Tesla just switched on the world's biggest lithium-ion battery in Australia

South Australia is now leading the world in dispatchable renewable energy," state Premier Jay Weatherill said at the official launch at the Hornsdale wind farm, owned by private French firm Neoen.

Tesla won a bid in July to build the 129-megawatt-hour battery for South Australia, which expanded in wind power far quicker than the rest of the country, but has suffered a string of blackouts over the past 18 months.

Supporters, however, say it will help stabilize the grid in a state that now gets more than 40 percent of its electricity from wind energy, but needs help when the wind dies down.

"Storage can respond within a fraction of a second. It can address those stability issues very quickly without needing to resort to using large power plants," said Praveen Kathpal, vice president of AES Energy, a losing bidder to build the battery.

South Australia is now leading the world in dispatchable renewable energy," state Premier Jay Weatherill said at the official launch at the Hornsdale wind farm, owned by private French firm Neoen.

Tesla won a bid in July to build the 129-megawatt-hour battery for South Australia, which expanded in wind power far quicker than the rest of the country, but has suffered a string of blackouts over the past 18 months. More

Kiribati president says Australia's loyalty to coalmines 'selfish and unjust'

The president of Kiribati has criticised Australia’s commitment to new coalmines on economic grounds as a “very selfish perspective” that illustrates the “fundamentally unjust” dynamics of climate change.

Anote Tong, whose small Pacific island nation is threatened by rising sea levels, has written to other national leaders calling for a worldwide moratorium on new mines ahead of UN climate talks in Paris in December.

Tong, who called for a pact to end new coal projects “simply to find some very concrete action on climate change”, told Guardian Australia he knew it would “touch on sensitivities”.

“I know the closure of coal-fired power plants will not happen,” he said.

“But at least the moratorium on coalmines, it gives people that sense that something can be done … and it allows those involved in the industry time to adapt. I thought it would be more achievable.

“In climate negotiations to date we keep talking around the numbers, two degrees or more than two degrees celsius. [But] it’s about what we do. And coal is certainly something very concrete, very significant in terms of what it does.”

In recent weeks the Australian government and the mining lobby have portrayed environmental groups as saboteurs of valuable coal projects, using legal challenges to put jobs and economic growth at risk.

Tong, who said he was yet to receive a reply from the Australian government, wrote in his letter that “science, as confirmed by the [intergovernmental panel on climate change], dictates that for the world to avoid catastrophic climate change, we must leave the vast bulk of carbon reserves in the ground”.

Asked about the economic arguments raised in defence of the continued advance of Australia’s coal industry – including its self-proclaimed role in helping alleviate world poverty– Tong said: “My response is very simple: it’s a very selfish perspective.

“I understand and I’ve always said that for Australia, climate change is not the top of the agenda because they’ve got high ground,” he said. “We don’t.”

Other countries had refused to acknowledge the “fundamentally unjust” situation that climate change is “not contained within the countries that create it”.

“The question is: do we have the moral obligation to worry and care about those for whom this is a serious issue?” Tong said.

“My answer is yes. You have every responsibility and obligation to do something about it. If it was happening inside Australia, there is no doubt at all in my mind that it would be on top of what everyone was doing.”

Amid fears about Kiribati’s survival, the government has been forced to consider radical engineering schemes to mitigate a shrinking land mass, while buying farmland in Fiji as a “food security” measure.

Climate change had dominated his 12-year term as president (which will end next year), but recent unprecedented tidal flooding and cyclones represented a “new and frightening” development.

“It puts some panic in people,” Tong said. “It’s not something we’re talking about happening into the future – we can see the problem. What do we do when the next tide comes? And we have a spring tide coming at the end of this month.

“There are really no sceptics [in Kiribati] at the present moment in time.

“I must be honest to say that I’ve never really gone out of my way to publicise to our own people what is happening because I didn’t see the sense in making them fear what they really cannot do anything about.

“So my focus has been trying as much as possible to alert the international community to the fact planet Earth has a problem, and so do we.”

Tong said the ideal outcome of Paris would include “realistic solutions” to the impacts that Kiribati and others face. He is among those lobbying for an international aid package for Kiribati and other vulnerable nations to meet the costs of climate change.

“For us, zero emissions is not even good enough. The reality is what’s already in the atmosphere will … continue to raise the sea to levels that would ensure that we go down,” he said.

“The future is guaranteed to be very terrible in a very short space of time. We need a package.”

Suggestions that vulnerable countries be given loans instead of grants were not politically acceptable.

“People will not go for it. It is the responsibility of the international community to come up with a package,” he said.

He hoped that “what happens in terms of delivery, what happens in terms of the targets, will happen very soon – sooner rather than later”.

“It is a moral issue and it’s absolutely unjust for those to go ahead and do what they’re doing without regard for those whose survival will be in question,” he said. More

 

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I'm fighting to keep my home above water

My name is Milañ Loeak, I’m from the Marshall Islands, and I bring you a message on behalf of my Climate Warrior brothers and sisters from across Oceania.

You've probably heard it all before -- that the climate is changing, that the ocean is rising, that my home in the islands will be the first to go. But the people of the Pacific are not drowning, we are fighting. And the biggest threat to our homes is the fossil fuel industry.

So here's how we're fighting back: there's a coal port in Newcastle, Australia and it's the largest in the world, shipping approximately 617,000 tons of coal every single day. If the port were a country, it would be the 9th highest emitting country in the world. That’s why I have travelled to Australia to shut it down for a day.

Using traditional canoes, I and 30 other Pacific Climate Warriors are going to paddle into the oncoming path of coal ships. Behind us will be hundreds of Australians in kayaks, on surfboards and whatever else they can find, united with us as we stand up to the fossil fuel industry.

But we need more than hundreds of Australians standing with us -- we are going to need you too.

The fossil fuel industry will try to dismiss us. They will launch their PR machine to say that we are just a small group acting alone and that we do not speak for others. But we know that we are not acting alone. We are standing with front line communities around the world when we say it is time to end our addiction to fossil fuels before it destroys our homes, our communities, and our culture.

As the Pacific Climate Warriors paddle into the water on October 17th, show that you stand with us -- click here to sign on to our call for solidarity.

Stopping one day of coal exports alone won't keep our homes above water, but it marks the rise of the Pacific Climate Warriors, and the beginning of our defense of the Pacific Islands.

I ask you to join us in this fight -- because we cannot save the Pacific Islands on our own.

Warm Pacific wishes,

Milañ Loeak, Republic of the Marshall Islands

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350.org is building a global climate movement. Become a sustaining donor to keep this movement strong and growing.

 

 

 

© 2014

Climate Criminality': Australia OKs Biggest Coal Mine

In a decision criticized as "climate criminality," Australia's federal government announced Monday that it has given the OK to the country's biggest coal mine.

The announcement comes less than three months after the state of Queensland gave its approval to the project.

"With this decision," wrote Ben Pearson, head of programs for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, "the political system failed to protect the Great Barrier Reef, the global climate and our national interest."

"Off the back of repealing effective action on climate change," stated Australian Greens environment spokesperson Senator Larissa Waters, referring to the scrapping of the carbon tax, "the Abbott Government has ticked off on a proposal for Australia’s biggest coal mine to cook the planet and turn our Reef into a super highway for coal ships."

Adani Mining expects its Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project in Queensland's Galilee Basin to produce up to 60 million tonnes of coal a year, most of which will be sent to India. A rail line will be created from the mine to a new coal port terminal, an expansion which means up to 3 million meters of dredging waste will be dumped in the area of the World Heritage-listed Reef.

UNESCO "noted with concern" (pdf) in April the prospect of additional dredging that would negatively impact the Reef and warned that the site could be added to the List of World Heritage in Danger.

The approval for the Carmichael project came from Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt with "36 strict conditions"—conditions that did nothing to allay the environmental fears raised by critics.

Felicity Wishart, Great Barrier Reef Campaign Manager for the Australian Marine Conservation Society, stated that the conditions would be "laughable, if they weren’t so serious."

Wishart also accused the Queensland and federal government of "watering down environmental protections and fast-tracking approvals for new ports and LNG plants on the Great Barrier Reef."

"The Federal government has fast-tracked industrialization along the Reef because it is too close to the mining industry," she stated.

Pearson also admonished the close ties, saying in a statement, "The Federal Environment Minister has laid out the red carpet for a coal company with a shocking track record to dig up the outback, dump on the Great Barrier Reef and fuel climate change."

Amongst Greenpeace's list of why the project shouldn't go ahead is that

[t]he mine would steal precious water. The mine requires 12 gigaliters (12 billion liters) of water each year from local rivers and underground aquifers. That’s enough drinking water for every Queenslander for three years. Even ten kilometers away, water tables are expected to drop by over one meter.

In addition to the dangers of dredging up the sea-bed, the list adds:

The burning of coal from Carmichael mine would produce four times the fossil fuel emissions of New Zealand. It is a catastrophe for the climate.

"History will look back on the Abbott Government’s decision today as an act of climate criminality," Waters stated. More

 

Greenpeace Australia Pacific created this infographic to highlight what the group sees as risks the Carmichael mine poses:

 

 

© 2014

Record hot year causes fire emergency in Australia

A state of emergency has been declared in Australia's most populous state and officials are saying that the 63 fires burning in New South Wales (NSW) present the worst fire danger seen in 45 years.

Seventeen of the fires are uncontained, and two, in Springwood and Lithgow, are classed as emergency situations. Three boys, age 11, 14, and 15, are being questioned by police on suspicion of lighting fires.

With temperatures remaining above 30°C and with wind gusts of up to 100 kilometres an hour, conditions favour the fires, and this weather is expected to continue. Firefighters fear a 300 kilometre fire front might join with a separate 60 kilometre fire (see map of current fires).

Ahead of the worsening weather, the NSW Rural Fire Service was conducting last-ditch back-burning operations – lighting small controlled fires in the path of large blazes so that no flammable material remains in the area, and the fire front cannot advance. These efforts were planned to strengthen containment lines at State Mine near Lithgow. Rural Fire Service commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, said the operations were risky but considered.

"If it comes off, and works, it's a wonderful firefighting effort," he told a press briefing. "But there is every likelihood investing in a strategy like that, that it will breach, that it will fail – and then you've got a fire that will cross over everything you've just tried to implement."

Primed for ignition

The worst property losses were caused by separate fires closer to Sydney in Springwood and Winmalee. More than 200 houses have been destroyed and at least one person has died so far.

The state of emergency gives authorities the power to force residents to evacuate and the right to demolish buildings that pose a danger, but so far these measures have not been used.

Climate models predict the worst fire weather will be increasingly common in NSW, but the ferocity of the current fires was not caused by particularly bad fire weather, says climate scientist Andy Pitman from the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Instead, it was the result of a very warm winter – the second warmest on record in NSW and part of Australia's warmest 12 months on record– which was probably caused by climate change, according to Pitman.

"Vegetation that would commonly basically shut down in winter continued to transpire," says Pitman. By continuing to give off water, the vegetation dried out the soil so that in spring, the plants had little access to water and became dry. That primed the landscape for fire: "Really hot days combined with strong winds plus ignition equals a major problem," says Pitman. More

 

Western Australia’s catastrophic forest collapse

Recent, unprecedented, climate-driven forest collapses in Western Australia show us that ecosystem change can be sudden, dramatic and catastrophic. These collapses are a clear signal that we must develop new strategies to mitigate or prevent the future effects of climate change in Australian woodlands and forests. But society’s view of forests is ever-changing: are we willing to understand ecosystems and adapt to changing conditions?

The south west of Western Australia has experienced a long-term climate shift since the early 1970s, resulting in dryer and hotter than average conditions. This shifted baseline, or average, has also led to more frequent extreme events. In 2010, the region experienced the driest and second hottest year on record.

These climate changes have resulted in significant decreases in stream-flow and groundwater levels. For example, formerly permanent streams now stop flowing for considerable periods. Groundwater levels have fallen up to 11 meters in some forested areas, with larger decreases in populated areas. Clearly, soil water reserves have dried out substantially and will likely continue to do so; we are now starting to see the implications of this. Although most of the West Australian society, particularly those in urban environments, may be well-buffered from these changes, ecosystems are not.

The climatic changes occurring in the south west of Western Australia are contributing to deteriorating woodland and forest health. In the past 20 years, insect infestations and fungal diseases have plagued many iconic tree species, including tuart, wandoo, flooded gum, marri, and WA peppermint, increasing their mortality rates. Many of these disorders are likely triggered or incited by changing climate conditions. More

 

Weird weather around the world sees in 2012

With unusual weather in Europe and the Americas, low Arctic ice, droughts in Africa and Latin America, 2012 picks up where 2011 left off. 

 2012 has begun where 2011 left off with weird weather in Europe and the Americas, Arctic ice at almost its lowest extent ever recorded in midwinter, disastrous droughts and searing heat in Africa and Latin America, and one of the world's biggest insurance companies warning that climate change will increase damages.Thousands of people in Austria, France and Germany were on Thursday still digging themselves out of some of the heaviest snowfalls seen in 30–50 years. After Europe's driest and warmest autumn for nearly 150 years, a massive storm dumped nearly 18ft of snow in two days this week, cutting off ski resorts and villages and leaving people and animals stranded. 

The summit of the 9,718ft Zugspitze mountain in Germany which had only 7.5 inches of snow a few weeks ago, now has 150 inches.However, Arctic sea ice has not fully reformed after last year's massive melt when it reached its second lowest extent ever recorded. It is now at its third lowest December extent recorded since records began 30 years ago, averaging 12.38m square kilometres (4.78 million square miles).More worryingly from a climate perspective, is data that shows its volume is now at it lowest ever recorded level at the start of a year. 

According to the US government-funded Polar Science Centre at the University of Washington, the volume on 31 December was around 12,230 km3 – a massive 47% lower than the maximum in 1979, and 37% below the mean as depicted on this chart. More

 

Success in Durban can not disguise need for climate adaptation

Earlier this month, the world’s heads of state, government, industry and NGOs met in Durban, South Africa, to discuss our common future. These climate negotiations were more successful than many people had feared. 

A new international climate agreement will enter into force in 2020. This agreement makes life more predictable for industry and supports a future based on low-carbon technology. But we cannot rest on our laurels because - irrespective of political processes - climate forces are wreaking havoc everywhere. The authorities are drowning in information but lack knowledge about how to adapt to the climate changes we are already facing.

A number of Native Americans in the town of Kivalina in the wilds of Alaska are currently suing oil and energy companies, accusing them of destroying the basis of Kivalina’s life. The town depends on ice formations which protect it against the massive forces of nature which ravage Alaska’s coast. The problem is that the ice has melted dangerously fast over the past few years. Even in 2006, the US authorities’ research results showed that the little society had to be relocated as a result of global warming. The so-called “climigration” lawsuit that is currently taking place in the USA may be the first of many actions for damages in which companies are made responsible for the negative effect that their operations have on the climate of local communities.

A new UN report shows that man-made climate change has already led to extreme weather in the form of heat waves and flooding. Thailand is a country that has over the past few weeks become painfully aware of how catastrophic amounts of rain can destroy the basis of existence for millions of people. Here in Norway, we were reminded of nature’s inexorable forces when Hurricane Berit struck local communities along the Norwegian coast, leading to major destruction. Norwegian municipalities are now being urged to implement measures to adapt to the extreme weather resulting from climate change.

There is widespread anger, frustration and disappointment about politicians and other decision-makers. The authorities, on the other hand, are drowning in information on climate change but lack knowledge about how to deal with the risks they are facing. More

The Coming Mega Drought

Australia experienced the worst and most consistent dry period in its recorded history over much of the past decade. The Murray River failed to reach the sea for the first time ever in 2002. Fires swept much of the country, and dust storms blanketed major cities for days. Australia’s sheep population dropped by 50 percent, and rice and cotton production collapsed in some years. Tens of thousands of farm families gave up their livelihoods. The drought ended in 2010 with torrential rains and flooding.

Australia’s Millennium Drought is a wake-up call for residents of the drought-plagued southwestern U.S. and for all of us. What happened in Australia could happen in the U.S., with devastating consequences to the region and to the nation. We can avert the worst, however, if we pay attention to Australia’s experience and learn the right lessons.

The southwestern U.S. bears some resemblance to parts of Australia before the drought. Both include arid regions where thirsty cities and irrigated agriculture are straining water supplies and damaging ecosystems. The Colorado River no longer flows to the sea in most years. Water levels in major reservoirs have steadily declined over the past decade; some analysts project that the largest may never refill. The U.S. and Australia also share a changing global climate that is increasing the risk of drought.

Evidence is mounting that climate change is playing a role in Australia’s water woes. Since 1950 average rainfall has decreased 15 percent, and researchers found average temperatures over southeastern Australia from 1995 to 2006 were 0.3 to 0.6 degree Celsius higher than the long-term average. The combination of higher evaporation and lower precipitation depletes soil moisture and reduces runoff, making droughts more intense and more frequent. Australian scientists forecast a 35 to 50 percent decline in water availability in the Murray-Darling river basin and a drop in flows near the mouth of the Murray by up to 70 percent by 2030.  More