Australia and Climate Change

To broaden the horizons of this blog briefly, I want to quickly focus upon the popularization of environmental and climate sciences, which has been taken on by the President of the United States of America, on his personal Twitter account (Fig.1). Unfortunately, to use a phrase he coined, what he is sharing is "fake news", worryingly his opinion on climate change is shared by prominent A ustralian politicians. Figure 1. Tweet from Donald Trump on 28/12/2107, highlighting misguided and misleading information on climate change. As demonstrated in Figure 1 there is a common misunderstanding between 'climate' and 'weather', where they are used interchangeably. Climate is a term used to define the average weather of a region over a given period, this is largely ~30 years , temperature is an aspect of climate. To clear up Mr Trump's misunderstanding, the average global temperature has increased by 0.85 o C from 1880 - 2012. To further exemplify Mr Tr...

The amount of carbon that has been emitted globally by anthropogenic emissions and land clearing, from 1750 to 2011 is totaled at   555 ± 85 PgC  (1 Pg is  10 15  grams, or one billion metric tonnes) , this rate of release of carbon is only seen at one other period in the geological past, the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). The PETM occured at  ~56Ma,  when it's postulated that massive methane hydrates were released from the sea, which then oxidised to  CO 2 , stimulating a huge greenhouse effect, resulting in ~5 o C global average increase in temperatures, persisting for ~100,000 years.  The current concentration of  CO 2  in the atmopshere is  403.3 ± 0.1 ppm ,  and is increasing at 2.21ppm per year , continuing along this path without drastic changes in government policy as well changes to lifestyle choices, is going to lead to a world similar to that of the PETM. This experiment we're running with world cl...

CSIRO ( The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation)  blog CSIROscope, recently posted , summarizing a paper  documenting the anomalously high number of frosts  during the winter of 2016, in SW Western Australia and tried to identify an anthropogenic climate change fingerprint in this  (sub-zero temperatures and frosts in WA shown in Fig.1). Figure 1. Left) Temperatures locally of -3.5 o C in SW Australia during July 2017 . Right) Freezing conditions recorded in Western Australia during July 2017. Photos - J Chapman. The paper concludes that variations in the large-scale circulation patterns, resulting from anthropogenic influence have caused an enhancement in weather systems, causing more cold episodes, during winter, in SW Western Australia. Showing that the outcomes of climate change can be unexpected and complex, even though nation wide the temperature has risen by  +0.94° C  since 1911. The SW region of WA...

To elaborate from the previous posts in this bog, which have touched upon the Australian renewable sector, I wanted to approach a potentially feather ruffling topic. A key way in which Australia will be incorporated into the global communities struggle, to mitigate anthropogenic climate change, is by proving the raw materials from which a greener future will be built.  A quote from which I have not been able to find a source, although there are frequent bumper stickers in more industrial and agricultural reliant communities reads; "Everything is either farmed or mined"  D e-industrialisation  through western Europe has led to a population which can be significantly removed from where the everyday items of their life come from.  I bring this to your attention, because there is a largely overlooked issue of how we will produce solar panels, wind turbines, wave power generators, as well as the large scale battery systems which will enable humanity to be weane...

The state of renewable energy in Australia The Australian energy sector is facing heightened political scrutiny with a multitude of fingers being pointed from politicians, energy companies and mining companies alike, as well as input from the odd American billionaire. After well publicized blackouts, in the state of South Australia through 2016, the reaction of federal government was to blame  the state government for having 41% of their energy coming from renewables, with limited storage capacity. The state government blamed the federal government for a lack of investment. This story has continued through state and federal governments, without much clarity coming through. The final, official incident  report documenting the cause of the blackouts found that extreme weather had downed electricity lines, which caused the wind farms to activate a protection mechanism, resulting in a huge drop in power and so causing the blackout. Not the result of having a high percentage of ...