Australia’s 116 new coal, oil and gas projects equate to 215 new coal power stations

Australia has 116 new coal, oil and gas projects in the pipeline. If they all proceed as planned, an extra 1.4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases would be released into the atmosphere annually by 2030.

To put that in perspective, Australia’s total domestic greenhouse gas emissions in 2021–22 were 490 million tonnes. So annual emissions from these new projects would be the almost three times larger than the nation’s 2021-22 emissions. That’s the equivalent of starting up 215 new coal power stations, based on the average emissions of Australia’s current existing coal power stations.

The reason we can get away with this is the current global framework for emissions accounting only considers emissions generated onshore. And almost all coal, oil and gas from these new projects would be exported. But as we share the atmosphere with the rest of the people on the planet, the consequences will come back to bite us.

This week the Synthesis Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described how fossil fuels are wreaking havoc on the planet. The science is clear: the IPCC says fossil fuel use is overwhelmingly driving global warming.

“The sooner emissions are reduced this decade, the greater our chance of limiting warming to 1.5℃ or 2℃. Projected CO₂ emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure (power plants, mines, pipelines) without additional abatement exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5℃,” the IPCC says, let alone new coal, oil and gas projects.

In the words of UN Secretary General António Guterres:

Every country must be part of the solution. Demanding others move first only ensures humanity comes last.

Guterres added that “the Acceleration Agenda calls for a number of other actions”, specifically:

• No new coal and the phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD countries and 2040 in all other countries

• Ending all international public and private funding of coal

• Ensuring net zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world

• Ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas – consistent with the findings of the International Energy Agency

• Stopping any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves

• Shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to a just energy transition

• Establishing a global phase down of existing oil and gas production compatible with the 2050 global net zero target.

Hidden in plain sight

Our new research, released today by the Australia Institute, reveals the pollution from Australia’s 116 new fossil fuel projects. These are listed among the federal government’s major projects.

Government analysts estimate each project’s start date and annual production figures. If they are correct, by 2030 the projects would produce a total of 1,466 million tonnes of coal and 15,400 petajoules of gas and oil.

Then it’s fairly straightforward to calculate emissions. We simply multiplied these enormous new fossil fuel volumes by their “emissions factors”. When one tonne of coal is burned it releases approximately 2.65 tonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalent (CO₂-e) into the atmosphere, and burning one terajoule (0.001 petejoules) of natural gas results in 51.5 tonnes CO₂-e.

Combined with the 164 million tonnes of emissions that the mining of these fuels would cause, the result is a planet-warming, but spine-chilling, total of 4.8 billion tonnes by 2030.

This amount is 24 times greater than the ambition of the federal government’s key emissions reduction policy, the so-called Safeguard Mechanism. That aims to reduce emissions by 205 million tonnes over the same period.

Rather than embrace the task of decarbonising the Australian economy, the Albanese government has continued down the path laid out by the former Coalition government. It’s a path that relies more heavily on the use of carbon offsets than curtailing coal and gas.

Even though the rest of the world is committed to burning less fossil fuels, there are more gas and coal mine project proposals in Australia today than there were in 2021.

Note also that this list does not include several large, advanced projects actively supported by Australian governments, including Santos’s Barossa gas field, Shell’s Bowen Gas Project, Chevron’s Cleo Acme, and several vast new unconventional gas basins including the Beetaloo, Canning and Lake Eyre basins.

3 reasons to change our ways

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen argues that Australians are not responsible for the emissions from our fossil fuel exports. That’s because the international accounting rules distinguish between the emissions that occur within our borders (known as scope 1 and 2 emissions) and those that occur when other countries burn the coal and gas we sell them (known as scope 3 emissions).

But if Bowen really wants to tackle climate change, there are three reasons both he and Australians should bear this responsibility:

First, there’s the moral argument. Australia didn’t ban whaling and asbestos mining because we wanted to stop Australians from eating whales or building hazardous homes. We stopped these activities because they were dangerous. Countries can and do shape the world they live in.

Second, even just the emissions in Australia from these 116 new fossil fuel projects (their methane leaks, fuel use and other relevant emissions in Australia) will pour 344 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere by 2030. That dwarfs the 205 million tonnes of emissions the entire Safeguard Mechanism is supposed to save over that same period.

And finally, leaving aside the risks of catastrophic climate change, which is admittedly a big ask, it is hard to overstate the risks to the Australian economy of continuing to focus our investment on the expansion of export industries that the rest of the world is committed to transitioning away from. If we aimed the $11 billion per year we spend on fossil fuel subsidies at decarbonising our economy, we would slash emissions in no time.

No new coal, oil and gas

The Australian government continues to support unlimited growth in fossil fuel production and export, despite clear statements from the United Nations, International Energy Agency (IEA) and IPCC that new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with global temperature goals.

No matter where in the world Australian fossil fuels are burned, they will turn up the heat. We can’t escape the simple truth that humanity must stop burning fossil fuels. It’s the only path to a liveable future.

Richard Denniss, Adjunct Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Species don’t live in isolation: what changing threats to 4 marsupials tell us about the future

Conserving native wildlife is a challenging task and Australia’s unenviable extinction record shows us we urgently need more sophisticated and effective approaches.

Too often we focus on saving individual threatened species. But in the wild, species do not live neatly in isolation. They are part of rich ecosystems, relying on many other species to survive. To save species often means saving this web of life.

Our new research models what’s likely to happen to four well-known Western Australian marsupials in the biodiversity hotspot of south-western Australia, by identifying key drivers of their populations over time.

In the past, these species were most at risk from habitat loss. But when we ran our models forwards, we found all four species would be at more risk from climate change, which is bringing heightened fire risk and a drying trend to the region. Even better control of foxes – a major predator – did not offset the trend fully.

Our work adds further weight to efforts to protect ecosystems in all their complexity. The way species – including feral predators – interact takes place against a changing climate, fire regimes, and human-made change, like logging and grazing.

To give native species their best chance of survival, we have to embrace ecosystem-based conservation, rather than focusing on rescuing individual species.

What did we find?

We looked at long-term monitoring data to find out what was having the most impact on the woylie (brush-tailed bettong), chuditch (western quoll), koomal (western brushtail possum) and the quenda (southern brown bandicoot), four animals living in Upper Warren jarrah forests.

All four have undergone considerable population change over the last few decades and some are now threatened due to predation by foxes and feral cats, habitat loss and increased frequency of droughts and bushfires. To add to that, controlled burns, lethal fox control and timber harvesting have all taken place in our study region within this time. What we didn’t know was how these threats and conservation efforts interact.

To find out, we built a complex statistical model of the ecosystem to pinpoint what was driving population change geographically and over time.

We found the abundance of these species were affected most by the historical impact of habitat loss, as well as less food in the form of vegetation or prey due to the area’s ongoing decline in rainfall.

Of the habitat lost here, most was cleared during the 19th and early 20th centuries. But now it has more or less stopped, the legacies of this change continue through the effects of habitat fragmentation and increased incursion by introduced species. That means the main falls in abundance took place decades ago.

What about fire and foxes? These threats had less effect than habitat loss and rainfall declines, which we attribute to the broad management of both of these in the region. It was also difficult to quantify the effects of fox control because of the lack of control areas – essentially, comparable areas without poison baits in the region.

Our work shows there’s not one simple answer for managing this ecosystem. Everything is connected. We need to embrace this complexity so that we can better pinpoint where our actions can make a difference.

What’s likely to happen?

While habitat loss was the major historical threat, the future looks to be different. Severe fire is set to increase and rainfall reduce due to climate change. This indicates all four species will see falling populations.

Annual rainfall in south-western Australia has already fallen at least 20% below the historical average and further declines are expected. If severe fires arrive more often – and overlap with reduced rainfall – we could see even greater population loss.

These threats mean local conservation managers will be less able to help. Controlling fox numbers may help at present, but in a drier, fierier future, things will get harder.

Our modelling suggests that for woylie and koomal, lethal fox control could boost their resilience to severe fire and reduced rainfall, but not completely offset the expected losses.

What does this mean for ecosystem management?

It’s long been a goal for conservationists to manage ecosystems as a whole. In reality, this is often incredibly difficult, as we need to consider multiple threats (such as fire and invasive species) and conflicting requirements of different species, in the face of uncertainty about how some ecosystems work, as well as limited budgets.

Ecosystems are complex webs of interacting species, processes and human influences. If we ignore this complexity, we can miss conservation opportunities, or see our actions have less effect than we expected.

Sometimes, well-intended actions can actually produce worse outcomes for some species, such as fox control leading to a boom in wallabies who strip the forest of everything edible.

Studies like ours wouldn’t be possible without the careful collection and synthesis of data over decades. As global climate change accelerates and the effects on ecosystems become increasingly unpredictable, conservation managers are flying blind if they do not have long-term monitoring to inform decisions on where and when to act.

So what can our conservation managers do? They can help ecosystems survive by doing two things. First, keep managing the threats within our control – such as invasive predators and ongoing habitat loss – to help reduce damage from other threats. Second, model and anticipate the effects of future change, and use that knowledge to be as prepared as we can.

William Geary, PhD Student, Deakin University; Adrian Wayne, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia; Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, and Tim Doherty, ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How did millions of fish die gasping in the Darling – after three years of rain?

Millions of dead fish float on the surface of the river. Native bony herring and introduced young carp, as well as a few mature Murray cod and golden perch. History is repeating on the Darling River at Menindee. This new fish kill is even worse than the enormous 2018–2019 fish kill. And it’s in almost the same location.

But how can so many fish die when we’ve been having floods? What’s killing them?

In both 2018 and 2023, the immediate answer is the same: the fish ran out of oxygen. Five years ago, it was because the river was almost dry. This time, it’s likely to be factors like the heatwave days earlier, receding floodwaters, bacteria pulling oxygen from the water – and no escape.

But two events like this in five years speaks to a deeper cause. The Darling River – known as the Baaka by Barkandji Traditional Owners – is very sick. Too much of its water is siphoned off for agriculture. Our native fish are hardy. They’re used to extremes. But this is too much, even for them.

Short term pressure, long term pain

I was a member of the expert panel investigating the 2018–2019 Menindee fish kills. Everyone agreed the fish ran out of oxygen. It was a very dry period, and a cool front arriving after a heat wave mixed deep low-oxygen river water with the thin top layer which had oxygen.

But our panel also examined the long-term changes to the river. We found the long-term cause for the river’s decline was simple: too much water was being diverted upstream.

It wasn’t just climate change – it was irrigation. We warned it could happen again. Now it has.

When faced with such environmental disaster, our leaders tend to reach for Dorothea MacKellar’s famous poem, My Country, and its line about a land “Of droughts and flooding rains.” Coalition water ministers at both federal and state level confidently blamed the drought for the first fish kill. Now, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet has linked this kill to the recent floods.

This is part of the reason. But only part. When floodwaters engorged the Darling and its tributaries, it was a bonanza for bacteria that broke down dead wood lying on the floodplain. Unfortunately, this explosion of microorganisms had a devastating side effect: they sucked oxygen out of the water.

This is what’s known as a blackwater event (in reality, more greeny-brown). As the floodwaters moved downstream and the Darling’s flow decreased, millions of fish fled the floodplains and found themselves crammed back in the narrow river channel where they were hit by plummeting oxygen levels.

Desperate, the fish looked to escape. But upstream, their exit was blocked. In December, authorities had fully opened the gates to the Menindee main weir for the first time in a decade to let fish migrate. But now the gates are shut.

They couldn’t get into the main Menindee Lakes, where they might have found water with more oxygen, as they were blocked by the regulators – large taps used mainly to let water out.

Could they escape downstream? Perhaps some did. But for millions of fish, there was no time. Their bodies will only make the problem worse, as tonnes of rotting fish deposit vast quantities of nutrients into the river. That’s great for bacteria, algae and some fish-eating birds. But it’s not healthy for the river, its fish, or its people.

Yes, fish kills have always occurred but not at this scale. The fundamental reason the fish of the Darling keep dying is because there is not enough water allowed to flow.

Why is the Darling in such trouble?

Since the 1980s, the Darling’s tributaries have steadily shrunk. The Macquarie, the Namoi, the Gwydir, the Border Rivers and the Condamine-Balonne are all shadows of the rivers they once were. Much of their water is captured in large dams, like Burrendong Dam, or intercepted by floodplain harvesting, which was legalised only last year by the NSW Government to the dismay of environmentalists and farmers downstream.

Just last week, before news of the fish kills at Menindee, water allocations in the Namoi and Gwydir Rivers were a staggering 113% and 275% respectively. That is to say, all the water farmers and other users could take from these rivers is well beyond the total flows left in the rivers.

The fish kills at Menindee are the clearest sign yet of how policy and management have failed the Darling. These catastrophes were inevitable. And the pain isn’t limited to fish. We are suffering too.

Taxpayers forked out nearly half a billion dollars for a pipeline from the Murray to Broken Hill, which nearly ran out of water in 2019. Why? Because the Darling was no longer dependable. In 2019, the towns of Wilcannia and Brewarrina ran out of water, significantly affecting Aboriginal communities. Why? Because the Darling was so low.

Fish kills like this one make news for a few days, and then get forgotten. But unless we tackle the fundamental problem of a lack of water in our rivers, there will be many more to come. This is not a natural disaster. It is man-made.

Richard Kingsford, Professor, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Our mysterious night parrot has terrible vision – but we discovered it might be able to hear like an owl

One bird bucks the stereotype of Australia’s raucous parrots – the mysterious and critically endangered night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis). Rather than flying around in noisy flocks or eating fruit in trees, the night parrot roosts all day in a clump of sharp spinifex grass. When darkness falls, it scurries about on the ground to forage, almost like a little rodent.

For eight decades, we thought it might be extinct. But then, in 2013, it was photographed. Now we know this vanishingly rare nocturnal bird still lives in parts of the remote outback.

Because it’s so rare, it’s very hard to study. In our work in palaeontology, we recently identified some fossil leg bones as probably belonging to the night parrot. Because there were no modern skeletons to compare them with, we had to CT-scan a museum specimen.

What we intended to do was compare the leg anatomy to our fossil leg bones. But then we found something bizarre. The night parrot’s skull was wonky and the ears were asymmetrical. Predatory owls have this too, as a way to boost their hearing and hunt better. But why would a seed-eating parrot need superb hearing?

Of wonky skulls and offset ears

In our new research, we offer the first anatomical description of the night parrot’s skull. In this, we were fortunate to be allowed to scan the precious type specimen held by the Natural History Museum in London. This is the original skin used by John Gould, the preeminent 19th century English ornithologist, to formally describe and name the night parrot in 1861.

We used high-resolution CT scans to look inside this museum “skin”, a dried specimen with internal organs removed, feathers on the outside and a partial skeleton on the inside.

The scans showed the left side of the skull did not mirror the right. Skull asymmetry isn’t unheard of in nocturnal birds. Many species of owl have offset ears and dramatically distorted skulls, which allows them to pinpoint any sound made by intended prey. But we certainly weren’t expecting it in a parrot.

Wired for sound?

When we looked closely at the night parrot’s skull, we spotted telltale clues of a bird specialising in hearing. Asymmetry is part of it: the left ear opening is flat while the right one arches out to the side.

In uneven-eared owls, one ear is typically placed higher than the other. In flight, sound waves travelling from ground level hit each ear at slightly different times. This tiny difference in timing allows the owl’s brain to calculate precisely the sound’s origin on a vertical plane.

But night parrots don’t hunt fast-moving prey. They mostly eat seeds, so they probably don’t use asymmetrical ears to locate food.

While owl ears are positioned at different heights on the skull, this isn’t the case for the night parrot. The major difference between the parrot’s ears is how far they stick out sideways. This might help them locate the direction a sound comes from horizontally, which would make sense for a bird living almost entirely at ground level.

This could be useful to listen for predators, keep contact with their mates and young, find new potential mates, or to scan their habitat for competitors.

Adding to the evidence for excellent hearing is the size of this parrot’s ear chambers. Compared to other parrots, an unusually large volume of the night parrot’s skull is devoted to the external ear chamber – fully one third of the length of its head. These enlarged ear chambers may act like amplifiers, increasing the volume of sound transferred to the inner ears. This suggests it would be wise to keep the noise down in their habitat until we know more about their hearing.

Bigger ears, smaller eyes

A previous study found the night parrot has small optic nerves and reduced optic lobes in the brain for processing vision. From this, the researchers inferred the nocturnal parrot probably sees poorly in the dark. Despite this, it expertly navigates its dark world, flying up to a 30 kilometre round trip in a night to find food and water, before returning home to the same spinifex hummock where it roosts before sunrise.

Now that we’ve examined the skull, we can see the same clues. Vision appears to have been traded for hearing. Inside an animal skull, real estate is precious. Heads are heavy and cumbersome, and there’s only so much you can evolve to fit inside one. Enlarged ear chambers appear to constrain the maximum size of a night parrot’s eyes.

Even so, this bird has crammed in as much as it can. It has an outsized head compared to its body. Gould described the parrot’s “thick bluffy head” as one of the features defining the species.

When we measured the scleral ring – the circular bone supporting the eyeball – and compared it to other birds, we found telling differences. A night parrot’s cornea is about as small as it can possibly be while still allowing visually guided nocturnal flight. A millimetre or two smaller and they wouldn’t get enough light into their eyes to see in the dark.

This remarkable parrot is one of 22 threatened birds prioritised by the federal government for recovery. We hope ecologists can make the most of this to find out what we need to do to bring night parrots back from the brink. We’re only beginning to learn how unusual they are.

Elen Shute, Researcher, Flinders University; Alice Clement, Research Associate in the College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, and Gavin Prideaux, Associate professor, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What is myrtle rust and why has this disease closed Lord Howe Island to visitors?

Some 70% of the World Heritage-listed Lord Howe Island has been closed to non-essential visitors in response to a recurrence of the plant disease myrtle rust.

Myrtle rust, native to South America, was first detected in Australia on the Central Coast of NSW in April 2010. It is caused by a fungus that belongs to a group of plant pathogens known as the rusts.

Rusts are among the most feared of all plant pathogens. They spread rapidly over thousands of kilometres on wind currents and can cause huge losses in plant production.

For example, wheat rust research over the past 100 years at the University of Sydney has shown clear evidence of wind-borne rust spores travelling from central Africa to Australia. Wheat production losses due to rust have at times totalled hundreds of millions of dollars.

Myrtle rust rapidly invaded the entire east coast of Australia in the years after it was first detected. It has caused the near extinction of at least three rainforest species, including the native guava (Rhodomyrtus psidioides) and the scrub turpentine (Rhodamnia rubescens).

The disease was detected at Lord Howe Island in 2016, and eradicated. Now it has managed to spread there once again. There are concerns if the disease is left unchecked, it could seriously alter the unique ecology of the island. Lord Howe is home to some 240 native plant species, of which more than 100 are not found anywhere else.

How can the disease be controlled?

Rust diseases in agriculture are controlled by the cultivation of genetically resistant plants, or by use of fungicides. These fungicides can kill existing recent infections and provide protection for up to four weeks. In other situations, such as horticulture and native plant communities, fungicides are used together with removal and destruction of infected plants.

The 2010 detection of myrtle rust in Australia followed its detection in Hawaii in 2005 and China in 2009. It was later found in New Caledonia (2013) and New Zealand (2017). Research has shown the same strain – known as the “pandemic strain” – has appeared in all of these countries. Several other strains occur in South America.

It is likely the fungus spread to Lord Howe Island from eastern Australia on wind currents. The especially wet conditions along the east coast of much of Australia in 2022 led to an increase in the disease there. This, in turn, increased rust spore load and hence the chance of long-distance spore dispersal.

In addition to being spread on the wind, the rusty coloured spores produced by these fungal pathogens stick readily to clothing. These spores remain viable for at least two weeks under ambient conditions. Several wheat rusts of exotic origin are believed to have been accidentally brought in to Australia on travellers’ clothing from North America and Europe.

The chance of inadvertent spread of myrtle rust on contaminated clothing is why access to Lord Howe island has been restricted since last week.

The second incursion into the island clearly shows how incredibly difficult rust diseases are to manage once they reach a new region. It points to possible recurrences of the disease there in years to come even should current efforts to eradicate it succeed.

On top of the ability of rust diseases to spread rapidly over large distances, a further complication in controlling myrtle rust is it infects a wide range of native plants. Some of these species hold great cultural significance and/or are endangered.

Endemic species of the myrtle plant family Myrtaceae that are dominant in many of the plant communities on Lord Howe Island are highly vulnerable to myrtle rust infection. Of critical concern are two species that occur only on the island: the mountain rose (Meterosideros nervulosa) and the rainforest tree scalybark (Syzigium fullagarri). The rust infects young leaves and also flowers, where it causes sterility.

Australia brings expertise to the battle

Australia has some of the best plant pathologists in the world and has long been a leader in controlling rust diseases in agriculture. This expertise, combined with world-leading scientists in the ecology of Australian native plants, has enabled solid progress in understanding myrtle rust in the Australian environment. Australian scientists have joined hands with New Zealand scientists to boost efforts to control the pathogen in both countries.

Research is also under way at the University of Sydney and Australian National University to develop new DNA-based diagnostics to allow rapid identification of the different strains of the pathogen. These tests are especially important given only one strain of myrtle rust occurs in the Asia-Pacific and Oceania regions.

The success of managing the impact of myrtle rust on the region’s iconic flora against a backdrop of climate change will rely heavily on undertaking the research needed to gain a much better understanding of this damaging plant pathogen. Recognising this, staff at the University of Sydney have convened a conference for June 21-23 this year. It will bring together myrtle rust experts to exchange their latest research findings and identify priority areas for research.

Robert Park, Judith and David Coffey Chair in Sustainable Agriculture, Plant Breeding Institute, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New research reveals how forests reduce their own bushfire risk, if they’re left alone

Fire management in Australia is approaching crisis point. Seasons such as the Black Summer three years ago showed how our best efforts in fire-fighting and prescribed burning are insignificant in the face of a changing climate.

But what if forests have their own tools to manage bushfire risk, and we could tap into them?

We know long-unburnt mountain forests in south-east Australia are far less fire-prone than more recently burnt areas. And forests in south-west Australia have the lowest fire risk when they’ve not been subjected to prescribed burning.

Our study just published set out to understand why this occurs, by modelling fire behaviour in iconic red tingle forests of south-west Australia. Our findings offer a clear set of tools for living with fire, even in a warming climate.

The ‘fuel load’ dilemma

Most bushfires in the south-west forests of Western Australia occur in areas burned specifically to reduce fuel loads.

Current fire management by government agencies focuses on broadscale burning to reduce fuel load. The practice is also known as prescribed, planned, controlled or hazard-reduction burning. It aims to reduce the intensity of future fires at a location by burning leaf litter and other fine surface matter.

Fuel-load reduction is premised on the idea that the amount of fuel in a forest determines how flammable it is. The idea comes from early attempts at fire behaviour modelling imported from the United States in the 1960s.

But more recent work has shown prescribed burning can lead to catastrophic outcomes. This includes the near-destruction of critically endangered wildlife populations and the destruction of homes when prescribed burns escape.

So what can be done? Our study on the iconic red tingle (Eucalyptus jacksonii) deals with this dilemma.

Getting to know the red tingle

Red tingles are among the tallest eucalypts, growing up to 70 metres. They grow only in a 6,000-hectare stretch along the high-rainfall south coast of Western Australia.

Red tingles can live for more than 400 years. They regenerate well after fire – even an intense fire – and form naturally mixed aged forests dominated by large old trees.

But red tingles are sensitive to frequent fires, no matter how mild. Flames can enter the tree and hollow it out, eventually causing its collapse.

The understorey of red tingle forest consists of tall, long-lived shrubs that germinate prolifically after fire. These understoreys thin and open as they age.

The goal of our research was to understand how these changes in red tingle forests affect fire behaviour. To do this, we used an advanced fire modelling tool developed by the lead author of this article, Phillip Zylstra, and his colleagues.

The tool doesn’t use a simple number to characterise a forest’s fuel load. Instead, it uses hundreds of thousands of calculations to determine which plants will ignite – and importantly, which plants won’t ignite but will instead calm the flames.

So what did we find? As the understorey of red tingle forest ages and thins, the lower branches of taller plants “self-prune” – in other words, they shed dead leaves and twigs.

When this litter is on the ground, it begins to decay and poses a lower fire risk than if it were still suspended.

The lower branches of taller plants, once self-pruned, are then less likely to ignite as fuel. Instead, they act as “overstorey shelter” that reduces wind speed and fire severity. In this way, mature forests control fire rather than drive it.

Our study showed that, due to this calming effect, fires in mature red tingle forests could be extinguished by firefighters most of the time.

By contrast, our study showed that prescribed burning in red tingle forests creates dense regrowth, which burns severely during bushfires. In such cases, our study showed firefighters are often unable to extinguish the flames and must resort to backburning - a risky fire suppression technique.

Making peace with the bush

Contemporary fire management approaches, and their dependence upon broadscale prescribed burns, contrast starkly with the approach of Australia’s First Nations people.

Menang and Goreng Traditional Owners of red tingle and surrounding forests say fire should be used in specific locations, burning only what is needed in small, strategically placed patches. Wadandi Pibulmun Yunungjarlu Elder Wayne Webb advised our team that Traditional Owners deliberately excluded fire from tall red tingle forests.

In our contemporary context, we can co-operate with the landscape - balancing the effects of climate change by using specialist fire-fighting skills and technological advances to reinforce safe forest havens.

The fire risk in WA’s south-western forests, and many other eucalypt forests, is so much lower if they’re left unburnt and allowed to mature. Our analysis of red tingle forests helps explain why.

One thing is clear: if we still want forests in our flammable country, we must stop burning their defences away.

Philip Zylstra, Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University, Research Associate at University of New South Wales, Curtin University and Grant Wardell-Johnson, Adjunct Associate Professor, Molecular and Life Sciences and ARC Centre for Mine Site Restoration., Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Great Southern Reef is in more trouble than the Great Barrier Reef

Marine heatwaves are damaging reef ecosystems around Australia, but while the tropical north has received the lion’s share of the attention to date, we equally need to worry about the temperate south.

That’s partly because the Great Southern Reef is of immense biodiversity value. Species found here are found nowhere else in the world. Even their distant relatives are long gone. It’s also because these temperate reefs are suffering even more from heatwaves than the Great Barrier Reef.

After 30 years counting thousands of marine species on Australian reefs, we could see the situation was changing rapidly. But our research team wasn’t able to survey enough locations to adequately track the changes. These occurred out of sight, beneath the waves, off coastlines extending thousands of kilometres. We realised we needed help.

So we enlisted the help of enthusiastic volunteer divers to complete the world’s first continental audit of shallow marine life. This unique Australian effort was a tremendous collaborative achievement. But it’s nothing compared to what’s needed in the years to come, to defend our reef ecosystems from the impacts of climate change and other human pressures.

Answering questions with data

Our goal was to answer crucial questions from managers, including:

• which marine species are rapidly heading towards extinction?

• how can threats to reef species be addressed cost effectively?

• how large do marine reserves need to be, to achieve conservation goals?

• which regulations work best?

Our solution was to headhunt the most enthusiastic and experienced recreational divers, then train them to scientific standards in underwater survey methods.

More than 200 highly trained volunteers have now participated in the Reef Life Survey of Australia. Together they have counted more than 3,000 species of fishes, corals and other invertebrates at over 2,500 sites around Australia, including offshore locations not previously visited by divers.

This information, combined with survey data from the Australian Temperate Reef Collaboration (collected using similar methods) and the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Queensland, has allowed us to produce the first continental audit of shallow marine life completed anywhere in the world. Our new research is published today in the journal Nature.

Our investigation revealed that heatwaves have damaged many (but not all) reef communities over the past decade. The effects have been patchy. Some reef populations have been devastated, other reefs nearby have declined and recovered, and others have flourished.

Species tended to increase numbers in years when water temperatures rose less than 0.5℃ above average, but declined rapidly once this heatwave threshold was passed. Overall, more species were declining than increasing.

Coral density has showed little overall change across the Great Barrier Reef since 2010. Many, but not all, coral reef communities impacted by the 2016 heatwave have recovered. Coral populations tended to decline in the north, show little change in the central region, and increase in the south.

Around Australia, fishes, mobile invertebrates such as crabs, snails and seastars, and seaweeds showed similar responses to warming. Numbers typically declined in the north of species’ ranges and increased in the south. The increasing abundance of warm water species in the south has, however, squeezed populations of cold water species.

At the limit, southern Tasmanian species trapped by the deep Southern Ocean barrier cannot migrate further south. The common sea dragon (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus), for example, has declined in numbers by 57% over the past decade across monitoring sites.

Many species living on Tasmanian reefs, particularly echinoderms such as sea stars and sea urchins, have shown precipitous population declines over the past decade.

A strong heatwave off southwestern Australia in 2011 also caused seaweed populations to drop rapidly. Most affected seaweeds remain at greatly reduced levels.

Overall, cool-temperate species inhabiting the Great Southern Reef - the interconnected network of kelp-covered rocky reefs that extends from northern New South Wales to southwestern Australia — are generally declining in number more rapidly and are more threatened with extinction, than tropical species.

This is perhaps not surprising given that Great Southern Reef species live in a climate change hotspot (where sea temperatures are rising more rapidly than elsewhere worldwide) along the most densely populated Australian coast. Impacts from infrastructure development, catchment degradation, pollution and fishing are widespread.

Why the southern reef is so great

Australia’s southern reefs - in temperate waters between the tropical north and the Southern Ocean - are hotspots of biodiversity. Most species are found nowhere else in the world (70% of the temperate species surveyed were endemic to Australia). In contrast, almost all of the tropical species censused in our study are widely distributed across the Indo-Pacific (only 3% endemic to Australia).

Furthermore, temperate Australian species often have no close relatives. Their evolutionary roots run deep. Examples include the red velvet fish (Gnathanacanthus goetzii) and the giant creeper snail (Campanile symbolicum). Both species sit alone in their families, and were found in our census to have rapidly declining populations.

Worldwide, the most threatened fish family is the handfishes. This is a group of 14 species restricted to southeastern Australia, primarily Tasmania. The critically endangered red handfish (Thymichthys politus) and spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus) have declined to tiny populations of around 100 (red) and 5000 (spotted) individuals living in shallow bays near Hobart. The smooth handfish (Sympterichthys unipennis) is probably already extinct.

What we stand to lose

The loss of most Australian marine species will likely occur unseen. Government funding does not generally support systematic monitoring of native plants and animals.

Data provided by volunteer Reef Life Survey divers has provided the only population trend information for over 1,000 species, while tens of thousands of species lack any information at all. Only the Great Barrier Reef Long Term Monitoring Program run by the Australian Institute of Marine Science receives dedicated funding covering marine habitats.

Until more attention is paid to the conservation of temperate marine species, the living heritage of future generations will continue to slip away. We will also remain in the dark as to what already has been lost. The little public, scientific or management attention paid to the Great Southern Reef belies its status as a global marvel, and one that is highly threatened.

Graham Edgar, Senior Marine Ecologist, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fishing for data: commercial fishers help monitor rising temperatures in coastal seas

The world’s oceans are buffering us from the worst climate impacts by taking up more than 90% of the excess heat generated by greenhouse gas emissions. This has warmed them by 0.88℃ (on average globally), according to the latest climate report released this week.

The warming of the ocean affects marine ecosystems, drives changes in ocean circulation and heat distribution, and strongly influences atmospheric weather systems. All these processes are critically important to the health of our planet.

Scientists measure subsurface ocean temperature around the world, but there is a coastal gap in those measurements. This is where fishing, aquaculture, recreation and ocean managers need good data the most.

MetService’s Moana Project is changing that. We have joined forces with the commercial fishing sector to deploy sensors on vessels nationwide to gain insights into how ocean temperatures are changing near the coast.

Monitoring coastal changes

Ocean temperature measurements are critical for understanding and accurately predicting extreme events, including severe storms and unusually warm coastal waters, which have serious economic and societal impacts.

During the past few years, Aotearoa New Zealand has been plagued by extreme rainfall and persistent marine heatwaves. This has severely affected marine life, fisheries and aquaculture.

Increased ocean temperatures can exacerbate severe weather events like Cyclone Gabrielle, contributing to the conditions for intense rainfall and potential devastation.

To prepare for a changing climate and provide early alerts for extreme events, we need to monitor temperature changes below the ocean’s surface. These measurements are usually expensive, often requiring oceanographic research vessels to deploy instruments.

Pioneering international programmes like Argo (autonomous floats that move with the world’s ocean currents collecting measurements) provide unprecedented world coverage of deeper waters.

But they are not primarily designed to measure coastal and shelf seas. The lack of coastal observations is recognised in New Zealand and globally, and is a priority for the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science 2021-2030.

Crowd-sourcing ocean observations

As part of the Moana Project, MetService and the commercial fishing industry partnered with Nelson-based company ZebraTech to develop the Mangōpare sensor, a small, lightweight, robust and accurate temperature sensor that attaches to commercial fishing gear.

The sensor was distributed to volunteer inshore and deep-water fishing vessels and citizen scientists. Thanks to more than 200 skippers and crew, there are now 300 sensors on commercial fishing vessels, providing more than one million subsurface observations a month from across Aotearoa New Zealand.

The sensor attaches to any type of fishing gear and automatically collects ocean temperature and depth measurements through the water column. This information is automatically sent to the cloud, quality checked, returned to the fisher collecting it and incorporated into MetService ocean forecasts.

Vital temperature record to improve forecasts

Temperature observations are used to improve ocean forecasting models and verify the depth of marine heatwaves around Aotearoa New Zealand.

Similar to a weather station on land collecting real-time data that improves weather forecasts, sensor data helps improve three-dimensional predictions of ocean temperature, currents and sea level. These forecasts are used to prepare coastal communities for approaching storms, optimise fishing and alert aquaculture to extreme ocean temperatures.

Scientists use the sensor data to understand how ocean temperature affects our marine ecosystems. Recently, severe marine heatwaves have affected coastal and offshore areas leading to changes in fish distribution and impacts on sensitive species.

The sensor provides measurements exactly where fishing occurs, helping fishers make sense of changes in their catch.

Temperature measurements are an invaluable record of subsurface ocean structure, allowing scientists to determine impacts of marine heatwaves, such as the bleaching of Fjordland sponges. Increased understanding is essential to a climate-resilient future for our oceans and marine species over the coming decades.

Partnering with technology innovators, the commercial fishing sector, citizen scientists and researchers from across New Zealand, this project breaks down traditional barriers.

This approach demonstrates how we can solve critical environmental issues and provide important insight into our changing oceans. The continuation of this system will lead the way toward informing a climate-resilient blue economy and understanding the coastal ocean, providing measurements that will only become more critical in the coming years.

Julie Jakoboski, Oceanographic Data Scientist, Moana Project's Te Tiro Moana Team Lead, MetService — Te Ratonga Tirorangi; João Marcos Azevedo Correia de Souza, MetOcean Solutions Science Manager of the Research and Development Team. Moana Project Science Lead, MetService — Te Ratonga Tirorangi, and Malene Felsing, Moana Project Manager, MetService — Te Ratonga Tirorangi

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why bioplastics won’t solve our plastic problems

Last month, Victoria banned plastic straws, crockery and polystyrene containers, following similar bans in South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales and the ACT. All states and territories in Australia have now banned lightweight single-use plastic bags.

You might wonder why we have to ban these products entirely. Couldn’t we just make them out of bioplastics – plastics usually made of plants? Some studies estimate we could swap up to 85% of fossil-fuel based plastics for bioplastics.

Unfortunately, bioplastics aren’t ready for prime time – except for their use in kitchen caddy bins as food waste liners. In Australia, we don’t have widely available pathways to compost or process them at the end of their lives. Nearly always, they end up in landfill.

That’s why many states are including bioplastics in their plastics bans. Avoiding single-use plastics entirely, whether traditional fossil fuel-based plastics or bioplastics, is more sustainable. And as our recycling system struggles, less plastic of any kind is simply better.

Bio-based, biodegradable and compostable are different

Bioplastics is a blanket term covering plastics which are biologically-based or biodegradable (including compostable), or both.

Plastics are materials based on polymers – long-repeating chains of large molecules. These molecules don’t have to be oil-based - biologically-based plastics are made from raw materials such as corn, sugarcane, cellulose and algae.

Biodegradable plastics are those plastics able to be broken down by microorganisms into elements found in nature. Importantly, biodegradable here doesn’t specify how long or under what conditions plastic will break down.

Compostable plastics biodegrade on a known timeframe, when composted. In Australia, they can be certified for commercial or home compostable use.

These differences are important. Many of us would see the word “bioplastic” and assume what we’re buying is plant based and breaks down quickly. That’s often not true. Some biodegradable plastics are even made from fossil fuels.

Are bioplastics broadly more environmentally friendly?

To understand this we need to look at the whole lifecycle of the plastic, how it is made, used and what happens to it at end-of-life. Manufacturing bio-based plastics generally has lower environmental impacts and has less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuel plastics.

This isn’t always the case. Producing plastics from plants has an environmental impact from the use of land, water and agricultural chemicals. Increased demand for agricultural land could lead to biodiversity loss and can compete with food production.

Bioplastics often sub in for familiar single use items such as plastic bags, takeaway coffee cups and cutlery. Around 90% of the bioplastics sold in Australia are certified compostable. In most of these applications a reusable alternative would be the most sustainable option.

Some applications have beneficial environmental outcomes: compostable bags for kitchen food waste caddies increase the rate of food waste collected, which means less food waste in landfill and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

What about the crucial question of plastic waste and pollution? Sadly, if bioplastics end up in the environment, they can damage the environment in the same way as conventional plastics, such as contaminating soil and water. A turtle can choke just as easily on a bioplastic bag as a conventional plastic bag. That’s because biodegradable plastics still take years or even decades to biodegrade in nature.

Ideally, bioplastics should be designed to be either recyclable or compostable. Unfortunately, some bioplastics are neither. These pose problems for our waste management system, as they often end up contaminating recycling or compost bins when the only place for them is the tip.

In recent research for WWF Australia, we found widespread greenwashing in the industry, with terms such as “earth friendly” and “plastic-free” adding to the confusion. Regulating the industry and standardising terms would make it easier for us all to choose.

Compostable plastics almost all end up in landfill

Compostable plastics are designed to be broken down in the compost. Some can be composted at home, but others have to be done commercially.

The problem is these plastics aren’t being composted most of the time. Australian Standard compostable plastics are accepted in food organics and garden organics bins in South Australia and some councils in Hobart. But everywhere else, access to these services is limited. Many councils in other states will accept food and green waste – but specifically exclude compostable plastics (some accept council-supplied food waste caddy liners).

This means most compostable plastics used in Australia end up in landfill, where they emit methane as they break down, where it is not always captured. There’s no benefit using bioplastics if they can’t – or won’t – be recycled or composted, especially if they’re replacing a plastic that’s readily recyclable, such as the PET used in soft drink bottles.

Where does it make sense to use bioplastics in Australia?

When you reach for a bioplastic product, you’re probably doing it to reduce plastic waste. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet. We need viable pathways for recycling and composting.

So should we avoid them altogether? If you use compostable bin caddies and compost them at home or your council accepts them, that’s a useful option. But for most other uses, it’s far better to just not use plastic at all. Your reusable coffee cup and shopping bags are the best option.

Elsa Dominish, Research Principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney; Fiona Berry, Research Principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney; Nick Florin, Associate Professor and Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, and Rupert Legg, PhD Candidate, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Antarctic ice age survival story: life seeking ice-free refuges imitates art in Ice Age, the movie

Antarctica is an icy place today, but the ice extended even further during past ice ages. The question of how and where life survived on land in the icy continent, through the ages, has long puzzled biologists.

Ever since the first expeditions to Antarctica, the persistence of life in this inhospitable environment has remained a mystery. Until now.

We assembled data to test our theory of how life survived previous ice ages. We argue that life forms including invertebrates, vertebrates and plants persisted by retreating to numerous ice-free areas, called nunataks, that were not buried by advancing glaciers.

Then when Antarctica gradually warmed up again, life expanded from these nunatak refuges to repopulate larger ice-free areas. Our approach explains the uneven distribution of Antarctic terrestrial life, and identifies new research priorities to test our theory further.

The coming age of ice

For many, the term “Ice Age” conjures up memories of the animated adventures of Manny, Sid and Diego (and don’t forget that squirrel-rat, Scrat!) trying to escape the advancing ice.

There may be some truth to this story. The idea of a mammoth, sloth, sabretooth tiger (and pesky humans) migrating south for warmer climes is becoming well known in the Northern Hemisphere. And research published this month suggests early humans sat out the last ice age in the ice-free refuges of southern Europe.

But in Antarctica, land-loving life forms had nowhere to go. Or so it seemed, until now.

As scientists began to learn more about life in Antarctica, they began to consider the possibility of survival in ice-free refuges. But there was a problem. Any ice-free land in coastal regions, where life exists today, would have surely been consumed by the expanding ice. So how did life survive?

Unusual ice-free refuges

Using evidence from the biology and geology of Antarctica, we describe how ice-free refuges (nunataks) could have provided respite for coastal species.

We discounted previous research suggesting geothermal sites provided sufficient ice-free refuges on the coast. That’s because these would have been short-lived - compared to an ice age lasting around 100,000 years - and too few in number to explain the survival of life on the continent today.

We provide the first testable evidence-based hypothesis for the existence of life on continental Antarctica for millions of years. And we achieved this using the most well-known of all Antarctic invertebrates, a small creature that inhabits ice-free land year-round: springtails.

Springtails are an important contributor to soil health globally. They were among the first animals collected during early expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula and the northern coast of Victoria Land from 1897-1900.

We collated a database of distribution records for Antarctic springtails from these first discoveries more than a century ago to the present.

We also delved into an existing resource that has not been previously used to explore these questions of survival. By exploring the Informal Cosmogenic-nuclide Exposure-age Database (ICE-D) for Antarctica, we were able to demonstrate that ice-free conditions persisted across the last (and previous) ice ages at a large number of locations.

Cosmogenic-nuclide dating is normally used to improve the understanding of ice sheets’ response to climate change, by revealing when a rock was last covered by ice. But it had not been used to identify ice-free glacial refuges, until now.

We show that some of these ice-free refuges persisted above the expanding ice during past ice ages. Some contained all species found in a region.

But how did life move from these refuges, to repopulate habitats such as coastal areas? Clues to this remarkable survival story comes from well-known alpine and polar studies, showing life present in ice-free ecosystems near glacial margins shifts as the ice expands or contracts.

Learning life lessons

Antarctic life faces an uncertain future as the climate changes. The region is experiencing more extreme events such as the catastrophic breakup of ice shelves, the highest observed Antarctic air temperature, and the least extensive sea ice ever recorded. It seems we are now living in the sequel “Ice Age: The Meltdown”. Let’s hope we fare as well as Manny and his friends.

Antarctica will change forever, and limiting that change will take a “mammoth” collective effort at a global scale to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is a daunting and unprecedented challenge, but one which is required to secure Antarctica’s future. Life endured past ice ages, but can it survive us?

Mark Stevens, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Adelaide and Andrew Mackintosh, Professor & Head, School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment; expert on glaciers and ice sheets, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Participation income: the social welfare model that could help communities fight climate change

Universal Basic Income (UBI), a programme in which all adult citizens are given a regular amount of money to spend on what they choose, dominates the debate on the future of social policy. It is based on the idea that in the middle of plenty, millions of people still suffer from unemployment, underemployment, and a lack of means to have a meaningful life, and that a regular grant will provide a basic threshold to guarantee a certain quality of life.

Basic income schemes have already been piloted in Finland, Canada, Los Angeles in the US, and Wales, among others. And many countries have dealt with the social protection gap in hard times by providing temporary cash transfers with no strings attached, as happened in response to COVID-19 in Japan, South Korea and the US.

While arguments still continue over the predicted impact of new digital technologies on employment as a result of increasing automation, there is a pressing crisis that also calls for radical changes in social policy: the climate emergency.

Wellbeing not economic growth

Welfare regimes all rely on the dividend of future productivity growth to underwrite increases in welfare spending. Even if economic growth could be decoupled from emissions, this is unlikely to happen fast enough to arrest global warming between 1.5 and 2°C, which scientists estimate is necessary to avert catastrophic changes.

There is fledgling research on new models of a welfare state which is not built on productivity and economic growth, but upon an architecture of sustainable wellbeing and care. UBI is the best known alternative to traditional welfare states. But it fails to meet the challenge for building a sustainable and just society.

Getting “free” money on its own won’t encourage people to use less fossil energy and do less of the things currently driving climate change. UBI schemes also consider monetary income as the route to meeting basic needs, strengthening the role of money in everyday life and leaving existing social relations untouched. Such schemes might entice politicians to cut resources from public services.

UBI does not fit well with the call for a more interventionist state to grapple with the climate emergency either. It is based on the idea of an individual right to income without recognising the value of common action or reciprocal behaviour. Claimants may withdraw from the community and never explore their full potential as community members.

Participation income

The original participation income model (PI) was proposed by the British economist Anthony Atkinson in 1996. It is similar to UBI, but obliges people to do something in exchange for the money they receive. These activities can contribute to both the capacity of the community or the individual, like care work or attending language courses. For the most part, claimants know best what activities would be appropriate, and it would allow them to engage in a reciprocal relationship with society.

These activities could include gardening or tree planting, essentially anything that involves restoring biodiversity and bolstering natural solutions to climate change. And it can even replace or be integrated into current labour market policy measures which aim to equip unemployed persons with new skills to reenter work.

PI does have some weaknesses which need to be overcome. Atkinson envisioned nearly every person in society being eligible for the scheme, as monitoring eligibility would be difficult and incur hefty administrative costs. The PI model could be revised so that the payment reaches people on low incomes who currently rely on means-tested benefits.

Some people will also choose not to take part in participatory activities, but they must not be allowed to slip through the net. If PI was given as a “top-up” to a guaranteed minimum income, receiving PI would be seen as positive and losing it could not be regarded as a sanction.

Importantly, if the participatory activities were imposed upon people, they would remain in a subordinate position and may be stuck doing similar duties repeatedly. Allowing PI recipients to choose their activities would let them decide how to enrich their own lives and the life of their community. This model could involve community-based organisations, public providers and local residents’ networks in planning a range of development projects.

Innovative models of social security are especially important for people who may not be able to find green jobs, or households and communities with limited resources, who may not have the time or money to adopt energy-saving technologies or a climate-friendly diet.

PI is no panacea, but it could be useful for helping build a welfare state model fit for the 21st century.

This article is co-published with Nordics.info

Heikki Hiilamo, Professor of Social Policy, University of Helsinki

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.