story:Climate change a 'threat multiplier' for DefenceNews Online25 Mar 2013
• Related Story:Defence unmoved by climate change dataNews Online9 Oct 2009
• Related Story:Defence needs to recognise climate of riskNews Opinion12 Jun 2009
• Related Story:Ex-Defence Force chief Admiral Chris barrie helps launch Climate Commission reportNews Online17 Jun 2013

Extreme weather and rising sea levels caused by climate change will significantly increase the need for an effective defence force. It's why the military are taking notice of the scientists.

WHEN AUSTRALIAN professors Colin Butler, Tony McMichael and Will Steffen stood up to talk climate change at a series of briefings in Canberra earlier this year there was something very different about the audience.

This wasn't a forum organised by an environment group where the seats are taken up by the usual cohort of the climate concerned.

Instead, this audience was full of hardheaded military types and members of the defence community - people worried more about conflict and geopolitics than wind turbines and carbon footprints. This invitation to speak on climate change had come from Australia's Department of Defence.

"They wanted to get a handle on the idea of tipping elements in the climate system that could cause rapid change that would be very difficult for human societies to deal with," says Professor Steffen, an Australian Climate Commissioner and executive director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University.

Butler, Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Canberra, displayed maps of places where climate change might act as a "threat multiplier" - food and water shortages in eastern parts of Asia and forced migration across Africa.

"The maintenance of peace and preventing war depends on more than just military personnel and hardware," says Professor Butler. "It also depends on what I call the 'determinants of peace' - that is, having enough basic resources of food, shelter and energy."

It's a far cry from 2009, when a Defence White Paper concluded that climate change would not be a serious consideration for the Defence Forces until at least 2030.

Australia's current National Security Strategy lists climate change as a broad global challenge "with national security implications" alongside the more obvious threats of corruption and the resurgence of violent political groups.

Last month in the journal Science, researchers reported the results of an analysis of "45 different conflict data sets" and found "strong causal evidence linking climatic events to human conflict."

When rainfall and temperatures started to shift, the study found a systematic increase in "the risk of many types of conflict."

One of the study's authors, the University of California's Marshall Burke, told the ABC that if societies in the future responded to these changes in the same way as previous ones, then, for example, "We could see a 50 per cent or greater increase in civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of climate change by about 2050."

Does this mean war?

Air Vice-Marshal Neil Hart is head of the Joint Capability Coordination Division at the Department of Defence. His responsibilities include examining the potential impacts of global changes on the preparedness of the Australian Defence Force.

He says that changes in the global climate system have the potential to "exacerbate existing problems" through flooding of low-lying regions, more frequent and severe natural disasters, and shifting rainfall. This could lead to loss of food production in some areas and "climate-driven large-scale human migration."

"Taken together, these factors point to the potential for an increased demand for humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and stabilisation operations over coming decades," he says.

The Australian Government's latest Defence White Paper, published in May, found that global energy, food and water resources were under pressure from population growth, rising affluence and climate change.

"As a frequent first responder to national and international emergencies, Defence needs to be prepared for some of the consequences of global climate system changes, such as potentially increased demands for the Australian Defence Force to undertake humanitarian and disaster relief responses both domestically and across the region."
 

As a threat multiplier, it has the potential to generate and exacerbate destabilising conditions that could reshape the regional security environment.

  The commander of the US Navy in the Pacific, Admiral Samuel Locklear, agrees climate change is a real threat to peace. Earlier this year he said climate change was the greatest long-term security threat for his region.

Rising sea levels could displace communities, he said, and the impacts from climate change could "cripple the security environment."

Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti is the UK's special representative on climate change. Appointed by the Foreign Office, he says climate change will likely "accelerate global instability" and that it challenges "our ability to deliver our core mission of providing national security."

Security council

Professor Tony McMichael, an expert on the impacts of climate change on human health at Australian National University, believes the defence department "can see quite clearly that the world around us is changing pretty rapidly and that has considerable implications for the defence forces on several fronts - both beyond our borders and within."

He says climate change impacts are already causing health issues in the Asia Pacific region, in particular from sea levels rising and damaging land used for growing food.

"So there are concerns that food supplies, agricultural land and even habitable land is now under threat. That represents a number of immediate threats to nutrition, health and safety that in the longer term is likely to disrupt communities."

In September, Australia will take its turn as president of the United Nations Security Council, where there have been long-running calls for more formal recognition of the climate threat.

One of Australia's leading security think tanks, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), produced a detailed report on climate change and Australia's defence force in March.

The report suggested that climate change had "generated little interest in either the Australian Defence Force (ADF) or the Australian Defence Department" compared with the UK and the United States.

"Climate change is transforming the conventional roles of security forces," the report said. "As a threat multiplier, it has the potential to generate and exacerbate destabilising conditions that could reshape the regional security environment."

But the report also pointed out the ADF had been called on to help communities after the 2009 Victorian bushfires, the Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi in 2011. These events, the report said, had resulted in some of the largest defence deployments ever in Australia.

As the issue of refugees continues to dominate the political landscape, Professor McMichael says the current flows of people "really are just a taste of what's to come as living conditions deteriorate in many parts of the world."

The ASPI report highlighted how there were 250 million people living in the river deltas of Asia. In particular, the report said the Mekong and Ganges-Brahmaputra deltas were regarded as being at extreme risk from sea level rise.

"Many defence forces around the world are obviously seeing the strategic implications of a rapidly destabilising climate and what that might mean," adds Professor Steffen. "It's simply in their interest to be prepared."

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/09/11/3845626.htm

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Graham Readfearn: The Slippery Slope to Slime -- Australia's Great Barrier Reef

by Graham Readfearn, ABC (Australia) Environment, April 15, 2013

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is unparalleled in its beauty. But now a new scientific experiment is revealing the future for the reef if climate change continues, and it doesn't look good.

Heron Island is a hub of marine research in the Great Barrier Reef.Credit: University of Queensland (supplied)

ON A LARGE WOODEN deck on a coral cay island in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, research assistant Aaron Chai removes the lid from one of 12 circular white water tanks.

"This is the 'do nothing' tank," he says, peering inside at a careful arrangement of dead, slimy, algae-covered and bleached-white corals.

In July last year, this small reef ecosystem looked very different - corals of vivid purples and blues beside the bright greens of turtle weeds. Since then the levels of carbon dioxide and temperature in the bowl-shaped tank have been changed to the kind of conditions expected by the end of this century if the world 'does nothing' about climate change and its fossil fuel use.

"It's the slippery slope to slime," says the University of Queensland's Associate Professor Sophie Dove, who is running this experiment on the university's research station on Heron Island, about 80 kilometres off Gladstone in central Queensland.

The World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef is already under stress from natural and man-made hazards. There's climate change and ocean acidification, both driven by burning fossil fuels; run-off from farmland; attacks by crown-of-thorns starfish; cyclones; fishing; and shipping.

A study led by the Australian Institute for Marine Sciences found that since 1985 the reef has lost more than half its coral cover, with two thirds of that loss occurring since 1998.

Tanks of tests

Dove's experiment aims to find out what the future may hold for the reef. All the tanks have inside a near-identical mini-ecosystem with specimens taken from a reef slope next to Heron Island. Each tank is filled with sediments, rocks, 11 different types of coral, two types of snails and various other species such as sea cucumbers, small crabs and blenny fish.

There are three 'control' tanks where temperature and carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels change every two hours in line with measurements taken by a sensor on the reef slope.

Conditions in three 'pre-industrial' tanks are treated to temperatures about 1°C less than today and CO₂ levels at 100 parts per million below current levels in the atmosphere, a reduction of around 25 per cent.

Then there are the future tanks. One future scenario presumes the world will do something on emissions so that as we approach the end of this century temperatures are about 2°C warmer and CO₂ levels rise a further 220 ppm.

The ecosystems in three 'do nothing' tanks undergo temperatures about 4.5°C above today with CO₂ levels raised 600ppm.

All of the different scenario tanks move in tandem with the control tanks, meaning they undergo the normal daily and seasonal changes that happen on the reef.

Coral in Tank 4 in July 2012. This tank imitated contemporary conditions on the reef.


Coral in Tank 4 in March 2013. The coral has developed as expected.

Slime

In the 'do nothing' tanks all but one of the corals has died and is being slowly covered in algae. Some of the coral skeletons have actually started to dissolve in the increased acidity of the water.

"If you look at those reefs in those future tanks now, they are really not all that attractive to tourists," says Dove. "It's not something that people would want to go and see. It is becoming more of a mono-culture and that stuff probably isn't that palatable to the fish. That slippery slope to slime looks to be coming true."

As humans have pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, oceans have absorbed about a third of this extra CO₂. This makes the water slightly more acidic and in theory makes it harder for corals to maintain their skeletons.

Coral in Tank 3 in July 2012. Conditions in this tank mimicked those expected in around 100 years if the world does nothing to kerb its fossil fuel use, with higher temperatures and acidity.


Coral in Tank 3 in March 2013. The coral has not survived and algae has taken over.

Warmer and cloudier water can also slow down the growth of corals and some studies have found corals are already growing more slowly in parts of the reef.

When increased temperatures put stress on corals their relationship with their colour-giving algae can break down, leaving behind a "bleached" coral.

"There's always life and death on the reef," says Dove. "We want to see if those corals that are bleached can spring back and go again.

"But we do need to look at what happens to dead coral because most of our live coral sits on a bed of dead stuff underneath. You don't want to be standing on a ladder that's full of woodworm.

"We want to keep the experiment running because we want to see how quickly some things disappear altogether."

Scientific studies published in recent weeks have used projections and computer models to predict the kind of effects on coral reefs that Dove can see in the tanks on Heron Island.

One study published in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at how often coral reefs might bleach in the future. The study found that under all but the most optimistic scenarios for cutting CO₂ emissions, bleaching would be an annual event for 95 per cent of the world's coral reefs by the year 2075

Some reefs in northwestern Australia were even more susceptible to bleaching, the study predicted, with annual bleaching taking place in less than 14 years from now if emissions go unchecked.

A recent study from Western Australia found that a severely disturbed reef may take as long as 12 years to recover from a bleaching.

Meanwhile a study led by the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre found that reefs in shallow waters could be subjected to even higher levels of acidification than was previously thought.

Yet far from climate change being a problem for the future, Dove says the healthy coral in her 'pre-industrial' tanks suggests "the world's already been running a big experiment on the reef over the last 100 years".

She plans to keep her own experiment running to get at least a full year of observations and will soon start to write up results to submit to scientific journals.

When she moves off the subjects of statistics, measurement, "calcification rates" and "symbionts" and onto reefs as amazing places to visit, a whimsical smile breaks.

She has spent the last 30 years or so exploring the wonders of coral reefs. If she's not studying them, she's holidaying on them.

"Some places are just magic," she says. "It's beautiful. There is still some hope but we have to put in a bit of effort. I would hate for it not to be there for people to see."

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/04/15/3730941.htm

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David Spratt, Climate Code Red: “Critical decade” or “lost decade”? Part 1

The conservative tide Political parties which vacillate between denial and delay on climate action are set to dominate Australian politics for the remainder of this decade, so how should we respond?

by David Spratt, Climate Code Red, April 7, 2013 | First in a series | Part two | Part three

The global average temperature is now higher than

at any time during the Holocene, the period of

human civilisation

Australian Climate Commission reports in recent months (here and here) emphasise that this is “the critical decade”. Yet the bookies say there is an 85–90% probability that the Gillard Labor government will lose this year’s federal election – and by a big margin – heralding an era of conservative domination of Australian politics at national and State levels.

Just before Easter, ALP stalwart and former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty wrote that: "The politics of the next few months is no longer about the result of the next election" (emphasis added). Everybody knows Labor is lost, baring Kevin Rudd rising from the dead and at least giving the conservatives a shake.

The next day, the Australian Financial Review reported that “Labor faces annihilation in marginal seats”. Polling in 54 marginal seats found the two-party-preferred (2PP) swing against Labor since the 2010 election had almost doubled, to 9.3% from 4.8% in two months, exposing Labor "to the loss of all 24 marginal seats it holds across Australia and risking up to 15 more semi-marginal electorates". It concluded that, at worse, Labor could win “as few as 32 seats in the 150-seat Parliament”. This was just after the Crean-Rudd leadership fiasco.

The irony is that while Prime Minister Gillard may proclaim to be personally “tough”, her government is anything but. It is strategically incompetent, communicates poorly, is disunited and faces an electoral wipeout. In Crikey, Guy Rundle wrote persuasively of 15 reasons why Labor is “on the edge of the abyss”. ABC presenter and former editor of The Drum, Jonathan Green, asked “Is it time to wonder whether saving the ALP is either necessary or desirable?”

The most recent Newspoll (25 March) had the ALP’s primary vote at 30%, whilst the Liberal–National Party (LNP) opposition had 50% of the primary vote and 58% 2PP. Just 26% approve of Prime Minister Gillard’s performance, whilst 65% disapprove. Crikey’s Bludgertrack 2013 (which averages and weights recent polls) as at 3 April points to an election result on current data of 48 seats to Labor and 99 to the LNP, excluding consideration of the five seats presently held by The Greens and independents.

In summary, most electors have long stopped listening to Julia Gillard (the corollary is that the higher her media profile, the more certain it is than Labor will lose), the LNP is likely to have a majority of 30+ seats, and is very likely to be in power for at least two terms, till 2019. (The last one-term federal government in Australia was that of Scullin in 1929–31.)
Electors’ dislike of Tony Abbott is only surpassed by their dislike of Julia Gillard, which is why Rudd as leader would have been a relief to many voters. At this late stage, Rudd would have been unlikely to keep Labor in power, but he would have at least saved some seats. These propositions were obviously too complex for the majority of members of Labor’s federal caucus.

THE SENATE: Team Abbott requires Senate support to amend or repeal the carbon price, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Target. The Climate Authority and Australian Renewable Energy Agency can easily be trashed by administrative measures.

It is not impossible for the conservatives to control the Senate after 1 July 2014, with the willing support of the one current DLP Senator, John Madigan. This could happen in a number of ways:

• Scenario one: The LNP would need to win one of the two spots in each of the two Territories, three of the six Senate spots in four States, and four of the six Senate spots in two States. The latter is far from impossible and requires the conservative side of politics to win just over 57% of the two-part preferred (2PP) Senate vote in that State. The latest Newspoll puts the LNP’s national 2PP vote at 58%, whilst Bludgertrack 2013 says 2PP support for the LNP is currently 60% in WA, 57–58% in NSW and Queensland, and over 55% is SA.
• Scenario two: In NSW and WA, the final Senate sport (after the LNP claim 3 and Labor 2) will likely be between the LNP and The Greens. It is likely that the Katter Party (Qld) and Xenophon (SA) will win Senate spots, which would exclude the LNP winning a fourth Senate spots in those States.  However, either or both of these could support the LNP in repealing or amending climate legislation. If the DLP, Katter Party and Xenophon all support the LNP, then it only needs to win three of the six Senate spots in each State (very likely) to have a Senate majority. In which case…
• Scenario three: The Greens Senate candidate in the ACT, Simon Sheik, has the opportunity to win that seat from the LNP, a result which may be crucial to who controls the Senate if Scenario two were otherwise realised. His cause is aided by rucktions within the ACT Liberals in which long-standing Senator Gary Humphries has been rolled by the more right-wing faction of Zed Seselja, who is now their Senate candidate. Seselja is abrasive and unpopular, with a recent poll finding 49% had an unfavourable opinion of Mr Seselja, while 37% looked on him favourably.

If the LNP cannot muster a Senate majority on climate issues, then it would need a double dissolution, which would be unlikely before 2015, and after the next Victorian State election. This may be politically difficult: some of the gloss will have gone from Team Abbott and lower house seats would likely be lost, especially if the tide turns on State LNP governments with another two years in power; the economy may dip for global and/or domestic reasons; and punters don’t like unnecessary elections. Of course should Labor cave in (not impossible given the repeated pattern of backflips on climate policy) on some if not all climate legislation, then there would be no Senate impediment.

Turning attention from national to State politics, a look at the political balance of power and climate policy-making in the major economic states is also sobering.

QUEENSLAND: Labor was wiped out in 2012, and now has seven seats in Queensland’s one-chamber parliament, compared to 75 LNP seats. The most recent State Newspoll found the LNP with 62% of 2PP, similar to the result at the State election, with Labor’s primary vote at 27%. It’s hard to imagine how Labor can be competitive in 2015, or the LNP could possibly lose. Given the coming federal Labor wipe-out in Queensland, the odds are on the LNP maintaining government for the remainder of the decade.

NEW SOUTH WALES: Following the March 2011 election in NSW, Labor holds 20 lower-house seats compared to the LNP’s 69 seats. The LNP also control the upper house with 19 seats plus the support of Fred Nile and Shooters and Fishers Party (4 seats). Labor hold 14 seats and The Greens 5 seats.  The most recent State Newspoll gave the LNP 63% of the 2PP, compared to 37% for Labor, whose primary vote is down to an astounding 23%. NSW has fixed four-year terms, with elections in 2015 and 2019. Amongst many stenches surrounding the NSW ALP, the present ICAC hearings featuring Labor luminaries Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald are killing Labor’s brand. There is a very high probability of the LNP retaining power in NSW till 2019 at least.

VICTORIA: The first-term LNP State government, which controls both houses of parliament, had been trailing Labor in the polls, but the recent leadership change will improve its position. The next State election is in late 2014 and both sides have an opportunity to win.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA: In this year’s March state election, the LNP won 64% of the seats, compared to 36% of seats to Labor.  The ALP primary vote was 33%, compared to 53% for the LNP. In the upper house, the LNP have 61% of the seats. The LNP is in power till 2017, and are likely likely to be there till 2021 unless the state economy unwinds.

Taken together, it looks very likely that Australians nationally and in the big economic states – with the possible exception of Victoria – will be governed by conservative parties infested with a sizeable proportion of climate-denial parliamentarians, and with climate policies which could be charitably described as the politics of delay. Slash-and-burn of good environment and climate policies is probably a more honest descriptions, if the actions of incoming LNP governments in Victoria, NSW and Queensland over the last two years are any guide.

My perception at the moment is that most people in the climate movement think an Abbott victory is both appalling and all but inevitable. One big threat now is that the sense of inevitability combined with Team Abbott “looking like winners” may draw more (and especially younger?) voters to “back a winner”, which could effect both The Greens’ vote and the Senate balance. "Winners are grinners" is an old political maxim.

Labor-leaning environment and climate advocacy organisations (defined as those who have been unwilling to make substantial public criticism of Labor over the last decade, even when it was warranted) seem very subdued. Many have been largely off the radar since the climate bills passed in late 2011, and there are few signs yet of strategic  discussion on a likely Abbott victory.  My comments last year still seem valid:

What is even more disturbing is the evidence in 2012 that many of the larger organisations  who have been concerned about winning better climate policy also seem to have taken climate off the public agenda for now. Many big groups campaigned in 2011 under the “Say Yes” banner for the carbon price, which was legislated at the end of that year.  That was the start of a new battle, but in 2012 most of those objectively disappeared from the public discourse, leaving Labor and the Greens alone to fight it out against the opposition, the miners, the Murdoch press, the deniers, the shock jocks and all and sundry. To be honest, I have seen hardly a peep in the media in defence of climate action from the ACTU or unions, the aid and welfare sectors, or many of the big eNGOs. I can see only four explanations, all disturbing. Some ran for cover because it got too difficult or they had gotten what they wanted (for example, the welfare lobby); some didn’t understand the strategic need to continue fighting it out in public; the media and communications professional in those organisation were not up to the job; or these organisations and their campaigners were simply “exhausted”. All four point to management failure.

Perhaps because Labor decided to take climate off the agenda – selling its climate legislation as only about “clean energy” and those mysterious “household compensation” TV ads on tax cuts that made no link to the climate bills – then some groups also considered Labor’s electoral chances would be bolstered if they sat on their hands as well.  Their general unwillingness to take full advantage of the considerable public space created by the scientists, meteorologists and the Climate Commission on the link between current extreme weather events and global warming is not a good sign.

In contradistinction, some of the smaller advocacy groups are full steam ahead at a State, regional and sectoral level. The “Lock the gate” campaign against coal seam gas has garnered amazing local community support and gained great momentum and state and national political and media attention, and the campaigns against coal expansion are growing across the eastern States, they are better resourced and attracting critical support from both local communities and experienced climate activists.  There has been strong community support for renewable energy, reflected in both the one-millionth solar PV domestic installation, and in the “big solar” Port Augusta campaign.

When all is said and done, and despite the comings and goings in Canberra, closing down the polluters is always at the heart of effective climate activism and advocacy, especially since end-use emissions from Australia coal and gas exports will dwarf domestic emissions by a factor of three- or four-to-one. Researcher Guy Pearse says that the expansion of Australian coal exports with the bipartisan blessing of Labor and the LNP will mean that by “2020 or soon thereafter, Australia is exporting nearly twice as much CO2 as is Saudi Arabia today.”  Pearse estimates that:

… Australian coal exports will generate around 75Gt (billion tonnes) CO2 between now and 2050 – perhaps another 5Gt will come from domestic coal use, and 8-10 Gt from LNG if the expansion of coal seam gas proceeds.

This totals around 90 billion tonnes of CO2, compared to current total domestic emissions of 0.55 billion tonnes a year, or just over 20 billion tonnes in total to 2050 if current emissions were held constant.

From this perspective, neither Labor nor the LNP by their behaviour indicate  any significant understanding of the policy consequences of the carbon budget approachwhich the government’s own Climate Commission advocates, nor any grasp of what needs to be done in this “critical decade”. The brutal truth is that if Labor should remain in power and stick to an emissions reduction target of just 5% by 2020 (achieved by importing carbon credits) and actual emissions not peaking till 2025,  this would still be largely a lost decade. With Team Abbott, the outcome is worse.

More of this in part 3, but next in part 2 a look at the major parties after September 2013.

http://www.climatecodered.org/2013/04/critical-decade-or-lost-decade-1.html

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Newspaper rag, The Australian, provides space for absurd gibberish from James Delingpole

The Australian publishes James Delingpole’s call for climate “alarmists” to face court with power to issue death sentence

James Delingpole (at left)

by Graham Readfearn, Graham Readfearn's blog, April 3, 2013

I IMAGINE only a small percentage of people reading this have had any journalism training, but don’t let that stop you from pondering the following ethical question.

If you read a newspaper story that included a direct quote from someone – let’s say, for instance, UK climate scientist Dr David Viner – would it be acceptable to put quotation marks on the headline of that story and claim it was a quote from Dr Viner? You can have a minute to think about it.

It might help you to know that the headline was not written by the reporter who interviewed Dr Viner and wrote the story, and certainly not by Dr Viner himself. In short, a third person – a sub-editor – wrote the headline.

You don’t need a minute? Of course not: it would be unprofessional, unethical and factually wrong to pass off a sub-editor’s made-up words as Dr Viner’s.

The Australian newspaper has just published a column from UK-based climate science mangler and anti-wind farm activist James Delingpole that tries to argue that Australia’s recent unprecedented heatwave and hottest month on record wasn’t all that hot and that global warming “alarmists” should be answering to a court with the power to issue a death sentence (no, I don’t exaggerate, but we’ll get to that at the end).

In the story, Delingpole says that Dr Viner had “famously declared” in 2000 that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”.

But here’s the thing. Dr Viner never did utter those words. He was indeed quoted in a story in the UK’s The Independent newspaper which carried the headline “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. But the headline was a gross over-statement: the first paragraph makes the  far more modest claim that a trend to warmer winters meant that  “snow is starting to disappear from our lives”.

The reporter, Charles Onians, quoted Dr Viner as saying that within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.” Note the absence of quote marks on the time frame being within a few years – they were Onians’s words, just as the headline was the sub-editor’s.

So Dr Viner’s actual prediction was that at some point in the future snow could become “a very rare and exciting event.” As well, the story paraphrases him as adding an important qualifier – that heavy snow will return occasionally and catch people unprepared. But Delingpole leaves this bit out.

Delingpole then uses the non-quote that Dr Viner didn’t say as a launchpad to ridicule him. “Viner has since become a legend in his own lunchtime, frequently quoted on the internet, sometimes having his name joshingly used as a synonym for snow. This isn’t because he got his prediction right, of course. It’s because, like Flannery, he got it so spectacularly, hilariously, hopelessly wrong.”

Hopelessly wrong, Mr Delingpole? What, like hopelessly attributing a quote to someone who never said it?

Delingpole is of course “reporting” from an unseasonably cold and recently snowbound United Kingdom, which the BBC reports has just experienced its second coldest March since records began.

Scientists are now reporting a link between the loss of sea ice in the Arctic – driven by human-caused climate change – and cold snaps in the northern hemisphere like the one experienced by the UK. A recent scientific paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explained the link.

Delingpole also says in the column that Australia’s recent record-breaking summer heatwave wasn’t that hot. “The thermometers were higher when the First Fleet arrived in the Sydney summer of 1790–91,” writes Delingpole, presumably having travelled back in time to check that the First Fleet thermometer was positioned within something resembling a Stevenson screen to ensure sunlight or incorrect air flow didn’t corrupt the reading.

It’s possible that Delingpole based his statement from this guest blog post by Australian MP Craig Kelly on Watts Up With That, where Kelly wrote that on December 27th, 1790, one of these First Fleet thermometers near Observatory Hill in Sydney recorded a temperature of 42.8 °C.

It’s a shame that Delingpole didn’t check this figure. Four days after Kelly wrote that story, Sydney recorded its hottest day ever with 45.8 °C at Observatory Hill on 18 January – a full three degrees hotter than Kelly’s favoured First Fleet thermometer. Even The Australian reported it.

But in any case, Australia’s recent record breaking heatwave wasn’t a heatwave confined to one temperature reading in one place. As a Bureau of Meteorology special climate statement pointed out, “maximum temperatures over the period 1–18 January have been 6 °C or more above normal over a wide area of interior central and southern Australia and 45 °C has been reached at least once during the event over 46.9% of Australia.”

You might think that The Australian would be wary about using Delingpole, after a recent Australian Press Council upheld a complaint about one of his previous contributions to Australia’s only national newspaper.

In that story in May last year, Delingpole quoted an un-named sheep farmer as saying that the wind farm industry  was ”bloody well near a pedophile ring. They’re f . . king our families and knowingly doing so.”

The APC said this was “highly offensive” and “the level of offensiveness is so high that it outweighs the very strong public interest in freedom of speech.”

But rather than heed the blunt-toothed press council’s finding, Delingpole was given more space by The Australian to respond. He wrote: “I stand by every word of the piece – especially the bit about pedophiles. I would concede that the analogy may be somewhat offensive to the pedophile community.”

How could even Delingpole top this statement for offensiveness?  He has a prime contender at the bottom of his most recent column, where he writes: “The climate alarmist industry has some very tough questions to answer: preferably in the defendant’s dock in a court of law, before a judge wearing a black cap.”

To those not au fait with the traditions of the English courts, black caps were only worn by judges when handing out death sentences.

By continuing to publish such low-grade and offensive polemics, in my view the only things hanging limp from the gallows are The Australian's credibility on climate change and its professional standards.

http://www.readfearn.com/2013/04/the-australian-delingpole-death-sentence/

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Australian scientists say Australia's climate has changed for good -- expect more drought and heat records

by environment reporter Sarah Clarke, ABC (Australia) News, April 3, 2013

RELATED STORY: 'Angry Summer' made worse by climate change: Commission

RELATED STORY: Australia breaks hottest summer record

MAP: Australia

The nation's top climate scientists and science bodies have for the first time endorsed a major report that says Australia's climate has shifted permanently in some cases.

The peer-reviewed assessment notes that there is "strong consensus" around this central finding, and in some cases the weather has changed for good.

Last summer was by all means a record breaker, with 123 weather records broken in 90 days.

As well as heat waves and unprecedented temperatures, there was heavy rainfall and major flooding.

But according to the Climate Commission, this was not a one-off.

In its most comprehensive assessment analysis, the commission says Australia has a future of records yet to be broken and "in some cases day-to-day weather has shifted for good".

AUDIO: Scientists say climate has shifted for good (AM)

"We see a pattern emerging. The south-west and the south-east of Australia have become drier - the south-west since the mid '70s and the south-east since the mid '90s," report author Professor Will Steffen said.

"That tells us for the future that we would expect to see dry conditions more often, more droughts in the future and very importantly we don't expect to see the previous pre-climate-change weather conditions come back.

"To a certain extent, for a long period of time the best we can hope for, at least in terms of [our] grandchildren, is to stabilise the planet and it will stabilise at a temperature which is probably 2 degrees or more above the pre-industrial.

"That means some changes in patterns will lock in probably for centuries."

Read the Climate Commission's latest report: The Critical Decade: Extreme Weather

VIDEO: Professor Will Steffen speaks with ABC News Breakfast. (ABC News)

Flooding events increasing

In the report, the Climate Commission looks at droughts, tropical cyclones, sea-level rise, heatwaves, bushfires and heavy rainfall.

While it says the number of tropical cyclones will not increase, the influence of climate change means they will become more intense.

One-in-100-year flooding events are already becoming more common, and sea levels have risen 20 centimetres since 1880.

While there are still some questions raised about global warming and its influence, the Climate Commission hopes this report will clear the water.

All the top climate scientists in Australia have backed it, as well as the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the UN's chief science body, the intergovernmental panel on climate change.

Climate Commission chief Professor Tim Flannery says the report sends a clear message.

"I think it's really important that people understand where the debate is in climate science and where it isn't," he said.

"And when you get a group like this that are endorsing or supporting this report in detail, I think that sends an important message that the scientific community is clear about these facts that we've laid out in this report."

With the report warning of greater risks of more intense and severe weather, emergency service bodies are reassessing their plan of attack.

Paul Considine from the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC) says its members now need to look at how their bodies are resourced, how they are staffed, and their capability to deal with the weather ahead.

"It's important that to take on board the advice we are receiving from the experts in the field and to say given that we now need to sit down and have a think, not just in isolation but with our governments and our communities that we serve in how we react to these predicted weather events," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-03/scientist-endorse-report-that-says-climate-has-shifted/4606372

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Graham Readfearn: Climate Denial Think Tank's Plans To Abolish Climate Change Departments in Australia

by Graham Readfearn, DeSmogBlog, March 21, 2013

A LEADING Australian free-market think tank with close ties to the country's conservative Liberal Party has revealed its plan for climate change - abolish it.

Aside from the current Labor-led government's mud-wrestling over its leadership, all opinion polls point to a landslide victory for the Tony Abbott-led Liberal Party at the next election, which has been set for September.

The Institute of Public Affairs, a leading promoter of climate science denial and misrepresentation, has revealed its recommendations for the next government in a document outlining budget cuts. The plan was written by Alan Moran, director of the think tank's deregulation unit.

The document made the pages of The Australian newspaper but the report did not mention the document's detailed plans to obliterate all climate change functions in the country's public sector. In one section the document outlines the think tank's recommendations for public sector departments. In dealing with the future of the "Climate Change and Energy Efficiency" department, Moran writes simply: "Abolish."

Pretty much every other federal government function to administer climate change policy, research global warming, ensure sustainable development or support renewable energy gets chopped under Moran's plan. Many publicly-funded research programs and agencies are either chopped entirely or cut to the bone.

As well as abolishing the country's climate change department, the IPA plan would also scrap the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and cut research into sustainable development and climate change carried out in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (the IPA plan also suggested a departmental branch responsible for plain packaging legislation should also be abolished, not surprising given that British American Tobacco has been a recent funder of the IPA).

The Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities would have 2,149 staff cuts and all "climate change functions" in the Bureau of Meteorology would be abolished, along with 15 staff. The CSIRO -- Australia's main science and research agency responsible for some world leading science on climate change -- would be halved in size with 2,780 people made redundant.

Moran's document is of course simply a wish list, but it comes from a think tank with close ties to the Liberal Party which, if you believe the polls, is heading for an easy win at the next election. John Roskam, the IPA's executive director, has been reported to have missed out on Liberal Party pre-selections for seats more than once, most notably in the seat of Higgins in 2009 where he had been considered a frontrunner. 

He is a former boss of the  Menzies Research Centre -- the Liberal Party's official think tank. In a profile on Roskam for The Power Index, IPA adjunct fellow Tom Switzer said Roskam had driven the think tank's agenda on climate change -- that is, an agenda to promote climate change denial and oppose policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The IPA, which does not reveal its funders, has been a sponsor of climate science denial conferences hosted in the US by free market think tank the Heartland Institute. Since the early 1990s the think tank has been hosting and promoting the views of climate science deniers such as Fred Singer, Vaclav Klaus, Pat Michaels and others.

On the IPA board is Liberal Party powerbroker Michael Kroger, who in 2009 was reported as being behind a push to clear the deadwood from the party and install Roskam and another IPA director, Tim Wilson, as fresh-faced new candidates. In recent weeks, a leaked Liberal Party discussion paper revealed it was ruminating over the merits of creating a new economic zone for the north of Australia.

The idea is being pushed by the IPA in partnership with another think tank,Australians for Northern Development and Economic Vision, founded by coal and iron ore mining magnate Gina Rinehart. ANDEV and the IPA was delighted at the Liberal Party taking up its plan.

Jim Chalmers, who heads the Labor Party's think tank The Chifley Research Centre, wrote in The Drum that Moran's document should be seen as a "chilling preview" of what was to come under a future Liberal government. Liberal leader Tony Abbott has already pledged to repeal the nation's price on greenhouse gas emissions. 

But it's ridiculous to think that any government -- even a Liberal one -- would shut down all of its climate change functions entirely, isn't it? Well no, unfortunately it isn't.  

As documented by The Global Mail, after the Liberal National Party came to power in Queensland a year ago, Premier Campbell Newman's government proceeded to napalm a host of environmental programs. Support was pulled for a major solar power project, 1,400 jobs with an environment focus were axed, key legislation protecting wild rivers was rolled back while  mining and resources was installed as on of the "four pillars" of his leadership. When it came to protecting the state's iconic Great Barrier Reef, Newman reminded voters that Queensland was "in the coal business" and that environmental protection would not get in the way of economic growth driven by the resources industry.

And the state's Office of Climate Change? Abolished. So wide reaching have been the cuts in Queensland, they might as well have been written by the IPA.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/03/21/climate-denial-think-tank-s-plans-abolish-climate-change-departments-australia

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