According to scientist and author Tim Flannery, Australia is at the sharp end of the devastating impact of climate change and must undergo an energy revolution immediately if it is to survive.
Credit: AFP
If ever a textbook example of the impact of global warming was needed, Australia provides it, says Flannery. Bushfires have raged for weeks in the country's alpine regions and water reserves in the major cities are drying up while a once-in-a-century drought has ravaged farming land, cutting into the nation's economic output.
"We are the worst, as a developed country. There is nowhere else that is getting the hammering that we are getting at the moment," he says. "It may be that other factors will be unleashed in the future which will make it much worse for places like Europe and North America, but at the moment every city in Australia - with the exception probably of Darwin - has got water rations. That is not due to poor infrastructure planning or anything else," he added. "It's actually due to a natural cycle of water availability which is driven by greenhouse gas pollution."
To avert biological disaster, Flannery's suggestions are radical: the coal industry should be shunted aside, traditional methods of producing power junked, and a desert metropolis established and placed at the centre of Australia's electricity grid. "We need to 'decarbonise' the economy extremely rapidly - which we could do if we were on a raw footing," he says. "We could just close down the coal-fired power plants. We could. We could mandate we are going to have electricity rationing, we are going to close things down, we are going to build a new infrastructure as quick as we can."
Flannery is unmoved by the possibility that this approach might cripple the country's economy - currently riding a commodities boom thanks to north Asia's hunger for Australian resources. "Won't the Australian economy collapse if climate change continues? There are a lot of ways to make electricity. Burning coal is just one of the more antique and stupid ways of doing it. We've got solar, we've got wind, we've got geothermal."
| Climate change timeline |
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1827: French scientist Jean-Baptiste Fourier is the first to consider the 'greenhouse effect' - the phenomenon whereby atmospheric gases trap solar energy, increasing Earth's surface temperature, rather than let the heat radiate back into space. 1979: Landmark report by U.S. National Academy of Sciences pins greenhouse effect to climate change and warns "a wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late". 1988: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is set up under U.N. auspices. A milestone in forging scientific consensus on how to measure and analyse global warming, it is charged with issuing regular updates on the state of knowledge. 1990: First IPCC assessment report says levels of man-made greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere and predicts these will cause global warming. 1992: Creation of U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which also calls for voluntary cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. 1995: Second IPCC assessment report suggests that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate". 1997: UNFCCC countries sign the Kyoto Protocol, which requires industrialised countries to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5.2 per cent compared with 1990 levels by 2012. 2000: The 1990s are dubbed the hottest decade on record. 2001: Third IPCC report declares the evidence for man-made global warming to be incontrovertible ,although the effects on the climate are difficult to pin down. Predicts that by 2100, the global atmospheric temperature will have risen between 1.8 and 5.6°C and sea levels by 0.09 to 0.88 metres. The United States, the biggest single greenhouse-gas polluter, abandons the Kyoto protocol, along with Australia. 2004: Russia ratifies Kyoto. Its approval is needed to turn the draft pact into an international treaty under the arithmetic of its ratification clauses. International Energy Agency (IEA) says China is now the world's second-biggest carbon polluter, due to surging use of fossil fuels. 16 February 2005: Kyoto Protocol takes effect. 29 August 2005: Hurricane Katrina devastates U.S. Gulf Coast, prompting speculation that exceptional season for tropical storms has been triggered by global warming. 2006: New studies suggest climate change is already well under way, with the loss of alpine glaciers in Europe, shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic Ocean ice pack, and retreating permafrost in Siberia. California unveils plans for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and files lawsuits against six automakers for their contribution to global warming. British report written by former World Bank economist Nicholas Stern says that climate change will cost up to 20 per cent of global GDP if nothing is done. 4 January 2007: British scientists predict 2007 will be warmest year on record around the world. |
Flannery explores these ideas in his latest book The Weather Makers, which explains how the build-up of greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels has damaged the atmosphere and led to global warming. This has resulted in melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and the extinction of some species - incontrovertible evidence that mankind's pollution is heating up the Earth, he says. "[The book] just makes the simple point that the atmosphere is very small - it's about one-five-hundredth [the size] of the oceans. So it's very easy to pollute."
Flannery has invited controversy from environmentalists for arguing that nuclear energy should be used to counter global electricity shortages, but his energy solution for Australia is even less conventional.
One of eight finalists for the 2007 Australian of the Year award, Flannery, a zoologist, biologist, explorer, conservationist and writer, rose to prominence following the 1994 publication of the ecological history of Australasia, The Future Eaters. He believes the solution for Australia lies in harnessing the heat contained in the Earth's crust.
Geothermal energy is already used in Iceland, North America and New Zealand, but Flannery believes Australia has the best geothermal resource in the world in the South Australian desert's Cooper Basin.
"One of the things I have suggested is that, if Australia is serious about this, we could build a major new city out there, link up with the north-south railway line, make it the centre of our electricity grid and use that resource. It will provide enough electricity to run the entire Australian economy for 100 years," he says.
Speaking quietly but intently, Flannery hopes that Australia will change from being one of the worst polluters on a per capita basis to the best example of the responsible use of world resources. "We could do that. We need a government to admit that it was wrong in ignoring this issue for so long and get on with a new vision," he says.
"Ultimately there is only one set of accounts that matters at all. It's not what [Prime Minister] John Howard says or what the current account balance in the Australian economy is - it's the one held by the atmosphere, the greenhouse gases held by the atmosphere, and that's the one we all need to keep our eye on."
To the climate change sceptics, Flannery says the changes the world has recently witnessed provide clear evidence that the Earth is heating up at an alarming rate. "What has become evident over the last three years … is that climate change is proceeding at a far more rapid rate than even the worst pessimist among the scientists imagined. We all underestimated the power of the greenhouse gases."
Flannery, who later this year will take up a post at Macquarie University in Sydney to research climate change, has sobering predictions for the future. "Let's project ourselves 50 years out and imagine that the rate of melt has continued so that the sea level has come up three or four metres. What that would mean is that there's barely a functioning port facility on the planet.
"So how do we go about international trade which is actually the centre of our global civilisation? Every coastal city is under enormous threat. People would be spending trillions just trying to keep their cities going. You've got refugees on a scale that is unimaginable. The stresses on peace would be enormous. Does that sound like a stable situation? That's just projecting what we've seen so far. That's just saying if we continue as we are, that's where we will end up."
Flannery is not alone in his predictions. His voice joins growing calls from around the world for a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas pollution and equally dire visions of the future. But while the amount of greenhouses gases already in the atmosphere is enough to cause disaster, Flannery believes this is no reason for inaction.
"This is about survival," he says. "The underlying conditions in the biosphere are getting worse and worse. The biggest danger with climate change is that it will go off the boil because it's got too big, too overwhelming. We've got to keep fighting against that."
if the best weather models
if the best weather models we have today cant get 12 hours ahead acurately then how can they predict 100 or 50 years ahead
Heh, I haven't seen that argument for a few years! There are lots of examples of real world chaotic systems that display predictable long term or average behaviours. e.g. waves breaking at the beach - predicting the heights of an individual wave is difficult, but predicting the average height for all waves over some time period can be done much more accurately.
who produce less than .3% of co2 could be affecting global temps
Where did you get that figure? In any case, what matters is the *balance* between what we emit and how much extra the earth can absorb.
Look, if you really don't understand the basics, "The Weather Makers" is actually quite good :)
Australia should lead the energy revolution
Flannery is absolutely right. To nitpick him on Darwin as "probably" is the only Australian city without water rationing is pathetic. The truth is inconvenient. Sorry about that.
What Flannery has not said is that it is too late. Last year hundreds of CO2 monitoring stations around the world recorded increases in CO2 levels beyond that expected from the burning of fossil fuels by humans. Melting tundra is releasing natural CO2, that has been until now frozen into the soil. This is one of the tipping points feared by scientists and I hope that this is not the cause of the unexplained variance, because if it is our fates are already sealed. Aside from increasing levels of CO2 over which we given up control (from tundra) the existing atmospheric CO2 is going to carry on heating the world for decades even if we stopped adding CO2 overnight.
Global warming is not the only problem. Oil production is peaking and the high price means that already some of the poorer people in the world have been priced out of the oil economy. This means, for instance, that prem babies die in third world countries because hospitals cannot afford diesel to run their gensets. It's only a matter of time before it costs $300 to fill a Holden, meaning that many ordinary Australians will also join the miserable ranks of those excluded from the oil economy.
Adding to that, there are a few other issues: the massive structural imbalance in the US economy, a dangerously unstable Middle East, declining crop production (grain stores are down to 57 days, 13 less than the "danger level" of 70 set by the UN)and a myriad of other problems ranging from pressure on water, land, disease (remember bird flu?) and a number of other topics I have either not heard about or have neglected to mention. Probably two or more of these things will happen at once.
For instance it may be that rate of the Greenland ice-cap melt halts the Atlantic conveyor in 2008. This immediately causes massive change in all the worlds weather systems and plunges Western Europe (ironically) into icey cold dry winters. Coincidentally and simultaneously, the markets price in Peak Oil lifting prices to $120 per barrel. You guess what the effects of that would be.
So. Back to Darwin and Mr Flannery. Stop vacillating and do something about it! Learn! Talk to your friends and neighbours. Change you car (Get one of the small or medium diesels, eg VW Golf), change all your light bulbs. Stop buying food that has been flown in. Change your electricity supply to renewable.
Tin Flannery
To all those people writing comments which are really petty ,argue the subject and don't waste everybodies time with facile comments.Cheers Tom Webster
What is Tim Flannery suggesting?
Time Flannery is saying that we need to act and act now. I totally agree and don't think that there is anything prophetic in what he is saying. There are a lot of people who share the (in my opinion) correct view that we need to act immediately.
His solution of shutting down coal fired power stations immediately, rationing electricity and building alternatively fueled power stations 'as soon as possible' has me bewildered.
How long is 'as soon as possible'? Won't this be slower and more expensive to do with an economy on rationed power supplies (let alone the economic instability this would cause)?
How about instead there is a levy put on the price of coal based electricity and the government legislate that this levy must be used to build clean power stations (and no, not clean coal, but non coal based power stations)?
Coal based electricity prices will go up, which should tend to push usage down and increase the adoption of non coal based electricity. Couple this with an aggressive timeline for phasing out coal based power and the transition could be made with a less brutal effect on the economny.
re Tim Flannery ideas
I think Tim knows more about how to sell his books than he knows about the subject he waffles on about , perhaps he should lead by example and show us plebs how he can live with out the goods and services supplied by fossil fuel
IE.live without steel,aluminum,bricks,medical supplies,computers,printing etc.
He strikes me as a real expert in every way. A realist
Tim has been enlisted to
Tim has been enlisted to promote debate after which we will find only one answer seems rational .No doubt it will be to build nuclear power plants. Interesting how the debate went from the PM saying anyone not considering Nuclear Power was “not real” to a list of sites appearing as to where the power stations would be best placed. So it is not a question of “ïf” but “of where” it seems. Is he there to make us think environmentalists are “not real” and the nuclear solution is the only solution available? Tim is another who profits from the old “the sky is falling” cry. Can’t be blamed for that approach after all many have channeled a nice cash flow from same without offering any usable and acceptable solutions. I suspect in the near future he will concede that nuclear power is the only viable solution. However it is not the answer to a question still unformulated. AND what do we blame for water problems other than poor planning. Australia has not simply dried up over night water resources have been poorly managed given we have understood the climate and drought cycles.
carbon capture - now
A lot is being said about carbon dioxide capture to help clean up the coal industry. I work in the natural gas industry where stripping carbon dioxide from raw gas is the norm. The problem is after capturing the problem gas we just let it go to the atmosphere anyway because there is no incentive to spend the extra cost of reninjecting the waste into depleted gas reservoirs.
The government talks about carbon taxes or even carbon trading but does nothing for fear of damaging the economy. When are our economists going to really account for the cost to the environment of doing nothingor is this just another defrred cost.
Cooper Basin natural gas has about 18% CO2 before treatment and is sold with less than 3% CO2. The most expensive step of extracting the acid gases is done but we desperately need incentives for business to do the next step of reinjection. A carbon tax will disadvantage the dirtiest energy sources the most, i.e. coal, but will also provide the necessary incentive for the natural gas industry to dramatically reduce the overall polution emission from this industry too.
Global warming - Climate Change
Global warming is very far from settled. In fact, that’s the real problem. We haven’t been able to get all of the facts on the table. The IPCC is a purely political setup.
There was a large group of people, the political people, who wanted the report to be more harum-scarum than it actually is. In fact, the report is quite a considerable step down from the previous reports. For example, they have reduced the potential temperature rise and they’ve reduced the sea level increase and a whole bunch of other things. Part of it is because they know so many people will be watching the report this time.
Yes, global warming has occurred, but it began in 1680, if you want to take the latest long-term warming, and the climate changes all the time. It began in 1680, in the middle of what’s called “The Little Ice Age” when there was three feet of ice on the Thames River in London. And the demand for furs of course drove the fur trade. The world has warmed up until recently, and that warming trend doesn’t fit with the CO2 record at all; it fits with the sun-spot data. Of course they are ignoring the sun because they want to focus on CO2.
The other thing that you are seeing going on is that they have switched from talking about global warming to talking about climate change. The reason for that is since 1998 the global temperature has gone down -- only marginally, but it has gone down. In the meantime, of course, CO2 has increased in the atmosphere and human production has increased. So you’ve got what Huxley called the great bane of science -- “a lovely hypothesis destroyed by an ugly fact.” So by switching to climate change, it allows them to point at any weather event -- whether it’s warming, cooling, hotter, dryer, wetter, windier, whatever -- and say it is due to humans. Of course, it’s absolutely rubbish.
Wild Views
Perhaps the writer has some wild views but at the end of the day alternative resources must be looked at as the current energy won't last forever. Australia is one of the top polluters of GHG and the Aussie Government are now addressing the problem due to joint decision made by the UN. The drought has been ongoing for 20 years in the rural areas of South East Queensland and only in the last 3 to 5 years it's been recognised as a National problem by Government. Why must it take outside influences acknowledge internal problems within Australia!
Take your chances with climate -- but not on my planet
Why roll the dice with climate change? It's so last millennium. Whether 0.4 or 4 meters of sea level rise, and whether you believe these figures are near certainties or a remote possibilities, are you ready to run blind experiments on the planet? If so, please try Venus. Enjoy the 400 degree greenhouse and pH1 showers...
If you take away just one point about Earth's climate, take this: It settles into a steady state, absorbs forcing mechanisms (e.g., increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases) for just so long, then shifts suddenly and radically into a new steady state. We're damn lucky that the last 18,000 years offer a graphically detailed record of how global warming bumps along in fits and spasms. Google it. We're also lucky that the last 2 million years tell us this warming should have stopped. And that weather records over the last 2 centuries tell us it's started it again. Ignore all this at our peril.
Please, step out of your coal-powered home for a week. Brave the elements. Get the wind (and smoke and un-ozone-filtered sun) on your face. Kill things, eat them. Scrounge for water. Feel in your bones that we all live tenuously on an equable but unforgiving Earth.
My outlook on Tim Flannery: As a paleoclimatology grad student who jumped ship on a promising career in order to immediately salvage a swath of SE Asian rainforest, I appreciate the urgency to attack climate change as well as to work opportunistically to make the biggest impacts we can as fast as we can. Flannery understands a bit about extinction events and the foibles of our fickle ecosphere. And it's no great stretch for him to digest a stack of the 900+ peer-reviewed papers on climate change and publish something accessible to the masses. I have little doubt that he'll follow the more traditional "publish or perish" approach in his new climate change faculty position. Meanwhile, I applaud his willingness to step out of the ivory tower and help us apply science toward policy issues in need of urgent collaborative effort.
Regarding a renewable energy shift in Australia: Why not view Flannery's recommendations as an opportunity to lead an industry ahead of the curve--to develop and advance exportable energy technologies--rather than a liability?
Djuna Ivereigh
from a fragile archipelago