Whitehaven Tarrawonga coal mine disrupted by protest

Frontline Action on Coal in the Leard State Forest claimed today that production at Whitehaven's Tarrawonga coal mine was disrupted due to a protester sitting on a tree platform with ropes attached to the front gate. Another twenty people supported the protestor.

The person up the tree was Jonathon Moylan who issued the ANZ hoax letter in January to garner attention on ANZ Bank financing to the tune of $1.2billion the Maule Creek coal mine.

The group claimed in a media release that all coal output and worker access to Whitehaven's Tarrawonga Mine this morning has been stopped. According to a report in the Herald a spokesperson for Whitehaven said that haulage of coal to the company's coal preparation plant had been stopped but production inside the mine had continued normally.

Front Line Action on Coal is one of the many community groups backing the "Call to Country" campaign by the Lock the Gate Alliance, calling for a federal moratorium on new coal and coal-seam gas projects and a Royal Commission into state government coal mine approval processes.

South American Lizards facing extinction due to climate change

Lizards are again in the news as being under threat from climate change. No, not those two footed political lizards we call politicians, who we elect again and again and who continue to support the corporate greed and short-sightedness of ripping the heart out of mother earth, destroying the environment and climate through subsidizing increasingly expensive fossil fuel extraction. We should be definitely trying to make them extinct. I am talking about four footed reptilian lizards who have evolved live birth as an evolutionary adaptation to living in cold climates. These are South American lizards who have successful adapted to a wide range of ecosystems.

I reported in May 2010 on the challenges facing lizards with climate change in "Why don't the people get rid of the lizards?". We are doing a very good job of driving the four footed reptilian lizards to extinction. Scientists estimate that "by 2080 local extinctions are projected to reach 39% worldwide, and species extinctions may reach 20%.". The 2010 scientific paper - Erosion of Lizard Diversity by Climate Change and Altered Thermal Niches - came to the conclusion that "lizards have already crossed a threshold for extinctions caused by climate change."

Reversing Victoria's anti-Wind Farm regulation could boost regional development

Victoria has a new Premier with Ted Baillieu falling on his own sword, with Denis Napthine, the member for South West Coast, being appointed into the role of Premier of Victoria. Just in time as new economic statistics show that the Victorian economy is in recession. Restoring sanity to planning regulations for wind farm development could boost regional development and the Government's very low environmental credentials as it faces re-election in 2014.

Related: Petition - Let's get Victoria back on track: clean energy, protect our farms

Update 14 March 2013: Sadly, Denis Napthine in conversation with Jon Faine on ABC Radio 774 Melbourne on 14 March scotched the prospect of reversing the anti-wind farm planning regulations as breaking a promise from last election in 2010. I don't know what that has to do with it, as the coalition Government has already broken several environmental policy promises as well as policies on maintaining TAFE and increasing salaries of teachers.

Friends of the Earth have highlighted one small policy change that could make a substantial difference in Victoria's regional economy and employment and also provide substantial climate emissions reduction. We are talking about reversing Baillieu's drastic planning law VC82 for wind turbines whereby anybody within a 2 kiloneter radius of a proposed wind turbine can veto the development.

"There is no doubt that Ted Baillieu was ideologically committed to opposing wind energy" said Friends of the Earth renewables spokesperson Leigh Ewbank. "The new Premier, Denis Napthine, does not have the same ideological baggage."

Coastal Wetlands under threat from Sea Level Rise says World Bank

Climate change induced sea level rise of one metre is likely to destroy 60 per cent of the developing world's wetlands says a new World Bank research working paper. The economic loss of these wetlands is estimated at approximately $630 million US dollars per year.

The World Bank study looked at the risk to coastal wetlands in 76 countries at a sea level rise of one metre. Because there are so many uncertainties with the rate of sea level rise, the one metre level was chosen to study the likely impact. This sea level may be achieved this century, with sea level rising 60% faster than IPCC projections. Sea level rise is unstoppable, but it can be slowed through emissions reduction and give us humans and ecosystems a chance to adapt. Sea levels will continue to rise for several centuries.

The study found that about 99% of the coastal wetlands at elevations of one meter or less in the Middle East and North Africa could disappear, as well as 77% in sub-Saharan Africa, 66% in East Asia and 39% in Latin America and the Caribbean. Places like the iconic Sundarbans of Bangladesh and India, a major home and refuge to the Bengal tiger, are under threat.

Water stress critical factor in reduced crop yield due to Global Warming

High temperatures over several days or more for a crop such as corn (maize) can reduce the crop yield substantially. But new crop research reveals that it is not so much the heat and heat stress that impacts the plants, but water stress caused by increased evapo-transpiration through vapour pressure deficit (VPD) - the plants version of human sweating to cool down.

The new understanding comes from research and modelling by one of Australia's leading crop scientists, Professor Graeme Hammer, from the University of Queensland. Graeme has spent much of the last decade as professor in crop science at UQ's Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) developing increasingly sophisticated computer models to predict the growth and yield of agricultural crops. Lead author for the study was David Lobell, an Assistant Professor in Environmental Earth System Science and Associate Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University.

Repost: China Takes a Leading Role in Solving Climate Change

China Takes a Leading Role in Solving Climate Change (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 4 March 2013 by dana1981 A few months ago we looked at some hopeful climate news, including Mexico passing comprehensive climate legislation nearly unanimously, and many other efforts from a variety of countries to reduce their carbon emissions. Ultimately the biggest emitters need to get…

Moderate Volcanic activity slowing global warming by 25% suggests study

Atmospheric warming has slowed over the last decade, and scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder believe the cause of this may be all the small to medium volcanic eruptions spewing sulphur dioxide high into the atmosphere where it changes the reflectivity of the top of the atmosphere.

It is well established that major volcanic eruptions like Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 emit millions of tons of sulphur dioxide that effectively cool the earth slightly for several years. It has also been theorised that the stagnation in global warming in the mid twentieth century was caused by the atmospheric nuclear testing carried out between 1945 and 1980. It seems that nuclear winter actually occurred, although on just a small scale. A small nuclear war would also likely cause global cooling through the amount of particulate matter thrown up into the stratosphere. But really this is not something to even contemplate happening due to the amount of death and devastation involved.

Scientists have theorised that other reasons for the slowing in the rate of atmospheric global warming over the last decade is that a greater proportion of heat is being taken up by the world's oceans; and secondly that Asia, particularly India and China, have increased their sulphur dioxide emissions from coal fired power by 60% between 2000 and 2010 which has increased the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere changing the reflectivity.

East Africa drought in 2011 partially attributed to climate change

Scientists from the UK's Met Office have researched the causes of the 2011 East African drought and found human caused climate change was a significant contribution. The drought was a humanitarian disaster that killed an estimated 50,000 people, with 13 million in need of assistance in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. Almost 30,000 children under the age of five were believed to have died of malnutrition in Somalia.

The drought had two components - the 'short rains' of October - November rainy season in 2010 which failed to appear, and then the absence of the 'long rains' from March - June of 2011 which really created the humanitarian crisis. The UN declared a famine on 20 July in southern Somalia, the first famine declared globally in 30 years. It was categorised as the worst drought in the region for 60 years.

Climate scientist Simon Mason from Columbia University said that East Africa has experienced a strong drying trend over the last 10 years. It is thought that rising sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean create conditions that pull moisture away from East Africa.

Permafrost climate tipping point threshold at 1.5 degrees - Siberian caves reveal

At what point might we trigger a permafrost tipping point? New research from the caves of Siberia points to a threshold temperature of just 1.5 degrees celsius. At that temperature we could see large swathes of permafrost across Siberia melting resulting in the release of more than 1,000 gigatons of carbon and methane. This would be a substantial climate feedback resulting in even greater global warming. There would also be substantial damage to natural and human environments and structures.

And we are already halfway there to warming the world by 1.5C, with an estimated global temperature rise since the Nineteenth century of between 0.7 and 0.8 degrees C. There is already enough inertia in the climate system to carry us over this threshold. Which makes every attempt to reduce carbon emissions, and the use of fossil fuels, as worthwhile to limit the permafrost thaw.

Related: Methane and CO2 in thawing Arctic permafrost a climate tipping point | "We do have an emergency" - Arctic Methane Feedback amplifying warming | Arctic Permafrost thawing raising CO2 levels

Arctic amplification, the Jet stream and Extreme weather in Northern Hemisphere

A series of major extreme weather events in the Northern hemisphere including the heatwave in the United States in 2011, the Russian heatwave of 2010, the Pakistani floods of 2010 have now been attributed to a common physical cause. The scientists suggest in a new scientific study that man-made climate change repeatedly disturbs the patterns of atmospheric flow - the atmospheric Rossby waves of the jet stream - around the globe's Northern hemisphere through a subtle resonance mechanism.

"An important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth normally takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating between the tropical and the Arctic regions. So when they swing up, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US, and when they swing down, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic," explains lead author Vladimir Petoukhov.

"What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks. So instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays. In fact, we observe a strong amplification of the usually weak, slowly moving component of these waves," says Petoukhov.