Post of the Day
Here’s how a 100% renewable energy future can create jobs and even save the gas industry
Sven Teske
A new pathway for the global energy transition shows how the world can meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming goal without relying on carbon capture and storage, by creating a renewable gas industry.
Today’s Celebration
Economic Liberation Day – Togo
Foreign Intelligence Service Day – Ukraine
Unification Day – Romania
National Girl Child Day – India
Moebius Syndrome Awareness Day
Feast of Our Lady of Peace – Catholicism
Climate Change
Jacinda Ardern tells world leaders they have nothing to fear from acting on climate change
The New Zealand Prime Minister appears on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos with Sir David Attenborough and issues a strong message for world leaders.
Americans’ climate change concerns surge to record levels, poll shows
Total of 72% polled now say global warming is personally important to them, Yale said, as 73% accept it is happening
Greenland’s ice is melting faster than we thought. Here’s why that’s scary.
“Once you hit that tipping point, the only question is: How severe does it get?”
New study establishes link between climate change, conflict, and migration
Research involving a University of East Anglia (UEA) academic has established a link between climate change, conflict, and migration for the first time.
Climate change tipping point could be coming sooner than we think
A Columbia Engineering study confirms the urgency to tackle climate change. While it’s known that extreme weather events can affect the year-to-year variability in carbon uptake, and some researchers have suggested that there may be longer-term effects, this study is the first to actually quantify the effects through the 21st century and demonstrates that wetter-than-normal years do not compensate for losses in carbon uptake during dryer-than-normal years, caused by events such as droughts or heatwaves.
Climate change will affect how many boys are born worldwide, scientists say
Worldwide, the sex ratio at birth averages between 103 to 106 males born for every 100 females; however, climate change and its effects on the environment in which pregnant women live will alter this ratio, research suggests.
Should we tax greenhouse gases?
Daniel Sutter
A carbon tax makes economic sense, particularly if we eliminate other climate change regulations and alternative fuels subsidies. But the political process does not always employ policies as economists suggest.
National
Calls for emergency action plan as myrtle rust pushes plants to extinction
Experts say some members of ‘enormously important’ myrtle family could be extinct within five years, with others to follow
AEMO warns of ‘load shedding’ as grid pushed to breaking point [$]
The Australian Energy Market Operator warned of possible “load shedding” – mandatory power cuts – of up to 40 megawatts in each of Victoria and South Australia late on Thursday.
‘He’s coming home’: Tim Flannery returns to Australian Museum
The scientist and climate expert will have a public platform to speak about climate issues in the lead up to the state and federal elections.
It took one heatwave — just one — to kill about 34 per cent of the spectacled flying foxes in Australia.
Green activists at war with regional Australia [$]
Warren Mundine
For two years America has been fixated on alleged Russian influence of US elections. I am equally concerned about foreign-funded sabotage of our economy by Green activists determined to destroy regional Australia’s future.
Are Alan Jones and Co responsible for science denialism? [$]
Emily Watkins
Or are Jones and his ilk more likely to influence politicians, rather than change minds within the general population?
Victoria
Get ready for heat, fire risk, Vic warned
Victorians are being warned to brace for hot conditions and a cool change reminiscent of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.
Power grid pushed to breaking point [$]
The unexpected breakdown of a generating unit at AGL’s brown coal power station in Victoria threatens to push the already stretched grid close to breaking point.
‘It was a no brainer’: KeepCup founder tackles takeaway food packaging
Jamie Forsyth’s favoured approach is to “jump off a cliff and build a plane on the way down'”. It was his mantra when he co-founded reusable coffee cup business KeepCup with his sister Abigail Forsyth and he’s used the same method to launch Returnr which seeks to address waste in takeaway food packaging.
‘Absolute carnage’: chickens beheaded in suburban fox slaughter [$]
Foxes have beheaded a Caulfield East woman’s pet chickens in a brazen daytime massacre — the second attack in a year. It comes as dozens of people have reported an influx of the pests in the area, but eradicating them is easier said than done.
New South Wales
Water crisis: western NSW mayors travel to Sydney to demand help
Five mayors warn their towns could run out of water within weeks and call for their needs to be prioritised over irrigators
Minister absent from water crisis meeting as mayors converge on Sydney
Mayors from western NSW townships along the embattled Barwon-Darling river system who converged on Sydney to discuss the water crisis have criticised the water minister for failing to attend or telephone into the meeting.
Scientists critical of Murray-Darling plan picked for fish-kill probe
Some of the plan’s most outspoken critics have been selected for an independent probe, called by the federal opposition, into the recent fish kills
Turbine invasion ups anger levels
Jim and Marilyn Williams have a view of the Snowy Mountains in all their glory. Soon they could also see a giant wind farm.
A postcard from the edge of the Murray Darling disaster
Sarah Hanson-Young
A Greens senator explores upstream to find out why the rivers are dry.
Public right to be salty over desal plant expense [$]
Dominic Perrottet
The desalination plant will supply much-needed water to consumers, but it doesn’t come cheap — and Labor’s total mismanagement of Sydney’s water infrastructure is to blame.
ACT
ACT’s Container Deposit Scheme mishandled ‘revenue-raiser’: opposition
Extra space for more material at the scheme’s sole recycling facility was only allocated once it was shut down and bursting at the seams.
More certainty is needed around light rail end date
Canberra Times editorial
Canberrans deserve more certainty about when the light rail will be finished, as the rest of the city is in a state of flux.
Queensland
Shorten warns on Adani ‘miracle’
Bill Shorten has cautioned against counting on a ‘miracle outcome’ for Adani’s divisive Carmichael coalmine.
Farmer burnt by permit debacle [$]
A Queensland farmer whose family had to fight for their lives during last year’s bushfires claimed the State Government failed to supply a backburning permit despite repeated requests.
South Australia
SA heat ‘will see records broken’: BoM
As South Australians brace for a day of record-breaking heat, but authorities are warning of dangerous bushfire conditions.
Government accused of doing ‘bugger all’ to shore up Australia’s fuel security
A former high-ranking Air Force officer says the Federal Government is “playing a game” by using the country’s low fuel reserves as an argument to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight.
Grid facing searing test as homes get solar batteries [$]
Power reserves Six hundred homes have been approved for the installation of solar batteries to stop power price spikes and blackouts, as the wider grid faces a massive test in Thursday’s extreme heat.
Tasmania
Heat and wind to heighten Tasmania bushfire threat
Worsening conditions across Tasmania could lead to an increase in dangerous bushfires threatening lives and homes, authorities say.
Woman ‘shocked’ to find digested plastic in scats from endangered quoll
A Tasmanian woman says she was shocked to discover pieces of blue plastic in quoll scats left around her property, weeks after another quoll was found dead on Bruny Island with its head stuck in a plastic bottle.
Fighting Tasmanian bushfires costs state millions [$]
The cost of Tasmania’s bushfires has been estimated at up to $10 million – and Treasurer Peter Gutwein expects it will rise.
Push to protect our most precious places [$]
Special efforts are being made to spare some of Tasmania’s most sensitive wilderness areas from the ravages of the bushfires burning in the state’s South-West.
Spicers in $2.85 million Burnie ‘Pulp’ land sale deal [$]
A large parcel of former “pulp mill” land in Burnie is set to be sold.
Resort plan to transform bush block [$]
A development presented as environmentally responsible and worth up to $50 million is being proposed on Hobart’s Eastern Shore.
Work stops on Catte Hill wind farm over fire risk, as 69-metre turbines begin arriving in Tasmania [$]
THE Central Plateau bushfires have caused work to stop on the under-construction Cattle Hill wind farm at Waddamana, but the area is not yet considered under threat.
World Heritage Ancient Gondwanan Communities At Risk
Nature Photographers Tasmania (NPT) and the Tasmanian National Parks
Association (TNPA) have called on the State Government and its agencies, the
Parks and Wildlife Service (PWS) and the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS), to
urgently seek further resources, so that critical wilderness fires in western
Tasmania are prioritised, along with life and property.
Northern Territory
Dozens of feral horses found dead in dry Central Australian waterhole
A mass feral horse death at the base of a dry waterhole in Central Australia has been blamed on an extreme heatwave in the region.
Western Australia
Cyclone warning for WA’s Kimberley region
The northwest of WA’s Kimberley region has been put on tropical cyclone watch as a tropical low develops.
National park’s new 20km trail to boost tourist numbers
Set in 17,000ha of jarrah, marri and yarri forest 150km south of Perth, Wellington National Park’s new addition means visitors will be able to enjoy more of its natural beauty.
Feral camel ‘plague’ sees pastoralists shoot 2,500 camels in a month
Feral camels thirsty for water invade pastoral properties in a remote part of Western Australia in “unprecedented” numbers, with at least 2,500 killed in the past month.
Sustainability
UK has biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, finds commission
Subsidies for coal, oil and gas are not falling despite EU pledges to tackle climate change
Traces of dangerous chemicals found in disposable nappies in France
French researchers say they have discovered traces of dangerous chemicals in babies’ disposable nappies in the first study of its kind worldwide.
How are India’s plastic waste imports increasing?
A legal loophole may have allowed plastic waste imports to India to quadruple, even as the country struggles to recycle its own waste.
New water splitting catalyst could make it easier to generate solar fuel
Water splitting, the process of harvesting solar energy to generate energy-dense fuels, could be simplified thanks to new research including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Identifying factors that influence mercury levels in tuna
Most consumers’ exposure to toxic methylmercury occurs when they eat fish. But research just published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology could help clarify why methylmercury concentrations in tuna vary geographically.
Why toilets should be on the agenda at Davos
Tim Wainwright
As the world’s cities grow, and the extreme weather patterns that accompany climate change take greater hold, innovation in sanitation presents more than great opportunity and must not be relegated to the corporate social responsibility team.
Here’s how a 100% renewable energy future can create jobs and even save the gas industry
Sven Teske
A new pathway for the global energy transition shows how the world can meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming goal without relying on carbon capture and storage, by creating a renewable gas industry.
Our extravagance is the greatest enemy of the environment
Vivien Langford
‘Our biosphere is being sacrificed so rich people can live in luxury.’
Nature Conservation
Brittle star sea ‘dinosaurs’ at risk from commercial fishing, researchers say
Ancient species lives at depths of 200 to 800 metres, where key commercial fishing species are found
Protecting Monarch butterflies could mean moving hundreds of trees
Researchers are trying to shift Mexico’s oyamel firs to higher elevations to help them weather warming temperatures.
When coral species vanish, their absence can imperil surviving corals
As coral species die off, they may be leaving a death spiral in their wake: Their absence could be sapping life from the corals that survive.
How plastic cleanup threatens the ocean’s living islands
Home to vibrantly colored, tiny creatures, the ecosystems floating on the ocean’s surface remain all but unknown.
Coastal seas around New Zealand are heading into a marine heatwave, again
Craig Stevens and Ben Noll
Marine heatwaves may become the new normal for the Tasman Sea and the ocean around New Zealand, and oceanographers are developing models to better predict their intensity.
Shawn Regan
A former National Park Service ranger on why now, more than ever, national parks need protection from Washington’s budget fights
Now for something completely different …
The best things to improve your ‘wellness’ don’t cost a cent
Kate Gregorevic
Wellness has been co-opted as an advertising term. But most measures to protect your health don’t involve parting with your money.
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