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A Few Observations About Ice and Glaciers

ice-glacier-climate-change — Fox Glacier image by Cath Singleton

One Thursday night while watching rugby league, I went to the freezer, extracted some ice cubes and wrapped them in a tea towel. The aim was to encase my throbbing thumb in an icy blanket of numbness.

It’s just arthritis, the doctor said, examining the swelling of the thumb joint. Gardening, playing guitar and driving tends to bring on the pain and swelling. Importantly, the doctor did not recommend ice, instead suggesting anti-inflammatories (tablets or gel).

For athletes the world over, ice has for decades been part of the treatment for swelling and pain brought on by sporting injuries. It was quite a revelation, then, to discover that ice no longer has the imprimatur it once had for treatment of bruises and sprains. It seems that doctors and physiotherapists now believe that moving the injured body part helps more with recovery than numbing it with ice.

To digress for a moment, a Deloitte survey of media and entertainment habits cited here a few weeks back found that 91% of survey participants multi-task while watching TV. I scoffed at the time, then started thinking about the things I was doing while ‘watching’ footie.

The ritual of icing my thumb expanded into googling (on my phone) all manner of references to ice (frozen water) as a future FOMM took shape. I may have toyed with my crossword book (seven down: a permanent mass of ice caught in a mountain pass).

I may also have left-handedly replied to two texts and three emails while watching the Brisbane Broncos make multiple mistakes, run sideways, miss tackles and wonder why they got beaten.

When it comes to ice and rugby league, you often footie players sitting forlornly on the bench with bags of ice strapped to their shoulders, knees, thighs or ankles. The most common rugby league injury is what is euphemistically known as a ‘cork’ which is what we kids used to call an ‘Uncle Charlie’, that is, when the schoolyard bully knees you in the thigh muscle. The result is extreme pain, as a deep-seated bruise takes shape within the traumatised tissue.

You will notice I have reclaimed the original definition of ice (the solid form of water). It takes this form when subjected to temperatures of zero and below. In contemporary culture, ice is most frequently used to serve chilled drinks and to create temporary fridges at large family gatherings.

The times when ice (frozen water) most often makes it into the news is when storms drop hailstones as big as golf balls, tennis balls, cricket balls or even bowling balls. It’s no fun being caught out in a hailstorm and can even be dangerous. There have been reports of people dying, going back to France in 1360, during the Hundred Years war, when 1,000 English soldiers were killed in a freak hailstorm. The deadliest of the last century was when 246 people died in Moradabad, India, in 1988.

Hailstorms bring out the worst in headline writers, as they struggle to find four or five letter words that create panic pictures (‘wreak havoc’ is a favourite) and so is ‘freak’, as in ‘a very unusual and unexpected event or situation’.

Hailstorms also play freakish havoc with the balance sheets of general insurers. The Insurance Council of Australia reveals its biggest payout in recent times was the $1.7 billion in losses a 1999 hailstorm caused to Sydney’s city’s east. Then there was the $31 million in losses caused by Sydney’s Anzac Day hailstorm of 2015. Not to mention the trauma and loss of production suffered by crop farmers and fruit-growers and the long queues of car owners waiting for their turn in the panel shop.

You may have already gathered I might steer this conversation from freak hailstorms to what climate change means for the world’s glaciers and arctic ice sheets.

As Sarah Gibbons wrote in National Geographic this week: “Like an ice cube on a hot summer’s day, many of Earth’s glaciers are shrinking.”

The article is based on new data from researchers at the University of Zurich. They found that melting mountain glaciers contribute roughly a third of measured sea-level rise. This is about the same sea level rise as the Greenland ice sheet and more than the contribution of the Antarctic. Their research also highlighted that many of the world’s glaciers may disappear in the next century. Sea levels rose 27mm between 1961 and 2016, roughly half a millimetre a year. NASA now says sea levels are rising at the rate of 3mm a year, with melting glaciers contributing about a third of that volume.

Glacial movement is caused by variations in temperature with snow accumulating or melting, the evidence seen at the glacier terminus. The sheer weight of the glacier causes it to move slowly downhill, whether or not the glacier is advancing or retreating.

New Zealand’s Fox Glacier advanced between 1995 and 2009 at the rate of a metre per week. Since 2009, the glacier has begun retreating again, as it did in the decades prior to 1995.

Fox and neighbouring Franz Josef are not typical glaciers, though. They retreat or advance 10 times faster than glaciers located in other countries. This is partially to do with the excessive precipitation on New Zealand’s west coast, but also the extremely large neve* above the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers.

(*that’s glacier-speak for snow accumulated above a glacier).

The New Zealand situation seems anomalous, however, as US scientists found that 2017 was the 38^th year in a row of mass loss of mountain glaciers worldwide. According to the State of the Climate in 2017, the cumulative mass balance loss from 1980 to 2016 was 19.9m, the equivalent of cutting a 22m-thick slice off the top of the average glacier.

My original premise of using ice to soothe pain arose again when friends came over to watch A Star is Born. You know that scene where Bradley Cooper’s character Jackson Maine drags Lady Gaga’s character Ally into a suburban all-night supermarket? This is not long after Ally has biffed an off-duty cop in the face and apparently damaged her hand.

“Better get something on that, before the swelling starts,” Maine says.

So he scurries around the supermarket, putting together a makeshift icepack to soothe Ally’s bruised knuckles. (I read this as a bit of rock star foreplay, giving Jackson an excuse to stroke Ally’s hand).

Gabe Mirkin, author of “The Sports Medicine Book,” where the RICE (rest-ice-compression-elevation), acronym first appeared in 1978, now says the rest and ice part of the cure is no longer recommended. He changed his mind after reviewing the latest research, which includes a study published in 2014 by the European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery & Arthroscopy. The report found that icing injured tissue shuts off the blood supply that brings in healing cells. “Ice doesn’t increase healing — it delays it,” Mirkin says, and the studies back him up

It would seem the rugby league fraternity did not get this memo.

Perhaps they should take the tip from commentator Gus Gould, who, despite a seven-year footie career marred by injuries, appears to advocate stoicism.

“Aw that’s nothing,” says Gus. “It’s just a cork – he can run that off.”

#shutupgus

The budget that forgot climate change

climate-change-power-station — power station image by Benita Welter from Pixabay

‘The budget that forgot climate change’ may be a slightly misleading headline, even though Greens Leader Richard Di Natale essentially said as much when interviewed on 2GB. He was elaborating on a press release issued on Budget night which castigated the Federal Coalition for virtually ignoring climate change.

“(Treasurer) Josh Frydenberg said in his speech that we owe our children budget discipline,” Di Natale said. We owe our children a plan for their future, and that should mean tackling climate change through a managed transition away from fossil fuels to a clean, green, jobs-rich renewable economy. By any measure this budget fails to do that.”

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) was blunter still, describing it as a “nightmare” budget.

“Scott Morrison’s government has given us budget that sets more money aside for a ring road in Cairns than for dealing with climate change – the biggest social and environmental crisis facing our generation,” the AYCC said.

“The LNP intends to set aside just $189 million over the next four years to deliver their so-called climate action plan – which, by the way, fails to so much as mention a transition away from coal and gas”.

To be fair, climate change did get two mentions in a Budget loaded with tax cuts to woo the nation’s middle-income earners (and an ‘oops we forgot the poor people’ moment, when the energy supplement was later extended to include NewStart recipients).

You know the old adage about shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted? The Coalition’s idea of dealing with climate change is to create a $3.9 billion Emergency Response Fund which will be used to mop up after severe storms, floods, bushfires and cyclones. The fund will grow to $5 billion over the next decade, the Treasurer said.

The Australian Financial Review’s Queensland Bureau chief Mark Ludlow outlined where the government had found the money for the Emergency Response Fund.

“The fund, which will need to be passed in legislation, will be created from the leftover allocations from the former Labor government’s Education Investment Fund as well as money that had previously been allocated to the National Disability Insurance Scheme which is no longer needed.”

One ought to mention, as Ludlow did, the government already picks up the tab for post-disaster funding under the existing Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements. The NDRRA comes into play once State or Territory funding has been exhausted.

More promisingly, the government announced a $3.9 billion Future Drought Fund, which at least acknowledges that Australia needs to plan on the assumption that drought will continue to plague the outback, if not the entire eastern seaboard.

The Climate Council took to Twitter on Budget night to spell out its disappointment.

“The divide between the parties when it comes to Coalition’s focus on tax and surpluses, and Labor’s focus on climate policy, might come down to this: would you rather leave your children with a smaller federal debt or a worldwide climate crisis.”

The tweet was linked to a University of Melbourne Budget analysis which said Australia was not on track to meet its Paris Climate commitment of a 26% to 28% reduction in emissions off 2005 levels.

“We are projected to achieve a 7% reduction, and the budget on Tuesday night offered little to suggest we can change course.”

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT) rates Australia’s position on climate change as “insufficient”, which is the same rating given in 2011. CAT is an independent scientific analysis produced by three research organisations tracking climate action since 2009. CAT tracks progress towards the globally agreed aim of holding warming well below 2°C, and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.

The Climate Action Tracker’s latest verdict (December 2018) notes that Australia’s climate policy has further deteriorated in the past year, “as it focusses on propping up the coal industry and ditches efforts to reduce emissions”.

“The Federal government is ignoring the record uptake of solar PV and storage and other climate action at State level.

“The Australian government has turned its back on global climate action by dismissing the findings of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and announcing it would no longer provide funds to the Green Climate Fund (GCF).”

The 2019 Budget confirmed that Australia’s contributions to the UN’s major fund would end in December, with a final contribution of $19.2 million. Australia has given $187 million to the fund, which finances developing world projects that cut emissions or promote resilience to climate impacts.

You may recall when John Howard belatedly made a pre-election commitment in 2007 to establishing a national Emissions Trading Scheme, starting no later than 2012.

Dubbed the Climate Change Fund, it promised that revenue from emissions trading was to be re-invested into climate change initiatives.oward made

I mention this only to point out that Tuesday’s announcement was just a rebadged Climate Change Fund – a new name for the same objectives.

The Morrison Government pre-committed $2 billion to the ‘Climate Solutions Fund’, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the economy. It does so by (continuing) to purchase low-cost abatement through the existing Emissions Reduction Fund. Already there are claims that the government plans to use ‘Kyoto carryover credits’ to reduce our greenhouse gas pollution, even though comparable countries have ruled out doing this.

Ah well, at least we signed up for the Paris agreement, well after incoming Prime Minister Kevin Rudd honoured a pre-election promise and ratified the Kyoto protocol in 2007.

Some 195 member countries including Australia agreed to the Paris agreement in late 2015. The agreement’s long-term goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, and to limit the increase to 1.5 °C.

So it has been a long journey from the first Australian greenhouse gas emissions reduction proposal 30 years ago. In 1989, Senator Graham Richardson, who must have had an inkling of what lay ahead, made a Cabinet submission for a 20% reduction in 1988 Australian greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2005.

So what does the future hold after the budget that forgot climate change, some six weeks out from a crucial Federal election where the Opposition Labor Party offers a mixed bag of policies, including a big commitment to renewable energy and climate change mitigation?

A book delivered to my mailbox yesterday delivers an unpalatable verdict. Author Anna Skarbik says Australia can be a carbon-neutral country by 2050 – “if we just get on with it”.

Skarbik is a contributor to Advancing Australia – ideas for a better country, just published by The Conversation through Melbourne University Press.

She states that the Federal Coalition’s current emissions reduction target of 26% to 28% by 2030 is not enough to meet the zero target by 2050. Federal Labor will also have to boost its promise of a 45% reduction in carbon emissions to meet this target.

“Australia would need to cut emissions by 55% below 2005 levels by 2030 to get there without undue economic disruption,” Skarbik wrote.

As she observes: “Lack of consensus on climate policy over the last two decades has cost us dearly.”

Recommended viewing:

Y dig up coal? Maleny’s contribution to the Stop Adani campaign:

Life on the planet in 2040

Vision-for-2040 — Melbourne school strike, photo by Takver https://flic.kr/p/2dfY9tt

On days when the woes of the world are too much with us, do you ever think what life on the planet in 2040 will be like? That’s the year the Doomsayers say will be the End Times or the Apocalypse. The theory is that by 2040, planet earth will no longer be able to sustain its estimated population of nine billion.

There are serious arguments for that proposition – extreme weather events caused by climate change, lack of sufficient food and water and ever-worsening pollution. There is the ever-present threat to life on the planet of nuclear war and a rolling series of civil wars which have driven millions of refugees into other countries, with consequent social and political disruption.

Imagine 2040, then. I’ll be 91, Nibbler will be 29 (which is old for a dog); Donald Trump will be 94, ex-wife Ivana 91 and current wife Melanie a spritely 70. Sir Paul McCartney will be 97 (should his long and winding road last that long), and Justin Bieber just 46!

More importantly, children being born now will be 21 in 2040 and quite angry about the state of the world they have inherited from their parents. Those who currently are angry teenagers will already be in their mid-to late 30s and maybe producing children of their own.

The key concern for life on the planet in 2040, just 21 years away, is the ever narrowing prediction about the effect of climate change on weather patterns and sea levels.

Most scientists and some futurologists will say the No 1 problem (I call it the giraffe in the wood shed), is over-population. Bluntly, the world just will not have the resources to feed nine billion people. Already futurists are saying that in the not-too-distant future, we’ll be getting our daily protein from faux meat and insects.

It’s tempting to lean towards flippancy in a 1,200-world commentary on what the world could be like in 2040. Let’s imagine two affluent Poms meeting for breakfast at a café in downtown London 2039 (having got there in minutes by Vactrain from their bucolic suburbs 60 kms away). Smashed avocado on toast will cost something like 29 Europounds, a flat white about 8 Europounds. The waiter already has the order as Paul texted (by thought) while Vactraining. Henry will want to talk about the EU and how long can it last – surely one more year? Paul, feeling guilty about a story he read on the Vactrain newsfeed about six million Brits living in poverty, mutters about Brexit and what a disaster it was.

“That’s ancient history, Paul,” says Henry, adjusting his virtual-specs so he can scan headlines while having a conversation, as you do. Meanwhile the waiter returns (on his hover board) to say there are no avocadoes, despite reports of a glut, but they can do smashed grasshoppers.

Someone with a flair for satire could easily take a similar lead from the occasional quirky statistical forecast in futuretimeline, a community database/blog maintained by futurologist William James Fox.

For example, the autopsy report for Elvis Presley will be made public in 2027, thus scuppering the obsessions of the Elvis-lives club. By 2035, Millennials will be enjoying an inheritance boom, just ahead of a 2039 forecast that scientists will have found a cure for ageing!

By 2039, Alzheimer’s will be fully curable. This will be too late for some people already affected, but should I start to become forgetful at 87, whoever is in charge can take me along to the clinic. Hopefully, it will be bulk-billed.

Flippancy aside, most serious science-based forecasts focus on climate change, because of its potential to ruin everything.

Forecaster quantumrun.com cites an optimistic number for 2040 – the rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels will be 1.62 degrees. That’s just above the 1.5 degrees limit recently set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

That won’t impress Sweden’s Greta Thunberg or her generational cohort. Born in 2001, she is part of what Forbes Magazine calls Generation Z, people born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s. In 2015, Gen Z represented 25% of the US population, a larger group than both Baby Boomers and Millennials.

Then aged 15, Greta sparked an international movement when she started a 20-day strike outside Sweden’s parliament in August 2018. News travelled fast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. By November 30, the movement had gone viral. In Australia, 15,000 schoolchildren went on strike to call for action (despite much blustering in Parliament). In January this year, 35,000 European teens invaded the European Parliament in Brussels. Over the next fortnight more than 50,000 Belgian teens walked out of their classrooms.

You’ll see more of this next Friday (March 15), when the Youth Strikes for Climate movement stages a global walk-out.

Thunberg, who has since been the target of social media abuse accusing her of being a Green plant (har har), resolutely dug in. In an editorial published in the Guardian Weekly recently she told readers “Adults need to act like their house is on fire – because it is.”

She has pledged to continue her protest until global leaders act to meet the IPCC call to reduce carbons emissions by at least 50% within 12 (now 11) years.

Greta’s lone vigil outside Sweden’s Parliament led to her being invited to give a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland.

“Some say we should not engage in activism,” she told delegates. “Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will?”

Meanwhile I’ve started watching Season Two of a Netflix political thriller, ‘Occupied’. The plot (set in the near future). envisages a ‘silk glove’ occupation of Norway by Russia (in cahoots with the EU), to ensure Norway’s oil and gas pipelines continue to service Europe.

In the first episode of Season One, Norwegian PM Jesper Berg announces that Norway will no longer produce or export fossil fuels, instead favouring thorium* energy plants. The series (based on an idea by Norwegian thriller writer Jo Nesbo), shows how conflicts might arise should a brave, futurist politician defy the status quo.

*thorium is a weak radioactive element that can be used in a new generation of nuclear reactors.

Climate change aside, one of the great challenges for life on the planet in 2040 is what to do with old farts like me! In 2017 the United Nations estimated the number of people in the world aged over 60 will double to 2.1 billion by 2050. The UN also expects the cohort of people aged 80 years or over to increase threefold to 425 million by 2050.

Susan Muldowney, writing for CPA Australia’s newsletter, said that by 2040, one in five Australians will be aged over 65 and 1.2 million of them will be older than 85.

“Australia’s aged-care sector has been largely government-funded and dominated by not-for-profit providers,” Muldowney wrote in the accounting association’s newsletter, In The Black.

“However, this may change over the next decade. The number of private, for-profit start-ups is expected to grow in line with the new regulatory push toward consumer-directed aged care and the generational shift from the frugal post-Depression generation.

“The culture-changing baby boomers are used to having choice – even if they have to pay for it,” she added.

Right, then, I’m off up town to order smashed avo on toast. Enjoy it while you can, I say.

Climate extremes – from bushfires to a polar vortex

snow-polar-vortex — February snow at White Rock, BC, image by George Davidge

February is the one month of the year when the climate extremes of the northern and southern hemisphere starkly remind us of the threat to civilisation posed by climate change.

In the northern hemisphere, a polar vortex in January and February brought record low sub-zero temperatures to the UK, Europe, USA and Canada. Cars disappeared beneath mounds of snow; Chicago’s river froze as temperatures dropped to a rare -46 degrees Celcius (wind chill temperature). The regular temperature at -30 degrees was just 2 degrees warmer than a 34-year-old record low.

I’m reliably informed that if you go outside in this kind of extreme weather, don’t blink – your eyelids will freeze shut. Mind you, there are enough selfies and images on social media to suggest that some happy snappers took the risk.

The image above was taken this week at White Rock, a coastal town in southern British Columbia, where the average winter high and low temperatures are Celsius 8 degrees and 2 degrees. It is rare to have extreme weather there (snow storms, ice pellets and freezing rain).

Even though I live Down Under, I’m attached to songs which evoke the wintry romance of the frozen north. They include Joni Mitchell, wishing she had a river to skate away on, Dar Williams, throwing her lover’s car keys into the water (where they froze, halfway down), and Dave Goulder’s song about northern hemisphere seasons, the January Man. “The January man he goes around in woollen coat and boots of leather The February man still shakes the snow from off his clothes and blows his hands…”

Meanwhile on the other side of the planet, Australians have just survived the hottest January since 1910 to suffer more of the same in February. On January 19, Melbourne residents endured 44° Celsius (it got to 47 in some outer suburbs).

In terms of climate extremes, most of Australia received less than 20% of normal rainfall in January. Canberra, the nation’s capital, normally known for bitter cold, had a record run of four days above 40C. A Bureau of Meteorology report also highlighted record long runs of consecutive hot days.

They included:

Birdsville (Qld) 10 consecutive days over 45C
Alice Springs (NT) 16 days in a row above 42C
Cloncurry (Qld) 43 consecutive days over 40C*
Camooweal (Qld) 40 consecutive days over 40C
Walungurru (NT) 27 consecutive days above 40C
Bourke (NSW) 21 consecutive days above 40C*

*broke State records

Australians also suffered through the highest overnight minimums on record, peaking at 36.6 degrees at Wanaaring in NSW.

February-bushfires-climate-change — Bushfire burning at Girraween National Park, image by Penny Davies

Searing hot temperatures sustained over many weeks turns native forest and grasslands into tinder-dry fuel. A stray cigarette butt, a lightning strike or a spark from a tractor-slasher is all it takes. Stanthorpe, normally the coldest place in Queensland, recorded a maximum temperature of 36.9°C on January 19. This was one of the few places in the country to offer some overnight respite (10°C ). A lack of rain and sustained high temperatures contributed to a massive bushfire which started at Wallangarra on the Qld/NSW border and quickly spread to Girraween National Park.

The fire started on February 12 on the outskirts of Wallangarra, cutting a swathe through 43,000ha of bush and pasture. As of yesterday, the fire was still smouldering, although the threat to people and property around Wyberba, Ballendean and Eukey has abated. However, there’s a windy weekend ahead, so bush fire brigade volunteers will be on high alert until it rains.

Last Saturday, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services warned Granite Belt residents that a large, unpredictable fire was heading in a north-westerly direction through Girraween National Park with the potential to cross Pyramids Road. Residents of Eukey and surrounds were put on notice to be ready to evacuate.

Climate change skeptics will tell you Australia has always had climate extremes; bushfires, floods and droughts (as they drive their diesel 4WDs to a ridge for a better view – they can get 2GB reception up there too).

In the interests of balanced journalism, it seems only fair to provide a link to their view of the world):

But as we never tire of repeating here at FOMM HQ, 97% of the world’s climate scientists think climates extremes are happening and they are aggravated by human behaviour

We Aussies, sweltering through weeks of temperatures above 30°C in many locations where humidity is 70% or more, yearn for the hopefully cooler days of March. In the northern hemisphere, those enduring the extreme winter can but hope for an early thaw.

The climate change deniers and those who just don’t want to think about it need to be reminded in ways that have become obvious to a generation of bright young things who skipped school to make the point.

As you’d know, there are climate change skeptics in Australia, as there are in other industrial nations. They may be in the minority, but some of them are in government, which makes their opinions matter.

A Lowy Institute Poll of 1,200 Australians quizzed about climate change and energy found that 59% agreed with the statement: “climate change is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.”

Furthermore, 84% agreed that “the government should focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable”.

It is now five months since a United Nations climate panel warned that the world has about 12 years left to limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius. Australia and the rest of the world must virtually eliminate the use of coal for electricity within 22 years if there is to be a chance to save even some of the Great Barrier Reef. At 1.5°C, coral reefs are expected to decline by a further 70% to 90%, the report said.

More than 90 scientists drew together thousands of pieces of climate research for the report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The conclusion was that global emissions of greenhouse gas pollution must reach zero by about 2050 in order to stop global warming at 1.5° Celsius. At current rates, 1.5C would be breached as early as 2040 (just in time for those born today to celebrate their 21st birthdays – Ed).

Ah me, there’s more to come on this story, with the Kids vs Climate Change movement started by then 15-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg gathering pace. Following Greta’s lone, 20-day strike in August, Australia was one of the first countries to respond. Despite scornful rhetoric and table-thumping from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, 15,000 students went on strike in November. Contrary to claims that the protests were partisan (and organised by hardcore greenies), this week students protested outside the electorate office of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan branded the ongoing protests as “appalling political manipulation”.

On March 15, teens around the world will absent themselves from school to demand action from adults in power about climate extremes. As people with teenagers know full well, they are the cohort least likely to be manipulated, politically or otherwise.

Footnote: I almost forgot to leave you with this link to Dar Williams’ beautiful song February, which has been interpreted by some as being about a couple with Alzheimer’s, using winter as a metaphor. My friend Rebecca Wright, who like me sees it as more of an ending and a new beginning song, does a fine version.

Moving North Queensland water to Murray-Darling

North-Queensland-Water-Murray-Darling — Barron Falls demonstrates North Queensland water excesses. Photo by Coral Sea Baz

Australia’s mismanagement of water is coming home to roost now, with the highly visible deluge in North Queensland in sharp contrast to the water-starved Murray-Darling Basin.

Far North Queensland residents and emergency workers are still struggling to cope with the worst floods in living memory. Tully, arguably the wettest place in Australia, had 955mm over 27 days since New Year’s Day, about a quarter of its annual rain. Townsville broke all records with 1,200mm falling in just nine days, which accounted for unprecedented flooding and the decision to open the floodgates of Ross River Dam.

Residents of the seaside Townsville suburb of Balgal Beach, seemingly impervious to flooding, found out otherwise.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) recorded North Queensland rainfall totals in January and the first week in February ranging from 1,036mm (Cairns) to 1,325mm (Townsville) The highest weekly total in January was 766mm at Whyanbeel Valley. Crikey, that’s a few millimetres more than the annual rainfall for Australia’s second-largest inland city, Toowoomba.

Last time we were in that fair city (September), the only green grass around was in the city’s three parks, watered by Council to celebrate the Carnival of Flowers. That was the month parts of the Western Downs were added to the 53% of Queensland’s drought-declared local government areas.

Meanwhile in Southern states, BoM made the telling observation that annual rainfall in 2018 was the seventh-lowest on record (since 1900) for the Murray-Darling Basin. Rainfall was low over the south-eastern quarter of the mainland in 2018, with much of the region experiencing totals in the lowest 10% of records.

This is brought into sharper focus when we are told that parts of Australia’s mainland from around Newcastle in NSW to Euroa in Victoria are now included on the United Nations’ list of the Top Ten Global Water Hotspots (see further reading).

Many readers will be familiar with the crisis facing the Murray-Darling system: blue-green algae, millions of dead fish, the Darling River drying up; water being diverted for irrigation to grow water-intensive crops like cotton and rice. The recently published report by the South Australian Royal Commission found that the 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan must be strengthened if there is to be any chance of saving the river system. Professor Jamie Pittock of the Australian National University writes that the Commission found systemic failures of the Basin Plan, adopted in 2012 to address over-allocation of water to irrigated farming. The Commission’s 111 findings and 44 recommendations accuse federal agencies of maladministration and challenge key policies that were pursued in implementing the plan.

Amid revelations of water theft, the awful legacy of dead fish in the oxygen-deprived Darling River and outback towns running out of water, plenty of people are having their say.

This week, South Australian independent Senator Rex Patrick dared to confront the cotton industry, demanding that growers justify the use of water and the right to grow that export crop. (The same could be said of rice, Ed.)

This is a long-running saga. In 2011 an article published by the Permaculture Research Institute explored a report that revealed Australia as the world’s largest net exporter of ‘virtual’ water (exported virtual water is defined as water consumed to create crops, livestock and industrial products for export). The report blamed the agricultural sector for the vast majority of the total volume of water exported from Australia in this way (72,000 gigalitres of virtual water exported overseas every year).

I’m not a scientist, hydrologist or environmental engineer, yet the answer seems desperately obvious. We need to channel and export North Queensland water to the arid south-eastern states and inland Queensland, NSW and South Australia.

One only has to think for five minutes about the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity/irrigation scheme to see we are more than capable of funding, building and maintaining large and ambitious infrastructure projects.

Sydney food technology engineer Terry Bowring told The Courier-Mail in 2010 about his $9 billion plan to move water from the Burdekin and other north Queensland rivers to arid parts of inland NSW, Victoria and South Australia. Mr Bowring’s plan involved channelling about 4,000 gigalitres of water a year. The water would be transported 1,800kms by canals, with 60% of the water sold to irrigators. The rest would go to cities such as Toowoomba and Brisbane for domestic use.

Mr Bowring told FOMM yesterday the plan was similar to the Bradfield scheme proposed in 1938. Until Mr Bowring’s plan surfaced (he’d been working on it for years), no-one had taken Dr John Bradfield’s scheme forward to include costings.

Mr Bowring said the costings were based on experiences from the US, where he worked for some five years. The system would take six years to build but only four or five years to recover costs.

As with the Bradfield scheme, critics said the Bowring plan was uneconomic and impractical. The telling thing is that it would only take about 13% of the water that flows from the Burdekin to the ocean. Typically, more water flows to sea from the Burdekin than the Murray-Darling Basin and all city dams combined.

Mr Bowring, who is in his 80s, said he has no intention of pursuing the plan, but will make his research available for future use.

The other side of this argument was provided by the (then) Federal Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.

The 28-page report generally scotches the idea, which is often raised when there are weather extremes in the north or the south.

“Moving water long distances is costly, energy intensive, and can have significant environmental, social and cultural impacts,” (item 1 under Key Facts).

“Using water that is locally available is generally more cost effective than transporting water long distances. Current studies show that local options, such as water conservation, desalination and recycling, cost around $1–2 per thousand litres; a supply from 1500 kilometres (km) away would cost around $5–6 per thousand litres.”

However the immediate problem is to make the Murray-Darling system a Federal and State priority, no matter the financial or political cost. It is shocking to consider that outback towns like Walgett, Wilcannia and Bourke have either run out of drinking water or are under extreme water stress. These events seem to have flown beneath the media radar that picked up on the early 2018 water crisis in Cape Town (South Africa).

The real danger is the risk to the fragile ecosystem of a river system that spans 77,000 kilometres of rivers over one million square kilometres across four States and the ACT. Environmental challenges include excessive water being diverted for agricultural, the blue-green algae that killed millions of fish, and salinity (in 2016-17, 1.84 million tonnes of salt was flushed out to sea through the Murray mouth).

As the Australian Conservation Foundation summed up, in an advertisement posted on social media:

“The heart-breaking death of these fish is no natural disaster. Powerful corporate interests and their cashed up lobbyists are bleeding our rivers dry. For too long, state and federal governments have let them get away with it.”

Further reading: https://www.fabians.org.au/australia_s_water_crisis (a (long), technical article by Watermark Australia’s Dr Wayne Chamley).

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Six Prime Ministers and a potato class action

As the dry winter fades away, ushering in a hot and bushfire-prone spring and summer, here’s some sober reflections on ‘Single-use Prime Ministers’.

I borrowed the single-use mention from a clever meme doing the rounds on social media, where, I might say in defence of the humble Kipfler, Sebago and Desiree, potatoes continue to be openly defamed. It might not be long before we see headlines where Tryhard & Associates, no win-no fee, mount a class action on behalf of Mr and Mrs Sebago and 15 other tuber families.

As we now see from former Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s attempted coup, while it worked in principle, the betrayal left Mr Dutton out on a limb, with a centre-right politician seizing the leadership.

At the outset, Australia’s new Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, decided the people needed to know that “we’re on your side”.

“That’s what matters. We are on your side. And we are on your side because we share beliefs and values in common, as you go about everything you do each day.”

Keep playing that one, Scott. Stay away from the line that brings down Westminster democracies; when a leader (be it Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Abbott or Turnbull), have all been caught referring to ‘my government’.

I had a couple of messages from FOMM stalwarts last week in aggregate saying “Get a grip, Bob. The nation’s imploding and you’re talking about stamp collecting?”

I defend last week’s meandering missive as making the case that Australian governments have been lurching hard-right for a very long time now, arguably since John Howard’s 1988 stance on multiculturalism and refusing to make a treaty with the Aborigines. Hence my writing about the stamp-collecting Philip Ruddock, a hard-line Immigration minister in control of our border policies from 1996-2003.

Now here’s the thing – party factions, backroom machinations and political knifings are not what does in a sitting PM – it is narcissism.

As economist and author George Megalogenis wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times: “The prime minister is not even mentioned in the Australian Constitution, yet the office has evolved into a paradoxical position of supreme authority and permanent vulnerability.”

Megalogenis also wrote: “They have borrowed the worst of United States presidential politics, with its obsessive focus on the leader, and grafted it onto a Westminster system of parliamentary government that was designed for collaboration and compromise.”

Australia has had six Prime Ministers since 2008, the number arguably including a bit of double counting when first Julia Gillard toppled Kevin Rudd, then Rudd came back and promptly lost the next election in a landslide. Then there was Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and now Scott Morrison. This era was characterised by frantic passing of new legislation in the incumbent’s first year. Fairfax Media research tallied new acts of Parliament passed in the first year for Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd (133), Julia Gillard (132), Tony Abbott (116) and Malcolm Turnbull (104). These are mediocre numbers compared to Paul Keating (212) and Gough Whitlam (161). Surprisingly (well, I was surprised), John Howard’s first year numbers (86), are only marginally better than Ben Chifley (74).

What appears to have brought undone Prime Ministers of the past 10 years is the polarisation caused by climate change policy. It seems nigh on impossible to achieve political consensus on this most serious of issues, even if over 97% of climate scientists active in that field of research say it is a reality, aggravated and accelerated by human activities. (There are, of course, nay-sayers. Just Google ‘what percentage of scientists believe in global warming, if you have a few hours to spare.)

All six of our Prime Ministers thus far have failed or been thwarted in terms of seriously countering climate change. Some even challenging the notion that fossil fuels have had their day. I refer of course to (a) Tony Abbott’s infamous ‘coal is good for humanity’ quote, and incumbent PM Scott Morrison’s stunt, brandishing a lump of coal in Parliament.

But let’s go back 117 years, to an era when coal really did rule – when steam trains, for example, burned through eighty pounds of coal for every mile travelled (a useful factoid from Michael Portillo’s fascinating series, Great British Railway Journeys).

Australia’s leadership changed seven times in the first ten years of Federation (and 11 times between 1901 and 1922). Again, leadership changes involved ambitious men having a second (and even a third) attempt. Andrew Fisher (1909-1909, 1910-1913 and 1914-1915) proved the most persistent, governing during the early years of WWI. Fisher, I’d like to point out, introduced Australia’s first postage stamp. On January 2, 1913, the Fisher-led government issued the Commonwealth penny stamp.

It featured a controversial design – a kangaroo on a white map of Australia. Although later stamps reintroduced the King’s head, the kangaroo design remained in use for some forty years. An example of this rare stamp sold at auction in 2012 for $142,563.

But we were talking about men (and women- Ed.) and their egos and how the Prime Ministership has evolved as the Office of Omniscience. Towards the last days of Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership, there were reports of policy on the run, along with statements made with no consultation, and there have been similar reports about other short-term Prime Ministers. To be fair, in the first year of the Whitlam administration, the late Gough Whitlam rammed through a colossal amount of social reform legislation in a fortnight with the help of a two-man Cabinet (the duumvirate) – just Gough and his deputy, Lance Barnard.

Megalogenis observed that post-Rudd, the Labor party has made it harder to remove future Prime Ministers. Changes to internal rules now require the party leader be elected by a combined vote of the parliamentary party and grass-roots members. From this side of the fence, it is hard to see the Liberals coming up with a similar safeguard.

In no time at all, it seems, Australians will be thrust into another Federal election, with a new Prime Minister who will not have had enough time to show his mettle. On the other side, we have Labor leader Bill Shorten, and deputy leader Tanya Plibersek. Mr Shorten’s tactics thus far, apart from keeping his head down and letting the Liberal Party stew in its own juices, has been to divide and conquer, emphasising the class gulf between the left and right.

Tucked away behind the cannot-be-seen hedge, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, passed over for the Opposition leadership in 2013, declared his colours in June, in the Whitlam Oration.

Mr Albanese called upon his party to emulate the Hawke and Keating approach and “collaborate with unions, the business sector and civil society to achieve positive outcomes in the national interest”.

The Labor frontbencher also delivered a warning about the need to find common ground with voters outside the union movement.

“This is not 1950, when most Australians were members of trade unions,” Mr Albanese said. “Indeed many people from working class backgrounds are not members of unions because they were beneficiaries of Gough Whitlam’s education reforms. We cannot afford to ignore this demographic.”

Sigh, it makes my brain burn, like the feeling I got when I saw that clever meme (above) with Scott Morrison feeding a lump of coal into a (red and orange) map of Australia.

Good for humanity my arse.

Rising sea levels and apocalyptic fiction

I’d always thought my song about the mountain dwellers ending up on waterfront row because of rising sea levels was not to be taken too seriously. It was an apocalyptic view of what might happen if it didn’t stop raining and, moreover, not a terribly original idea as it turned out. But the risk of flash flooding from above-average rainfall is only half the problem for people living down there, at sea level.

A loyal reader, visiting the coast from cooler climes down south was discussing his theories about rising sea levels and coastal tourist locations like Noosa, given news of the Arctic region’s third winter heat wave in a row. His attention had been drawn to Greenland, where temperatures have remained above freezing at a time of year when it should be at least 30 below. Clearly such weather extremes in the fragile ecosystem of the Arctic region must accelerate the process of rising sea levels?

As The Independent reports, this is happening even though large parts of the Arctic Circle are trapped in perpetual darkness.

New global projections forecast a sea level rise of 2m by 2100, compared to a 0.74m rise in a 2013 study. So far, the forecasts that oceans would rise on average by 3mm a year has provoked a scornful debate between believers and climate sceptics. Yes, the science is not wholly believed. There are people in high places who have made naïve and disturbing statement such as “coal is good for humanity”, at a time when most scientists agree that CO2 emissions, produced largely from human activity, must be reduced.

The spectre of melting polar ice bringing an apocalyptic end to civilisation as we know it has been a favourite theme of science fiction writers for a long time. Now there is even a fiction sub-genre known as ‘cli-fi’ which has spawned many cataclysmic climate scenarios.

The spookiest forecast, before cli-fi was a thing, was The Drowned World, J.G Ballard’s second novel, published in 1962. Ballard’s main character is a scientist in charge of a floating research station, drifting above a submerged London, beset on all sides by encroaching tropical jungle. A 50^th anniversary edition (with an introduction by Martin Amis) has been released and it is available as an ebook. I’ve not read it, though, relying on Peter Briggs’ review for the synopsis.

Ballard eerily conjured up a world where polar ice caps have melted and solar storms have left us in an irradiated world. Europe is a series of lagoons, devoid of human life, although the tropical bugs love it!

The most recent book in the cli-fi genre which I have read is The Ice by Laline Paull. Her 2017 mystery novel begins with wealthy tourists aboard the Vanir, traversing previously frozen Arctic oceans. The mission is to find a (now rare) polar bear, but instead they find the thawed body of an explorer who went missing years ago in mysterious circumstances.

Fiction aside, the alarming temperature rises in the frozen north have had a bizarre impact on Europe, the US and Canada in 2018, which at this time of year ought to be seeing the first thaws of spring. A day temperature of 1 degree celsius in Greenland might not seem too warm to us Aussies, but typically the days are often up to 30 degrees colder. And this is not confined to Greenland. The most northern US city (Utqiaguik, Alaska), has also been enjoying a balmy 1 degree celsius − again that’s 22 degrees above average.

Meanwhile,The Independent observed that a relatively high pressure system over Russia and the Nordic north and a relatively low pressure system across the UK resulted in freezing Artic air being drawn towards the UK and causing exceptionally cold weather there.

The chorus of Waterfront Row ponders: “Little did I think when I moved to the mountains, I’d end up on Waterfront Row, renting out my shed to all those who fled the torrents and the foment down below.”

Imagine my chagrin upon writing and recording this song to be told (by a country music fan), that the song was similar (in theme) to Graeme Connors’ A Beach House in the Blue Mountains. I had not heard of the song but googled it (as you do).

We’re not the only ones taking ‘cli-fi’ into the realms of songwriting. Sunshine Coast songwriter Noel Gardner made up this cheery tune about the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu. He takes the role of the climate sceptic to satirise the controversy about Tuvalu and rising sea levels.

Some years back, the tiny Pacific island nation was said to be so prone to inundation its citizens might have to become New Zealanders. As it happens, some 2,400 Tuvaluans have already moved to NZ or neighbouring islands, according to a not-for-profit group that monitors world poverty.

They may have moved too soon, if, as the article below says, Pacific atolls like Tuvalu actually grow and float, becoming impervious to rising tides.

Now, a study confirms what we’ve already known – atolls, and in particular Tuvalu are growing, and increasing land area, writes Anthony Briggs. “So much for climate alarmism”.

Nevertheless, the highest elevation on Tuvalu is 15 feet and it is perpetually exposed to rising sea levels, cyclones and tsunamis.

An article in The Conversation says previous studies examining the risk of coastal inundation in the Pacific region have been conducted in areas where the rate of sea level rise is ‘average’ – 3mm to 5mm per year. A team of authors, led by The University of Queensland Senior Research Fellow Simon Albert unearthed outlying examples.

At least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands, where sea level rises are in the order of 7mm-10mm a year, have been lost completely to rising sea levels and coastal erosion. A further six islands have been severely eroded. These islands range in size from one to five hectares and supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old.

Last year, new projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US revealed that global sea levels could rise by 2 metres by 2100 if emissions remain at their current levels. As the ABC reported, this is substantially higher than the 74cm increase proposed in a 2013 Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Under these new projections, Sydney’s Circular Quay, Brisbane Airport, Melbourne’s Docklands and North Fremantle would be among locations at risk. So too Stradbroke Island, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, while in South Australia the seaside suburb of Glenelg would also be in trouble.

Scarier predictions have been made, with scientists taking into account the prospect of Antarctica melting, as well as the Arctic, doubling predictions of a 2m rise by 2100.

Should we care? By 2100, the youngest person I know will be 89, so maybe she will care. Her children and grandchildren definitely will.

And what does this mean for Australia, where the majority of the population live along narrow bands of coastal land on the east and west coasts?

You can scare yourself (or reassure yourself) by checking out this interactive website which allows you to see the predicted results of sea level rises wherever you happen to live.

FOMM back pages

Cape Town water crisis a stark reminder for drought-prone Australia

water-crisis-drought — Water stress map: www.wri.org creative commons licence

Cape Town’s water crisis is making news around the world, but nowhere should it be ringing alarm bells more than in our neck of the woods – South East Queensland. It’s not that long ago since the Millenium Drought (2001-2009) reached a dramatic point in late 2007. Brisbane became the first Australian capital to endure Level 6 water restrictions at a time when the region’s main reservoir, Lake Wivenhoe, dropped to 15% capacity.

In Cape Town, South Africa, the town water crisis is so parlous that taps were to have been turned off on April 16, but conservation efforts by the city’s 4 million people has pushed this out to June 4. Cape Town introduced Level 6 restrictions last month. Reports from the South African capital sound a bit like conditions in South East Queensland, circa 2007-2008.

The so-called ‘Day Zero’ – when water in Cape Town’s six reservoirs drops to 13.5% – means taps will be turned off and residents will have to queue at standpipes for daily rations. (Think dystopian movies like Young Ones or The Worthy).

A news report this week described a sudden sharp shower in Cape Town (10mm or so). People were said to have rushed out of restaurants, bars and shops just to feel the rain on their faces.

Residents are being encouraged not only to limit their showers but also to have baby baths over the shower outlet to collect the grey water for recycling. As was the case in Brisbane, Cape Town residents are being discouraged from washing their cars and flushing toilets (unless really necessary).

According to our local utility, SEQWater, during our own water crisis in 2007-2008, Brisbane residents successfully halved daily water consumption to 140 litres per person under Level 6 restrictions, which included a ban on filling pools. Gardens could only be watered with buckets (with water collected from those three-minute showers). The motto, ‘if it’s yellow let it mellow’ was nailed to many a dunny door.

Conditions are tougher in Cape Town, where residents are limited to 50 litres each per day. The Guardian reported that Cape Town’s water crisis was accelerated by a drought so severe it was not expected for another 384 years. Plans to diversify with more boreholes and desalination plants are not scheduled until after 2020. The city’s biggest reservoir, Theewaterskloof Dam, has mostly evaporated or been sucked dry since the drought began in 2015. The shoreline is receding at the rate of 1.2 metres per week, The Guardian reported.

Tucked away in its two-page feature on Cape Town’s water crisis was the colourful but completely unhelpful statement from an un-named homophobic pastor who blamed the drought on gays and lesbians.

Back home, South East Queensland’s water crisis in 2007-2008 ushered in a new era of water management, resulting in the SEQ Water Strategy, which set a water consumption target of 200 litres per day.

SEQWater spokesman Mike Foster says the biggest single change since the Millenium Drought was construction of a 600 km reverse flow pipeline network that allows treated water to be moved around the region. The utility also now has a ‘drought-ready’ strategy which is triggered when storage falls to 70%. Currently the region’s dam levels overall are at 75.9%, so nobody is losing sleep over the average per capita daily water consumption of 184 litres.

water-crisis-dams — Baroon Pocket Dam spillway January 2011, image by Bob Wilson

FOMM wrote in March that water levels at our local dam, Baroon Pocket, had dropped to 46%. SEQWater supplemented the Sunshine Coast through an extended dry spell in 2017. Baroon Pocket Dam is now back to 78% (this photo of the spillway (January 2011) shows what can happen when 750mm falls in one month.

Blame it on climate change if you like, but the Sunshine Coast region has recorded below average annual rainfall in three of the last six years. What really did the damage was an eight-month stretch from July 2016 to February 2017 with an average rainfall per month of only 43mm. Source: Bureau of Meteorology monthly rainfall.

The South East Queensland Water Strategy aims to maintain regional water security into the future through management and operation of a water grid including a recycling facility and a desalination plant.

SEQWater owns and operates 26 dams, 51 weirs, and two borefields, including 12 key dams which supply as much as 90% of the region’s drinking water. Foster says SEQWater is now planning for far worse events than the Millenium Drought.

“Cape Town never thought they would experience more than two failed wet seasons in a row. South East Queenslanders never thought we would experience two failed wet season in a row either.

“But we went through the Millenium Drought and nearly a decade of failed wet seasons.”

Foster says that if SEQ was again faced with a Millenium Drought scenario, the strategies put in place would allow water supply to be maintained with medium level restrictions.

Meanwhile, in far more parched countries

You might feel relieved to learn that Australia was not one of 33 countries identified by the World Resources Institute as facing extreme water stress by 2040. However, Australia is one of six regions facing increased water stress, water demand, water supply, and seasonal variability over the next 22 years.

The top 11 water-stressed countries in 2040, each considered extremely highly stressed with a score of 5.0 out of 5.0, are projected to be Bahrain, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar, San Marino, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Lebanon.

The 2015 report forecasts rapid increases in water stress across regions including eastern Australia, western Asia, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the North American West, northern China, and Chile.

Nothing focuses the mind on the need to conserve water more than a summer camping holiday in a water-scarce national park. At the Bunya Mountains national park, east of Dalby, bore water is available in the national park camp ground. But it is labelled ‘non-potable’ and visitors are advised to boil and/or sterilise the water before using. We have a 60 litre tank under our caravan and we also take two 10-litre containers as back-up. Even so, after five days the van tank was less than half full and by the time we drove home on a stinking hot Sunday, we were sharing the last few mouthfuls from a water bottle.

Fine, just walk into the Kilcoy IGA and buy some bottled water, right? Maybe not. In Cape Town, supermarkets were forced to introduce a per customer limit after a big run on bottled water.

You may recall I was enthralled a while ago by Ben H Winters’ series, The Last Policeman. This cli-fi trilogy depicts the urban chaos developing as the population wait for the cataclysmic arrival of an asteroid which will destroy the planet.

Winters expertly conjured up underlying tensions between survivalists, conspiracy theorists or escapists who have “gone bucket list” or found easy ways to do themselves in. Then there are those with no particular moral code. As of the policemen in Winters’ second book says: “Just you wait until the water runs out…”

More reading: The 11 cities most likely to run out of water

http://bobwords.com.au/doesnt-rain-soon-mate/

http://bobwords.com.au/dont-drink-the-water/

John Hewson and integrity in a post-truth world

Photo of John Hewson – Crawford School of Public Policy

Nobody can call out an errant politician better than former Liberal Opposition Leader John Hewson. In the 22 years since he resigned from politics, Hewson has become a respected academic, the darling of TV panel shows like Q&A, and a regular on the celebrity speakers’ circuit. Yesterday, Hewson was a keynote speaker at Griffith University’s two-day summit, Integrity20.

Who better to address the opening topic “Post-Truth, Trust and the Ethics of Deceit?” Hewson has been speaking out about fake news and the propensity of politicians to stray from the facts, long before Donald Trump made it a catch phrase. He is also an advocate for evidence-based public policy, often identifying where politicians have used models and commissioned reports to suit their version of the facts.

So to Hewson’s opening address yesterday, where he used the climate change debate to support his argument for ‘evidence-based public policy’.

“We had a very hard-line position as a response to the climate challenge back in the early 1990s. I was calling for a 20% cut in emissions by the year 2000 off a 1990 base. We are yet to know how we are getting the 5% reduction in emissions by 2020 off a 2000 base. And of course, we’re committed under the Paris Accord to cut emissions by 26% to 28% by 2030.

“What’s happened over that period is drift – the issues have been left to drift. Housing affordability’s been left to drift, the climate response has been left to drift and the final line of that drift is the mess we have in the energy sector. Electricity and gas prices are running away to the point where the average household is struggling to afford to pay its power bills.

“These are the outcomes of negligent government over a very long period of time.”

Hewson believes the situation can be turned around, but it will take some years to reverse the damage. He said what the country needed was an honest debate about leadership.

“And leadership is going to be about telling people honestly the way it is. To get good policy up we have to educate people to accept the magnitude of the problem.

“But we don’t have any debate now in this country – it’s all negative. One side puts its hand up and says let’s do X and the other side immediately says no.”

One in three voted for someone else

He said people had lost faith in the two-party system. In the last election, one in three people did not vote for one of the major parties. The protest vote was not just something that had happened only in Australia, he added, citing Brexit, the US, France and Germany as recent examples.

“It’s a longer term trend and it will get worse before it gets better.”

The path to restoring voter confidence, he said, was by focusing on the issues that affect people – the cost of living, health, housing, childcare and education.

But the main problem was that the ‘wrong people’ were in government.

“If you asked them why they went into politics, they’d say to make a difference and leave a better world for their grandchildren.

“And then they do the opposite.’

Hewson, who will be 71 next Sunday, had a distinguished career in politics. He was leader of the Australian Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition between 1990 and 1994. Before and after politics he has worked as a senior economist for organisations, including the Australian Treasury, the Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In this context, it seems uncharitable to recall that in 1991 he advocated an unpopular goods and services tax. He lost the 1993 election to Paul Keating over the “Fightback Package”, of which GST was a central element. Ironically, Paul Keating (who first advocated a GST in 1985), shamelessly exploited public opinion to thwart Hewson.

All that aside, Hewson at least clearly outlined what he was going to do in 1991-93 and stuck to it. He is known still as a straight shooter, a man who once said he lived in hope of ‘spin-free politics’.

Day one of the Integrity20 Summit was not just about politics and truth. ABC presenter James O’Loghlin chaired a panel discussion about solving the world’s problems through innovation.

Inventor and futurist Mark Pesce showed a short video of a robot working on a farm in Indonesia. He described it as just two wheels, an axle and a smartphone on the end of what looks like a selfie stick, collecting data and producing crop reports. These robots cost about $2,500 and can be shared around a farming community. He also demonstrated how 3D printers, aligned with a simple robot used in smart phone technology, can reproduce all the plastic parts to build another 3D printer. Eventually, robots will also be able to assemble the printers – and that’s just the edges of the innovations universe.

CSIRO scientist Stefan Hajkowicz said the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the future of work had been greatly over-stated. He thought there were many areas where robots and humans would work side by side – in hospitals for example. The robot would do the blood test and the nurse would soothe the patient’s concerns.

But it turns out robots are crap at irregular tasks we humans take for granted, A robot cannot tie your shoelaces, for example. And, as Hajkowicz added, they can’t fold towels. They tried to get a robot to fold a towel. It took 20 minutes and did the job badly.

Today I attended the final full-day session of Integrity20, hastily scribbling notes and pressing stop/start on my hand-held recorder. You may wonder how I met my deadline – marvel at my prowess.

M.Y Prowess (sub-editor): “Isn’t it time I had a byline?”

BW: Ghost writers should be read and not heard – and try using commas instead of dashes – please – some of my readers find it tiresome.”

Next week: Bryan Dawe on satire, media censorship and the global rise of populism.

Renewable energy vs climate sceptics

Have you ever noticed, after giving your dog a bath, how it will head straight for the nearest patch of renewable energy? Ours has a favourite sunny spot next to the dining room table where he will happily bask, while our solar-powered camping lamp, calculator and torches are recharging on the window sill.

Free sunshine – what’s not to like? As it happens, we have been preparing our little caravan for a weekend music festival in the bush. The 160 watt portable solar panel slides snugly under the bed. At $159, this has proved to be a worthy investment for our outback and bush music weekend adventures. It means you can keep topping up the caravan’s battery (if the sun is shining) and go to bed early if it’s not.

We are not expecting rain. No-one is expecting rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed the winter just past was the hottest since records began in 1910. It was also the 9^th driest winter on record. The average maximum temperature was almost 2 degrees above the long-term average.

Meanwhile, Texas is suffering unprecedented flooding courtesy of Hurricane Harvey, the reporting of which has somewhat overshadowed devastating monsoon flooding in South East Asia. So far, in the latter disaster area, 1,200 people have been killed and almost two million children were unable to get to school.

As we ironically say in the privacy of our own home – “Just as well there’s no such thing as climate change, then!”

Now all, some of, or only a small part of these extreme weather events could be ascribed to global warming/climate change, which, 97% of scientists agree, is mostly caused by human activity.

Despite this consensus on behalf of an apparently overwhelming majority of scientists, sceptics disagree. I happened to read that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott is set to deliver a speech, “Daring to Doubt,” at an annual climate sceptics group meeting in London on October 9.

You might remember Tony Abbott – his reign as PM at one year and 361 days (cumulative terms), was longer than that of Harold Holt and Billy McMahon, but not by much. Abbott the Climate Change Sceptic is infamous in some quarters as the man who canned the government-funded Climate Commission as part of a Budget cost-cutting exercise.

The Climate Commission bounced back as the privately-funded Climate Council. A new report by the Climate Council concludes that the individual States are going their own way, with mixed results.

South Australia is a clear leader in the renewable energy field, the stakes raised by the government’s decision to replace ageing coal-fired power stations with a 150 megawatt solar thermal power plant.

FOMM foreshadowed this in 2014, when the SA government was trying to negotiate the future of the coal mine which fed its Port Augusta power stations. Now, after five years of lobbying and debate, the SA government is aiming to invest $650 million in renewable energy.

It hardly seems worth mentioning that 1,900 kilometres away, the Queensland Government, in a contrarian move, remains committed to the country’s largest Greenfield export coal mine. The Carmichael mine, which includes a dedicated railway line to take coal north to Abbott Point, is deeply unpopular among environmental groups because of the potential damage it could cause to the Great Barrier Reef, both by the number of ships traversing the narrow channels, and through coral bleaching as a result of human-induced temperature increases.

On the other hand, Queenslanders’ love affair with domestic solar panels is demonstrated by the fact that 32% of households are covered in 2017. Lobby group Solar Citizens (almost 100,000 members), welcomed last week’s decision by the Queensland Government to increase the regional feed-in tariff (FiT) program. This will allow solar systems up to 30kW to receive 10.1c per kWh – six times more than what was previously agreed.

Solar Citizens has an ambitious target of one million solar roofs by 2020.

“Queenslanders know a sensible idea when they see it – with 520,000 solar homes, our State has the highest rooftop solar uptake in the country,” a spokeswoman said.

However, critics of domestic solar energy say the flaw is that those who can afford to become self-sufficient do so, and those who cannot end up paying disproportionately more for energy.)

This week, the Climate Council presented its annual ‘state of the States’ renewable energy report. CEO Amanda McKenzie said the State survey showed a major step up from last year. All States and Territories (apart from WA), have strong renewable energy or net zero emissions targets. South Australia is building the world’s largest lithium ion battery storage facility, and over 30 large scale wind and solar projects are under construction across Australia in 2017.

“The good news is that many States are surging ahead and doing the heavy lifting for the (Federal) government.”

Last week, the Victorian government flagged new legislation which would increase its renewable energy target to 40% by 2025. There is also an intermediate plan to lift Victoria’s clean energy target to 25% by 2020.

So yes, it does seem as if individual States (and Councils) are setting their own renewable energy policies, in the absence of clear leadership at a national level.

Noosa Mayor Tony Wellington did not miss an opportunity to talk up his region’s commitment to solar panels. Noosa Shire, which de-merged from the larger Sunshine Coast Regional Council (SCRC), claims 9,000 households in Noosa Shire have solar installations, which is better than the State average. Cr Wellington told the Sunshine Coast Daily Noosa’s goal was to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2050.

Not to be overshadowed, the SCRC opened a 15 megawatt solar farm in July. The SCRC was the first local government in Australia to offset 100% of its electricity consumption with energy from a renewable source.

But what can humble citizens do, as pro-coal lobbyists clash swords with the solar and wind farm warriors? The go-it-alone mentality arises from a failure on the part of our Federal Government to stimulate investment in the renewable sector. Australia has already promised, under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% on 2005 levels by 2030. But Tony Abbott’s call as PM to reduce the renewable energy target (and now he advocates scrapping it altogether), was unhelpful.

Whatever way you judge it, a former PM addressing the Global Warming Policy Foundation is not a good look. The last Australian PM to do so was John Howard in 2013 (when he claimed global warming had stalled and was sceptical about the possibilities of an international agreement on climate change).

There have already been reports in the UK media which seized on old quotes by Mr Abbott referring to climate science as ‘bullshit’ and recycling his coal is ‘good for humanity’ comment.

As readers will know, we spent a week out at Carnarvon Gorge in July, a time of year when it is common for the temperature to dip below zero at night. We packed accordingly, then spent four nights kicking off the doona and keeping each other awake as the mercury stayed above 15.

It should be cool at night for the Neurum Creek Folk Festival, but I packed my shortie pyjamas, just in case there is such a thing as climate change.