Go Greener, Australia

On Tuesday, Brian from Larvatus Prodeo posted 7 graphs showing the incredibly rapid decline in Arctic ice last year. It beats all other extremes that have been recorded already, and shows how close we are to the point of no return.

Scientists previously predicted that the Arctic ice-cap would be no longer there during summertime by 2040, but have now revised that date to 2012. When it’s gone, we’re looking at faster sea-level rises and changed weather patterns with a knock-on effect around the world.

I was struck by the comment from one of the NASA climate scientists, Jay Zwally, as quoted in the National Geographic article Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within 5 Years (and quoted by Brian as well)

“The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming,” said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. “Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”

Brian’s article Trouble at the top of the world shows just how bad the damage is getting. He’s going to post more articles explaining the issue, and is encouraging people to send them to any policy-makers they know. Please read it, and send a link to it to anyone who you think needs to know more about what’s going on.

One of the major items on our government’s list of “Things to Do to Help the Environment” is paying for more carbon sequestration experiments. In the recent budget, they allocated $500 million towards research into ‘clean’ coal. But what is it, exactly?

Carbon sequestration is also known as geosequestration or carbon capture and storage (I prefer the last name, because it’s easier to spell!). The idea is to figure out how to capture the carbon being emitted, transform it into a liquid or gas which can be easily stored, then find a suitable underground area to put it in, where it will hopefully stay without harming the environment around it. You can see how they’re planning on doing it in this pdf file on Carbon Capture from CO2CRC, the company leading the research in Australia.

Currently they’re working on an experimental sequestration project in the Otway basin in Victoria. This will pump 100,000 tonnes of naturally-occurring carbon dioxide into a natural reservoir 2km underground, to see if it stays there once they put it there. Unfortunately, even if this project goes exactly to plan, it would be at least 5 to 10 years before it would be available commercially (opponents say it might be as long as 20 years). And as reported in the Age, it can’t even be retro-fitted to our older power stations like Hazelwood.

Then we face the problem of where we’re going to store this stuff. At the moment, over 80% of Australia’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. With over 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide produced annually, that’s a lot of liquid or gas to find a new home for. CO2CRC has a pdf map of possible sites in Australia but it’s unlikely that all of them will be suitable. Another research project in Kwinana has been cancelled because the geological formations were found to have gas ‘chimneys’ that would allow the gas to escape.

Other demonstration projects have been cancelled recently in Norway and the UK, as they were considered too expensive. A US project has had it’s government funding cancelled as well due to cost blow-outs.

It makes you wonder why we’re spending half our money for eco-friendly energy on carbon capture and storage. It seems like a slow, expensive way to support a dying industry. I’d prefer to see all the research money go to renewables research, which only got the same $500 million to divide among individual technologies like solar, wind and geothermal.

Obviously the coal companies would like to get rid of the carbon-dioxide they put out instead of putting it into our atmosphere, since that would let them carry on with business as usual. But the coal industry is made up of enormous companies posting huge profits: if they want to stay the preferred energy source, isn’t it up to them to meet our new, cleaner standards? Why are we paying for their research?

Carbon storage may be necessary though: even if we stop getting our energy from coal-fired power plants relatively soon, we may still need to scrub the existing carbon emissions out of the atmosphere. If so, we’ll need a safe place to put them, and I haven’t heard any better ideas yet

Last night the ABC aired The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary that claims nature, not humans, is causing climate change. ABC Science Online has a debunking at The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle Swindle which explains the science in layman’s terms. If you really want to nerd it up, you can see more details at RealClimate.org and the Australian Science Media Centre.

I’m not sure why the ABC aired such an out-of-date documentary: Tim Flannery suggested it’s for ratings, while Crikey.com.au believes it’s due to political pressure.

Studio Debate
I was more interested in the studio debate after the documentary was aired. Tony Jones hosted a panel of scientists, industry leaders and media people. They covered the science, the UK response to the doco, and the business response to global warming.

Prof. David Karoly (climate scientist) and Prof. Bob Carter (geologist, denialist) had most of the discussion, arguing over statistics and data. Karoly had a lot of energy and evidence, while Carter repeated points from the film which were easily rebutted. Ray Evans (Lavoisier Group, denialist) ranted about how pathetic the coal industry is to cave in to the environmentalists - Dr Nikki Williams, representing coal interests, gave him a killer look at that point! She’s in favour of preventing global warming, but her main aim was good PR for the coal industry.

Then it was time for questions from the audience. Unfortunately, many of the people in the studio weren’t there to debate or ask questions, they just wanted to air their own kooky theories (Larvatus Prodeo has the YouTube video of it). There were rambling statements about carbon-14 isotopes from a creationist; and a few people saying that all environmentalists are into eugenics - I’m told they’re followers of a guy called Larouche. My favourite was the student (of astrophysics, music and “physical economics”, another Larouche-ian) who rambled incoherently about Johannes Kepler and Plato. The more sensible audience members asked panelists to clarify things they’d said earlier, or made statements about how they’re not scientists but they believe the planet is getting warmer and they’d like someone to fix it, please.

After the debate, Lateline interviewed Dr Carl Wunsch, a scientist who says the documentary misrepresented him. He had his comments cut from the film, and has threatened legal action against Durkin. I think he was naive to not check what he was contributing to before being interviewed, because Durkin already has a reputation for dodgy “science” and misrepresenting people on film. Wunsch is certainly wiser now.

It was an interesting night of tv, but I don’t know that it’s had any benefit for the Australian public. The denialists are still convinced there’s a left-wing conspiracy, and those of us who are more sensible will still be switching our light-bulbs and recycling our rubbish.