Australia's total coal mine methane emissions double official estimates, Ember report finds (Excerpt): ABC News

 hours ago

This map shows the coal mines emitting the most methane in the country.(Supplied: Ember)

Australia's methane emissions from coal mines are twice as high as national estimates, with some mines leaking up to 10 times more methane than officially reported, research by an international climate think tank has found.

Key points:

• A new report has revealed that Australian coal mine methane emissions are double official estimates
• In 2019 coal methane emissions had a greater global warming impact than all of Australia's cars
• New "readily available" technologies could reduce methane emissions by 45 per cent

European-based researcher Ember was commissioned by the environmental group, Lock the Gate Alliance, to analyse available data on methane emissions from the Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System (AGEIS), the Clean Energy Regulator (CER), the Australian Chief Economist, Department of Natural Resources and Mines, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Global Energy Monitor.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and its global warming potential is more than 25 times that of carbon dioxide.

The report found that in 2019, Australian coal mine methane emissions made up 68 per cent of overall energy industry emissions, making it a bigger contributor than oil and gas.

"What we found was that the methane leaking from Australian coal mines causes almost double the climate impact every year of all of Australia's cars," report author Dr Sabina Assan said.

"That's a really massive climate impact before we even start to think about the carbon dioxide emissions released from burning coal."

By ABC national regional reporter Nathan Morris

Go to complete ABC News report

Coalition quietly adds fossil fuel industry leaders to emissions reduction panel (excerpts): The Guardian

"The Morrison government has quietly appointed fossil fuel industry leaders and a controversial economist to a committee responsible for ensuring the integrity of projects that get climate funding.

Critics have raised concerns about whether some appointees to the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee may have a potential conflict of interest that could leave its decisions open to legal challenge.

The overhaul of the committee follows the government indicating it plans to expand the industries that can access its $2.5bn emissions reduction fund, including opening it to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects by oil and gas companies."

........

 "Bill Hare, the chief executive and senior scientist with Climate Analytics, said it appeared the government had appointed “mostly people concerned with the status quo” rather than aiming for a rapid shift towards zero emissions.

He said he was concerned the government planned to allow fossil fuel companies to receive climate funding for merely reducing emissions below inflated estimates of what their CO2 output otherwise might be."

............

"The emissions reduction fund has so far operated with limited success in reducing national emissions. The government has paid $740m for emissions cuts and signed contracts for another $1.66bn. Despite this, national emissions had dipped only slightly since the Coalition was elected in 2013 prior to the Covid-19 shutdown.

Government data shows the small reduction was overwhelmingly due to the rise of solar and wind energy, which are not supported through the fund." 

 To go to the original The Guardian article

The Carbon Club/Book: 'You bastards sacked me.' (excerpt): SMH

The Carbon Club

How did environmental issues become so politicised? The people purge early in the Abbott government – beginning in 2013 with the "night of the short knives" – gives some clues.

By Marian Wilkinson
August 29, 2020

 .................................

"What surprised the scientists most was not their hasty sacking but how quickly the government obliterated their work. “The website that we’d spent a lot of time building was taken down with absolutely no justification as far as I could see,” says Flannery, the one-time principal research scientist at the Australian Museum and internationally renowned scientific author. “It was giving basic information that was being used by many, many people – teachers and others – just to gain a better understanding of what climate science was actually about.”

Corruption

The Climate Commission had been set up in 2011 by Julia Gillard’s Labor government as an independent source of information for the public to understand climate change and its impacts on Australia. But the commission and its members had been pilloried as “alarmist” by sceptical columnists in the Murdoch media and by radio shock jocks from the beginning. Flannery was expecting the commission to be disbanded, but the decision to kill its website hurt."

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We Want Climate Action Now

"Not long before this, the Liberal Party’s donor cash cow, the Cormack Foundation, which Morgan chaired, had stumped up another $300,000 for the Institute of Public Affairs. The conservative think tank’s latest publication, Climate Change: The Facts 2014, was soon in the works with essays from Australia’s best known climate sceptics, News Corp’s Andrew Bolt and former James Cook University professor Bob Carter, along with their international cohorts by now so familiar here: MIT’s Professor Richard Lindzen, Dr Pat Michaels from the US Cato Institute – a think tank co-founded by American billionaire Charles Koch – and the former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson.

Climate Justice

At the same time as Morgan’s attack, Lawson’s UK think tank, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, welcomed Abbott’s old mentor, John Howard, to deliver its annual lecture in London. The former Liberal prime minister used the opportunity to enthusiastically back Abbott’s plan to dismantle Labor’s climate policies in a speech he called “One Religion is Enough”."

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"By the end of Abbott’s first year in office, the PM had made it clear he didn’t believe most climate scientists, even those who worked for his government. But while his climate scepticism could shape policy in Canberra, it would soon put him in conflict with the most powerful leader in the world, US president Barack Obama.

This is an edited extract from Marian Wilkinson’s The Carbon Club (Allen & Unwin, $33), out Monday."


Related:   MAJOR PARTIES LEAVE BACKDOOR OPEN FOR DIRTY DONATIONS

Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government, carbon emissions, corrupting donations, Institute of Public Affairs IPA, Koch brothers, Murdoch media, political party donations from corporations, Professor Flannery

The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from?: GRIST

' “I think the main issue is that people focus way, way too much on people’s personal footprints, and whether they fly or not, without really dealing with the structural things that really cause carbon dioxide levels to go up,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

Transportation makes up a little over 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. (In the United States, it makes up around 28 percent.) That’s a significant chunk, but it also means that even if all travel were completely carbon-free (imagine a renewable-powered, electrified train system, combined with personal EVs and battery-powered airplanes), there’d still be another 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions billowing into the skies.

So where are all those emissions coming from? For one thing, utilities are still generating roughly the same amount of electricity — even if more of it’s going to houses instead of workplaces. Electricity and heating combined account for over 40 percent of global emissions. Many people around the world rely on wood, coal, and natural gas to keep their homes warm and cook their food — and in most places, electricity isn’t so green either." '

Read the original GRIST article

New research puts myth to bed: EVs will lower emissions: The DriveIn

New research has busted the myths around electric vehicles and emissions – confirming that in virtually every part of the world, including still coal-dominated Australia, switching to an electric vehicle will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, confirmed that in 95 per cent of the world, switching to an electric vehicle from a petrol equivalent would lead to an overall reduction in greenhouse emissions, even when the full life-cycle of a vehicle is taken into account.

There has been some conjecture over the emissions savings that could be achieved by a switch to an electric vehicle, with myths being pushed by the likes of climate contrarion Bjorn Lomborg in the Murdoch media that electric vehicles have no environmental benefits as they still may still source their electricity from fossil fuel power stations.

But the study, led by researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands, working with the universities of Exeter and Cambridge, found that electric vehicles did indeed lead to lower emissions, even in regions where a large portion of electricity generation is sourced from fossil fuels.

Read more in the original article

British carbon tax leads to 93% drop in coal-fired electricity: UCL News

"A tax on carbon dioxide emissions in Great Britain, introduced in 2013, has led to the proportion of electricity generated from coal falling from 40% to 3% over six years, according to research led by UCL.


British electricity generated from coal fell from 13.1 TWh (terawatt hours) in 2013 to 0.97 TWh in September 2019, and was replaced by other less emission-heavy forms of generation such as gas. The decline in coal generation accelerated substantially after the tax was increased in 2015."

Read the UCL article

See also:

Morrison now demands we 'adapt' to climate change catastrophes: IA

Morrison now demands we 'adapt' to climate change catastrophes: IA

Independent Australia

"IT'S REMARKABLE that the least resilient, most non-adaptive Federal Government in living memory should now urge its citizens, in the face of horrific bushfires, to prove our resilience and adaptability by learning to put up with weather conditions that are hostile to human life.

It will, in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s view, take resilience to learn to adapt to whatever horrors nature has in store for us as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change.

"And the government is failing again by now suggesting that our primary focus should be on adapting to climate change, rather than upping our efforts to tackle the root cause: the burning of fossil fuels." - Greg Mullinshttps://t.co/4xOsQFGPdS

— Climate Council (@climatecouncil) January 20, 2020

It’s difficult to argue against this. It will indeed take a resilience – previously unheard of within humanity – to withstand record-breaking temperatures, prolonged drought and catastrophic weather events such as the fires, floods and cyclones we’re certain to experience if more is not done globally and urgently to reduce emissions. The question is, why demand this resilience as the way forward, instead of committing to undertake mitigation and prevention?

Morrison’s latest tactic is a textbook example of behaviour typical of an abuser — also known as "gaslighting". In order to continue the pattern of abuse that brings gratification of one kind or another, the abuser must convince the abused that they have to adapt to the abusive conditions. In order to perform that adaptation, the abused must develop the resilience both to withstand the abuse, and to live an outwardly normal life. The abused party must not give any indication of the dysfunctional nature of their circumstances because the abuser must be allowed to maintain the illusion of normality for the eyes of the outside world. Resilience and adaptation are essential to achieve these goals, as many survivors of abuse will confirm."

Read the complete Independent Australia article 

Related:

"How Does a Nation Adapt to Its Own Murder?

Australia is going up in flames, and its government calls for resilience while planning for more coal mines." New York Times

Leaked IPCC report warns of the future of oceans in climate change: Global Landscapes Forum

"This topic will be discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum New York 2019. Learn more about how to join here.

The world’s vast oceans, glacial ice sheets and northern permafrost are poised to unleash disaster, including drought, floods, hunger and destruction, unless dramatic action is taken against human-caused carbon pollution and climate change, warns a leaked draft of a major U.N. report.

The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) sounds alarm bells over declines in fish stocks, plus “a hundred-fold or more increase in the damages caused by superstorms, and hundreds of millions of people displaced by rising seas,” according to news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), which obtained a copy of the 900-page draft report."

Read the complete article 

Related:

Great Barrier Reef outlook now 'very poor', Australian government review says: The Guardian

It’s Time to Try Fossil-Fuel Executives for Crimes Against Humanity: Jacobin

......"These are welcome attempts to hold the industry responsible for its role in warming our earth. It’s time, however, to take this series of legal proceedings to the next level: we should try fossil-fuel executives for crimes against humanity.

Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Just one hundred fossil fuel producers — including privately held and state-owned companies — have been responsible for 71 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions released since 1988, emissions that have already killed at least tens of thousands of people through climate-fueled disasters worldwide.

Green New Deal advocates have been right to focus on the myriad ways that decarbonization can improve the lives of working-class Americans. But an important complement to that is holding those most responsible for the crisis fully accountable. It’s the right thing to do, and it makes clear to fossil-fuel executives that they could face consequences beyond vanishing profits."

Read the Jacobin story 

Related:

Great Barrier Reef outlook now 'very poor', Australian government review says: The Guardian

How BHP's climate stance caught its fellow miners on the hop: Financial Review

" 'Society’s combustion of fossil fuels and industrial processes like steelmaking and agriculture have released greenhouse gases at rates much faster than at any other time in the geological past.'

It could be a line from any climate change rally over the past two decades.

Instead the words came straight from the mouth of BHP chief executive Andrew Mackenzie, who warned in a speech in London on Tuesday of an "escalation towards a crisis" and signalled the resources giant would push customers to reduce emissions."

Read the Financial Review article 

But is this just 'greenwashing' ?

The Age of Stupid revisited: what's changed on climate change?

Ten years after climate movie The Age of Stupid had its green-carpet, solar-powered premiere, we follow its director as she revisits people and places from the film and asks: are we still heading for the catastrophic future it depicted? 



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#climate catastrophe #2.0 degrees  #1.5 degrees  #carbon emissions  #youth  #children

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The (Australian) government thinks we’re idiots and is not serious about reducing emissions : The Guardian

Australia's gas comparative emissions 2016- Click to enlarge

"Tackling climate change is tough and Scott Morrison’s latest policy is an insult"

"This fund of $2bn over 10 years is not just a rebranding of Tony Abbot’s Direct Action, it is actually a diminishment of it. At $200m a year on average it is less than half the money a year that was spent on Direct Action – a policy that was so laughably bad that a government with any level of shame would quietly have dumped it and pretended it never happened.

Yet, here we are. Nine years after Lenore Taylor ripped apart 
 

Vote for my future climate

the Liberal party’s policy of reliance on “soil magic”, we have the prime minister still thinking such measures of carbon sequestration are worth pursuing and will achieve anything close to what is required."

Read the excellent, original The Guardian article 

Related: California votes to extend cap-and-trade climate law to 2030

#carbon emissions  #carbon   #Australia   #scottmorrison   #climate action   #2degreesC

The case for “conditional optimism” on climate change: Vox

"Yes, it’s going to get worse, but nobody gets to give up hope or stop fighting. Sorry."

"In sum: humanity faces the urgent imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then eliminate them, and then go “net carbon negative,” i.e., absorb and sequester more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. It will face that imperative for several generations to come, no matter what the temperature is.

Yes, it’s going to get worse, but nobody gets to give up hope or stop fighting. Sorry.

Rather than just rejecting the question, though, let’s give it a little more specificity, so we can discuss some real answers. Let’s ask: What are the reasonable odds that the current international regime, the one that will likely be in charge for the next dozen crucial years, will reduce global carbon emissions enough to hit the 2 degree target?"

Read the Vox article 

#climate catastrophe  #climate action  #climate adaptation  #carbon emissions  #1.5  #2.0 degrees   #greenhouse gases

See older stories 

See also A Huge Climate Change Movement Led By Teenage Girls Is Sweeping Europe: BuzzFeed

Gum trees and the fight against global warming: SMH

Old Gum Tree, Tarkeeth Forest, NSW

"Just as the world grapples with the effects of climate change – fiercer and more frequent bushfires, droughts, floods and freak storms – Australia is doing its darndest to cut down more trees. Forests are disappearing so fast in NSW and Queensland that WWF International has put Australia on its list of global deforestation hot spots – the only one in the developed world – while koala populations continue to be decimated through habitat loss.

Climatologists say one of the easiest and cheapest ways to reduce carbon emissions is to preserve forests; deforestation accounts for 18 per cent of global emissions, far surpassing vehicles and aircraft combined, according to the Climate Council."

Read the SMH article

#Australia  #carbon emissions  #forests  #deforestation hotspot  #global emissions  #global heating

Meeting Paris Agreement Targets Would Create 24 Million Jobs Globally: Nexus Media

Photo by Andreas Gücklhorn on Unsplash

"A rapid transition to clean energy would create, not eliminate, jobs."

"The study, which appears in the journal International Labour Review, found that accelerating the transition to clean energy could add 24 million jobs globally by 2030. In reaching their conclusions, Montt and his colleagues developed a model of the world economy to reflect how it would look with widespread adoption of renewables and enhanced energy efficiency. They found the impact in the renewables sector will ripple across other industries, such as construction and manufacturing."

Read the Nexus Media article 

#jobs  #renewableenergy  # cleanenergy  #industries  #manufacturing  #construction  #climatechange

A Carbon Capture and Storage Plant

#carboncapture #carbonemissions #renewableenergy #climatecriminals #climatedeniers

Rolling Stone: The Truth About These Climate Change Numbers

"A new report shows carbon emissions are moving in the wrong direction, and we’re running out of time."

"A new report issued this week by the Global Carbon Project shows that, far from making progress, we’re going in exactly the opposite direction. After several years when global carbon emissions flatlined, giving hope to some that the turning point had come, the new report shows that carbon emissions are projected to increase by 2.7 percent in 2018. That may not sound like a lot, but given what’s at stake with our rapidly changing climate, it’s the equivalent of an alcoholic who had sworn to go cold turkey taking a couple of shots of Jack Daniels at lunch."

 #carbon #china #usa #coalmining #globalwarming #climateaction #carbondioxide #1.5 degrees

Read the Rolling Stone Article