5 June 2017, Renew Economy, “Reputation” clause may scupper government loan deal for Adani. The federal government’s ability to hand Adani Energy a $1 billion loan to help finance the rail link for the Carmichael coal project in the Galilee basin has been dealt a decisive blow by the emergence of a “reputation” clause that must guide the board of Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF). The Board of NAIF is expected to make a decision on whether to grant the funding in the next few days, but legal experts, financiers and environmental advocates argue that the existence of the reputation clause written in to the investment mandate by then resources minister Josh Frydenberg make it impossible for approval to be given. Leading environmentalists and climate change advocates such as Tim Flannery and John Hewson says the wording of the “reputation” clause should forbid the directors from supporting the loan, particularly in light of the international climate deal, the impacts on the Greater Barrier Reef, and on water quality. They say that Section 16 of the Investment Mandate of the NAIF, a $5 billion fund created by the Coalition government that is yet to make a single investment, is quite clear and specific: Read More here
Tag Archives: Emissions
1 June 2017, The Conversation, Global stocktake shows the 43 greenhouse gases driving global warming. The most comprehensive collection of atmospheric greenhouse gas measurements, published today, confirms the relentless rise in some of the most important greenhouse gases. The data show that today’s aggregate warming effect of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) is higher than at any time over the past 800,000 years, according to ice core records. Building on half a century of atmospheric measurements by the international research community, we compiled and analysed the data as part of a group of international scientists, led by Malte Meinshausen from the University of Melbourne in collaboration with CSIRO. Together, the data provide the most compelling evidence of the unprecedented perturbation of Earth’s atmosphere. They clearly show that the growth of greenhouse gases began with the onset of the industrial era around 1750, took a sharp turn upwards in the 1950s, and still continues today. Research has demonstrated that this observed growth in greenhouse gases is caused by human activities, leading to warming of the climate – and in fact more than the observed warming, because part of the effect is currently masked by atmospheric pollution (aerosols). The new collection of records comes from measurements of current and archived air samples, air trapped in bubbles in ice cores, and firn (compacted snow). The data cover the past 2,000 years without gaps, and are the result of a compilation of measurements analysed by dozens of laboratories around the world, including CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology’s Cape Grim Station, NOAA, AGAGE and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, among others. Read More here
29 May 2017, Renew Economy, The myth that Adani coal is boom or bust for Queensland economy. There are a whole bunch of reasons why the Adani coal mine does not make sense: for the environment, the climate and on basic economics. The latest results from Adani Power, revealing over the weekend a $US954 million loss ($A1.3 billion) for the last financial year, its fifth loss in a row, and a growing preference for domestic over imported coal, not to mention the endless delays and requests for government support, underline the fact that the project makes no financial sense. And we know that on environmental and climate grounds, it makes no sense either. Rescuers minister Matt Canavan counts Adani’s benefits on the basis that the mine will last 60 years. That timeframe assumes that the world will not act on climate change. Another myth that refuses to go away, and seems to be prosecuted by everyone from the Coalition, to the state Labor government and to the local councils, is that the Queensland economy depends on Adani and its Carmichael mine for jobs and investment, and that the region’s economy would be devastated if the mine didn’t go ahead. It is simply not true. For a start, the inflated figures being pedalled by those state and federal politicians – the claim of 10,000 jobs – have been debunked by Adani itself, and its more modest investment plans now suggest maybe one-tenth of that, at best. And perhaps those politicians should have a look around and see what else is happening in the region. It is really quite stunning: some 4,200MW of large-scale wind and solar projects, all of them in central to northern Queensland, and billions of dollars worth of other projects in the pipeline, including biofuels and even a battery gigafactory in Townsville. Read More here
22 May 2017, Washington Post, Stop hoping we can fix climate change by pulling carbon out of the air, scientists warn. Scientists are expressing increasing skepticism that we’re going to be able to get out of the climate change mess by relying on a variety of large-scale land-use and technical solutions that have been not only proposed but often relied upon in scientific calculations. Two papers published last week debunk the idea of planting large volumes of trees to pull carbon dioxide out of the air — saying there just isn’t enough land available to pull it off — and also various other strategies for “carbon dioxide removal,” some of which also include massive tree plantings combined with burning their biomass and storing it below the ground. “Biomass plantations are always seen as a green kind of climate engineering because, you know, everybody likes trees,” said Lena Boysen, a climate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, who led one of the new studies while a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “But we just want to show that that’s not the complete story. They cannot do that much.” Forests have long been recognized as one of the world’s most important natural carbon sinks, capable of storing large amounts of carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. Simply preserving the world’s forest resources — and replanting areas that have already been deforested — is viewed as an important step in protecting the climate. But for years, scientists have discussed the idea of going further by using large plantations full of fast-growing, carbon-storing trees to pull extra carbon emissions out of the atmosphere, a strategy sometimes called “afforestation.” But the amount of land and other resources this strategy would require to actually help us meet our global climate goals — namely, keeping global temperatures within at least two degrees of their pre-industrial levels — is completely impractical, according to Boysen’s new study in the journal Earth’s Future, and would require the destruction of huge amounts of natural ecosystems or productive agricultural land. Read More here