28 October 2015, Climate Home, Australia PM Turnbull stands by coal amid moratorium calls. Recently annointed prime minister is defending mine expansion plans, to the ire of Pacific neighbours and climate campaigners. When Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister last month, climate watchers were hopeful he would reverse Australia’s coal-friendly stance. There was some sign of that this week, as newly appointed chief science advisor Alan Finkelenvisioned a world free of fossil fuels. Yet it has been business as usual for the country’s bullish mine expansion plans, which threaten international climate goals. That is despite 61 prominent Australians, from rugby player David Pocock to Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, backing Pacific islanders’ calls for a moratorium. Dismissing the idea, Turnbull told national journalists: “Coal is a very important part, a very large part, the largest single part in fact, of the global energy mix… and likely to remain that way for a very long time.” He variously argued that coal-fired power would reduce poverty in developing countries and that if Australia stopped exporting the black stuff, others would. “It would make not the blindest bit of difference to global emissions,” the Guardian reported him saying. Read More here
hmcadmin
26 October 2015, Washington Post, Scientists confirm that East Antarctica’s biggest glacier is melting from below. Earlier this year, we learned some worrisome climate news. Although Antarctic scientists have been most concerned about loss of ice in the western part of Antarctica, a study in Nature Geoscience suggested a vulnerability in the much larger ice sheet of East Antarctica, as well. East Antarctica’s enormous Totten Glacier, you see, has a key similarity with the glaciers of West Antarctica — namely, it is rooted deep below sea level. This means that it is potentially exposed to warm ocean waters, and the study in March uncovered a deep and 5-kilometer wide subsea valley beneath the glacier’s oceanfront ice shelf that, the authors said, could be a route for warm offshore water to reach its base. This might explain why the glacier has been observed to be thinning and lowering, or losing elevation, over time, they noted. Located along East Antarctica’s Sabrina Coast, Totten glacier is the ice sheet’s largest. It holds back 3.9 meters of potential sea level rise, or over 12 feet, and connects with the very deep and vast Aurora Subglacial Basin, which is also rooted well below sea level. So the results were treated as being of enormous consequence. But they’re not the end of the story, as there is vastly more to learn about Totten glacier. A new study out in Geophysical Research Letters reaffirms some of these core concerns about Totten’s melt — while also appearing to partly alleviate others. Read More here
26 October 2015, Climate News Network, Bonn climate talks fail to cut rich-poor divide. Negotiations to smooth the way towards a new global agreement on tackling climate change ended without closing deep rifts between developed and developing countries. The world is hoping for a positive outcome at theUN climate change conference in Paris in early December to head off potentially catastrophic climate change. Judged by the outcome of a five-daypreparatory meeting in Bonn, the outlook is not good. Once again, delegates from around the world argued about cash, with developing and poorer countries accusing wealthier nations of reneging on promises to provide more money to fight a warming climate and adapt to climate change. The developing world argues that many poorer countries are already feeling the effects of climate change – caused mainly by the greenhouse gas emissions of the richer nations. Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, from South Africa, speaking on behalf of more than 130 developing countries, including China, told delegates at the talks in Germany that rich countries had be ready to provide far more financial assistance to help poorer nations, which were already having to deal with climate change. Read More here
26 October 2015, Carbon Brief, Old battlelines resurface as countries meet for last time ahead of Paris climate summit. Countries have completed the last round of negotiations before a landmark meeting in Paris in December, where they have agreed to sign a new UN agreement on climate change. Despite the urgency, the week produced little consensus, with issues such as finance proving fractious till the end. Nonetheless, parties produced a new draft text, which will form the basis of the final negotiations in Paris. The document does little to narrow down the options for the final deal, but crystallizes the key debates that negotiators and ministers will attempt to resolve in just over a month’s time. Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, told the Chatham House climate conference in London today that the new text was “now party owned” and, as a result, was “not biased, but balanced”. Read More here