The changing face of Australia

Weather-wise, Australia has been seeing something of a wet period recently. Normal to above-normal rains have been observed across much of the country over the past several months, with November being particularly wet. There's ongoing flooding in NW Queensland, and the normally dry Lake Eyre may partially fill this year. The NT's Red Centre has turned green. Further, the Bureau of Meteorology's annual climate summary indicates that 2008 was 'only' the 14^th warmest year on record. Does this spell the end of climate change in Australia? Is K-Rudd doing the right thing by setting such a pathetic target for reduction of CO2 emissions in this country?

This is most likely courtesy of the return of quasi-La Nina conditions in the Pacific, after a brief return to neutral Pacific conditions. A strong La Nina affected the weather during late-2007 and early-2008. Historically, La Nina often mean wet periods in Oz, and overall cooler global temperatures as well. This latter point applies to Australia as well.

Globally, the cooler weather has caused most of the contrarians to downplay the reality of climate change. Hopes and wishes are all well and good, but the power of positive thinking won't change this reality; Anthropogenic climate change is not gone, either in Australia or the rest of the world. What we are experiencing is just weather and interannual climate variability -- by definition short-term. The La Nina likely won't make it much past the end of austral summer, and El Nino will be around again soon enough, when we'll likely see new record high mean temperatures, both in Australia and around the globe. This is not the end of anthropogenic climate change.

Regardless of whether one accepts the reality of the above facts or not, the Great CO2 Enhancement Experiment (~40% and rising) we are running on the planet is dangerous -- full of unintended consequences and unforeseen peril. Warming of the mean global climate is serious, but only one of many of our worries. CO2 presents other dangers as well. Below are a few early results from experiment noted of late in Australia and its territories.

• Recent analysis of the long term patterns of coral growth on the Great Barrier Reef are telling. A 400 year record of banding like tree rings on the giant Porites coral reveals a massive decline in the growth history. Since 1990, a decline in the growth rate has been observed. Previously, the record would undulate, now the decline is consistent. Should current trends continue, the growth rate will be zero by 2050. Ocean acidification as much has rising temperatures are believed to be the culprit.

• In Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, a 40 year study has revealed an increases in woody vegetation on the savanna and in the floodplains of the park. Intially, the increase was hypothesized to be a result of feral buffalo (an invasive species). However, this relationship has proven to be weak as after 1985, the buffalo were nearly eliminated from the park while the vegetation structure continued to change. Instead, the researcher speculate that he change may be related to an increased level of atmospheric CO2, increasing rainfall and changing fire regimes during the study period.

• Heard Island, a sub-Antarctic island some 4000 km southwest of Western Australia is showing a rapidly changing landscape. A portion of the land has split from the mainland, effectively forming a new island. This is a result of changing sea level, possibly from rising temperatures (a 1^oC increase over past 50 years, and it's not an urban heat island!) or from other factors like strong ocean swells and winds. Further, a glacier on the island has likely retreated further and anecdotally, the lagoons at the glaciers terminus have increased in size. Analysis and monitoring are underway.

None of the Earth's 'spheres' remains untouched by Our Way of Life. Climate change and other environmental degradation affects the whole population of the Earth and every nation on its face. Australia's self image as the Lucky Country will not spare it any damage, as the above examples attest. Even without a temperature change, the Experiment has detrimental results -- ocean acidification or enhanced plant growth are but two. The effects run deep and climate change is just the obvious manifestation. And there are may well be surprises we haven;t even considered yet to come.

So yes, it is short-sided for Australia to set such a pathetic emissions reduction target. It's time to stop listening to the neoliberal economists; they are clueless and morally bankrupt. Let's lead instead of being led like sheep following the shepherds of greed. Unchecked, the whole experiment – CO2 enhancement, rampant consumerism, overpopulation -- will catch up to everyone in the end. If we act soon, we have a chance to break the bonds and begin a new way of living. If and when the inevitable crash comes, the considerations which are driving this decision now will be meaningless. The businesses will be gone and the economy will be toast. The world is not ours to exploit to the point of exhaustion. We have a moral obligation --to our fellow denizens of biosphere (human or otherwise), both now and into the future -- to leave the world in the state we inherited it. They are our legacy and our immortality, the standards by which we will be judged.

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Image: Bureau of Meteorology

Teaching ourselves to fish

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he'll eat forever. Or so the old aphorism goes. But is it true given the current state of the evidence?

In Europe, the crisis is becoming dire as deep cuts to the numbers of fish extracted from the ocean are being proposed. For 2009,the following measures have been proposed:

• No fishing at all west of Scotland for cod, haddock and whiting west of Scotland;

• A 25% cut in herring catches in the North Sea and west of Scotland;

• A continued a ban on anchovy fishing in the Bay of Biscay;

• A new ban on fishing for spurdog and porbeagle, two species of deep-sea shark.

Ironically enough, these cuts come after a poorly thought out 11% increase in the numbers of cod taken agreed to last year...Bluefin tuna in the Atlantic are also threat of becoming depleted.

Sharks are also under extreme duress, with a quarter of sharks and rays threatened with being fished out of existence in the Northeast Atlantic. Critically endangered sharks in include the gulper shark, prized in the cosmetics industry for its liver oil, and the two sharks most valued in Europe for their meat -- the spiny dogfish and porbeagle sharks.

The shark's path to extinction isn't confined solely to Europe. Rising affluence in Asia is stoking demand for shark fin, widely viewed as a delicacy when shredded in soup. Much of this is supported by illegal fishing activity, with 'hotspots' found off Central and South America as well as in the western and central Pacific. Tragically, most of this catch is a complete and utter waste, because in many cases crews on illegal vessels slice the fins off sharks and dump the less valuable carcasses overboard.

Even the fish that aren't merely tossed overboard aren't particularly utilized in an efficient fashion. Nearly one third of 'forage fish' –anchovies, sardines and the like -- are ground-up into meal and fed to pigs, poultry, and even farm-raised fish. Domestic pigs and poultry are such gluttons for seafood that together they consume six times the amount of fish eaten in the United States and double the amount in Japan. These fish provide food for seabirds, marine mammals and larger fish; their removal may be putting the entire oceanic food web at risk.

Aquaculture -- fish-farming -- is apparently no better, particularly in the ocean. While perhaps feasible at a small-scale and as part of a larger process with multiple uses of water, a group is claiming that ocean salmon farming is devastating the world's oceans.

Three or more kilogrammes of wild fish is needed to produce one kilo of farmed salmon. The ocean bottoms under and around the open-ocean net pens are usually devoid of any life, buried under the excrement of up to a million salmon overhead...

Other impacts of the farms, including rampant disease and salmon as invasive species, are described in the linked article.

Overfishing (and its disruption to the biosphere) is but one of the many consequences of humanity's reckless exploitation of the natural environment. The ongoing Great CO2 Enhancement Experiment is also having strong impacts: Increasingly rapid ocean acidification; ecosystem changes driven by the unusual(?) melting of the Arctic ice caps, Indian ocean circulation oddities wrought by both natural variability and climate change. Humanity takes from the natural world, contributing little (if anything) back.

Because the oceans are owned by everyone and no one, a classic 'tragedy of the commons' scenario arises. All take, few give back. Laissez-faire rules the day. Some toothless attempts are made to curb the excess: agreements, quotas, licenses and such are easy to write and impose. We have heaps of them now regarding fisheries. Unfortunately, only those law-abiding souls with a conscience are bound by them; the dominant economic and social paradigms dictate that such people are losers, in both the literal and pejorative sense*. The oceans are too big to effectively police; people can and will (and indeed do) take what they want when they want it. Given the performance to date, this strategy is unlikely to succeed.

The parable cited above is remains true. Metaphorically speaking, Gaia has just been giving us fish; the earth is finite, unlike our seemingly insatiable demands. Humanity has not learned to fish yet, because we have failed to heed the lessons. The most straightforward path, as twisty as it may be, is to make the cost of extracting resources (like fish) prohibitively expensive when done at unsustainable levels. Given that money is about the only thing(s) that gets anyone's attention, the changes must be economic. Proper valuation of environmental considerations must be made in the general economy. This pretty much requires a change in the value system (of the global North in particular, but everyone really) lives by. Consumption must once again come to refer primarily to tuberculosis, not Our Way of Life.

It is late in the piece, and dramatic changes to the planetary ecosystem could be 'locked in'. Or not, we don't know for sure. The risks are large and we should act as best we can. It is time to listen to the lessons being taught and learn to fish.

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*Summarizing the paradigm, not a personal viewpoint...
Image: Spiny dogfish shark found dead in a net. From The Guardian.

Australian stories

A few items of planet doom?-type interest from Down Under. Noted here are the extraordinary heat plaguing the southeast, new measurements documenting a slowdown in growth of the Great Barrier Reef and a follow-up on an ethically questionable appropriation in weather modification research.

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Late summer and early autumn have brought scorching heat to SE Australia. Adelaide has been particularly hard hit, with (as of Friday) 12 days in a row with maximum temperatures above 35 C. The trend is forecast to continue through Tuesday, four days hence. If this verifies, that would make 16 days. The previous record for Adelaide, set in 1934, is 8 days. Tasmania recorded its hottest march day in 68 years. Northwest VIC also recorded an extended run of hot weather during this period as well. Tasmania also beat or tied record highs for March, with 37+ C seen in Hobart. Interestingly, February 2008 was one of Tassie's coolest on record.

As noted previously, several other occurrences of extended heat have been observed this summer. Perth and WA have sweltered. Tennant Creek had an extended heatwave, with 19 consecutive days with a maximum temperature above 40 C.

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That coral reefs are in danger from climate change has been noted previously. According to IPCC, a “significant loss of biodiversity” is projected to occur by 2020 on the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, the degradation of the reef is becoming quantifiable; warming of the Coral Sea has slowed reef growth over the past 16 years.

Worrying signs that warmer seawater combined with a possible change in the ocean’s acid balance may be curtailing the growth of an important reef-building coral species have been documented by a research team from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville.

The paper, published in the journal Global Change Biology, points to a 21 per cent decline in the rate at which Porites corals in two regions of the northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have added to their calcium carbonate skeletons over the past 16 years.

The relative contributions of ocean acidification and global warming to the observed decline cannot be fully determined at this time. Not enough is known about the chemistry of the reef and more needs to be done to understand all the implications of the increase in carbon dioxide entering the oceans and to put these preliminary coral growth data into context.

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In an earlier post, I discussed the “bamboozle-ment” of the Australian people through a dodgy ionisation rain enhancement scheme orchestrated by Malcolm Turnbill. The project seems (to me) to be more of a payoff to campaign donors than a serious scientific program and I hoped for further investigation by the new government. Such an investigation has occurred. The timing is still a bit questionable and the amount is five times larger than recommended by his department. But it's okay because “...those conducting the trial, the University of Queensland, wanted $50 million.” Mr. Turnbill says,

"The National Water Commission was more sceptical and they didn't want to have a trial at all - some tests of the scientific theory which would have cost about $2 million,"

"I decided that what we should do is have a thorough trial in one location in south-east Queensland at $10 million, which was one-fifth of what the University of Queensland was recommending."

I think he should have listened to the National Water Commission...I suppose nothing will really come of this in the end. Business as usual...

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And so it goes. We're beginning to experience our future climates now – earlier springs, extended summers, lengthy runs of hot weather. Such events will only grow more frequent in the future; the Whirligig spins faster and faster. The final decline of the Reef is beginning. Go see it while there is still time. Governments play economic shell games while the environmental crises looms larger. The crises we face are largely the result of market failure – a failure of the dominant economic system to value environmental concerns. You want to have hope, but despair can easily come. Lovelock's 'enjoy life while you can'...for tomorrow you die attitude is a tempting lure. Doing nothing is easy; instead we must say 'Zero, Now' and take account of ourselves and our actions. It is the only way forward.

Environmental threats to food

Some very serious environmental issues are gaining wider exposure in the media as of late. All three of these issues have been noted previously on planet doom?. And all three threaten the security of our food supply, now or in the future.

A particularly pressing issue is the here and now threat to our food supply. An article from ScienceAlert indicates that world food security is at its lowest levels since recordkeeping began about 50 years ago. The accompanying graphic illustrates the sharp downward trend over the past 6-7 years.

What is driving this? Climate change, especially its effects on amplifying drought. Numerous droughts and unprecedented floods have been reported this year, affecting crop production and degrading the land. Locations around the world -- the United States, India, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia -- are feeling the pinch. Plant diseases are flourishing in the newly changed climate. Soils are becoming over-used and subject to desertification.

Nitrogen pollution is emerging as a potential threat to diversity. This inert gas, vital to life, is being deposited from the atmosphere to the earth at an increasing rate. This extra nitrogen comes from human sources, namely automobiles and intensive farm practices. This deposition reduces species diversity in grasslands, with unknown consequences. The threat may be reducing. Or it may be too late and we have already passed a tipping point. We just don't know. Does this only affect grasslands, or is this factor playing a role in the loss of diversity (in addition to other human meddling) being observed in forests?

To feed the growing population and makeup for the shortfall in grain we are observing, more intensive agriculture is required. But this causes further nitrogen pollution, further degrading the land and reducing food production...An unpleasant feedback loop. The ScienceAlert article noted above suggests that more scientific/agricultural research input is required, but unfortunately government policy (at least in Oz) is making this unfeasible. The government is making token gestures, but they are apparently underestimating the magnitude of the problem.

Unfortunately, we may not be able to rely on the ocean to makeup the shortfall. Ocean acidification, a byproduct of our CO2 enhancement experiment, is threatening corals and subsequently other marine life. This acidification is proceeding much faster than expected, on the scale of decades rather than the centuries previously imagined.

From the article

Corals and plankton with chalky skeletons are at the base of the marine food web. They rely on sea water saturated with calcium carbonate to form their skeletons. However, as acidity intensifies, the saturation declines, making it harder for the animals to form their skeletal structures (calcify)...[but]“It isn’t just the coral reefs which are affected – a large part of the plankton in the Southern Ocean, the coccolithophorids, are also affected. These drive ocean productivity and are the base of the food web which supports krill, whales, tuna and our fisheries.

So, if the threat from overfishing and marine pollution weren't enough, we now (potentially) have another way to do ourselves in. Overfishing itself is partially responsible for reef destruction, and other fishing methods, designed with 'economic efficiency' in mind, also wreak havoc on biodiversity. Recent observations of the increase in jellyfish numbers suggest that we may have already pushed the ocean ecosystem too far even without acidification...That will just be the coup d'gras.

These new findings indicate that our CO2 enhancement experiment -- and the associated climate change – are truly a threat to humankind. The time has come to get serious about action to rectify this intolerable situation. The future depends on it. Let's hope we act before it is too late (if it is not already).

Coral reefs under threat

Coral reefs are hotspots for ocean biodiversity. They are also very sensitive to humankind's uncontrolled 'carbon dioxide enhancement' experiment, both through the warmer sea surface temperatures (and colder, too!) wrought by global warming and as well as increasing dissolved CO2-content leading to ocean acidification. As such, the health (status) of the reefs serves as an early warning for the effects of climate change.

Unfortunately, the news is grim. Corals in Australia, Indonesia and SE Asia are disappearing faster than expected. "We have already lost half of the world's reef-building corals," said John Bruno, lead study author. For humans, it's another suggestion -- like the melting Arctic or increases in dangerous wildfire weather-- that the climate is changing at a faster pace than expected. Put another way, the climate models our current projections are based on may be too conservative.

Understanding exactly what this alarm means is an important endeavor. We are still learning about how coral reefs work. Important questions being asked are “why coral reefs bleach and die, how they respond to climate change – and how that might affect humanity”. The “engines of the reef” -- microscopic algae that feed the coral – are having their genetics investigated to better understand their role in coral bleaching. Given coral's survival through geologic time, it obviously has some survival mechanisms to resist the impacts of climate change. Ancient corals are being examined to determine what these mechanisms are, with the hope that modern corals can survive ocean acidification.

In addition to the overarching ecological impacts, loss or damage to coral reefs can also have an economic impact as well. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia provides a $A6 billion dollar a year industry, another incentive to preserve the reefs and prevent climate change. While climate change is the main threat, other dangers also exist for the reefs of the world. Agricultural pesticides are so poisonous that they can prevent coral spawning, and consequently the reef's ability to regenerate and protect itself. Fertilizer runoff can also promote algal growth, blocking sunlight and killing reefs.

The human impact on the environment is obvious – for example, climate change, land degradation and pollution. It is time to act to minimize that impact. The militant consumerism of current (primarily Western) society is ecologically destructive and socially divisive; it is time to re-imagine society into something environmentally sustainable and mutually inclusive. It is not an easy path, but the alternatives are even less appealing.

Coral Controversy

In recent years, coral bleaching has been observed in many places of the world. Up to 90% of reefs in parts of the Indian Ocean have been permanently damaged. In 1998 and 2002, 5% of the Great Barrier Reef were severly damaged in mass bleaching events. One cause of this is warmer sea surface temperatures (SST). There are other factors as well, both anthropogenic and natural.

As a result of this sensitivity to warmer SST, one of the projected impacts of climate change has been the widespread destruction of coral reefs. However, recent research reported in The Australian newspaper suggests otherwise:

Researchers in north Queensland have found many corals contain microscopic algae that protect them from temperature fluctuations.

The study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, which clashes with the work of many coral experts who have long claimed the reef is doomed by climate change, used DNA analysis to show many corals stored several types of algae that kicked in to provide nutrients when temperatures increased.

[...]

"The potential for this hidden back-up algae to provide nutrition to coral during heat stress is far greater than previously thought," said the study's lead researcher, Madeleine van Oppen.

She acknowledged the work was viewed as controversial in coral reef sciences.

The research team believes bleaching, widely associated with the death of coral, is part of coral's natural cycle of life.

Obviously, more research needs to be done, but this provides a glimmer of hope. Still, the issue is controversial: Soft Corals "Melting" Due to Warming Seas, Expert Says -- National Geographic.

Soft coral communities in tropical waters may literally be melting away because of bleaching events, which have been dramatically accelerated by global warming, a leading expert says.
[...]
Maoz Fine, of the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences at Eilat, Israel, said global warming will subject most reefs to deadly temperature increases by the year 2030.

Preparing reefs now for dramatic climate change should be the most important task, he said.

"If we want to see reefs in the near future, we must remove all other disturbances such as overfishing, increased pressure from tourists, sewage, and so on," he said.

"Many acute disturbances can be prevented, and this will definitely increase the resilience of reefs."

This story from ScienceDaily suggests that it takes a significant amount of time for the reef system to recover, and preservation may require even more extreme measures...

Overall, the time frame needed by surgeonfish and tangs, triggerfish, rabbitfish, and the coral-building algae to completely rebuild their populations to pre-fishing levels may exceed the length of the study."Decisions made by managers to close areas to fishing in an effort to save fish populations can be unpopular but necessary," added McClanahan. "What this study has shown us is that many fish populations take long periods of time to recover fully, and that permanent bans on fishing in some parks are necessary if we're to conserve healthy coral reef systems."

The possible impacts above don't even take the likely effects of ocean acidification into account (from National Geographic):

More troublesome to marine habitats, biologists say, may be the potential impact of rising ocean acidity from fossil fuel use.

Acting as a carbon sink, the ocean absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide. One 2005 study estimated that half of Earth's airborne CO2 was ultimately trapped by the ocean.

Through a series of chemical reactions, this dissolved CO2 turns ocean water more acidic.

Corals build their skeletons from waterborne calcium carbonate, the same mineral that makes limestone.

Rising ocean acidity retards the speed at which calcification can occur and in some cases may cause corals to build weaker skeletons.

The organisms, in effect, suffer a sort of osteoperosis.

All in all, if one of your ambitions (and one I would personally recommend) in life is too see the wondrous beauty that is a coral reef (or if you want your kids to see one...), the time to do it is now rather than later.

See Also:

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority