Australian coal exports: a climate change boomerang
Blogpost by Aaron Gray-Block, Media Relations Specialist at Greenpeace International
The Australian continent might be about 4,000 km wide from east to west, but even the far west coast cannot escape the winds of Cyclone Rusty and the alarming impacts of climate change caused by coal mining, such as the planned Galilee Basin project, in the nation’s east.
Cyclone Rusty, a category 3 tropical cyclone, hammered into the West Australian coast today, packing a punch with gale force winds expected to hit 200 km per hour and forecast to bring heavy rain and major flooding.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology issued a warning for “an extended period of destructive winds” and rainfall “heavier than that associated with a typical system.”
In coming hours, the storm is expected to intensify into a category 4 storm – on a category of one to five – equal to Cyclone Tracy which obliterated Darwin in Australia’s north in 1974.
Perhaps aptly named Rusty, the storm could cause a major disruption in world iron ore trade. It has already shut port terminals used by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton and handling nearly half the global supply of the steel-making raw material.
The State Emergency Service says communities in the path of the storm, including Port Hedland which has been closed, are on a red alert and people need to go to shelter immediately. And this cyclone is the latest extreme weather event to have hit Australia in recent weeks, already tested by a record heatwave and dangerous bushfires, followed by storms and flooding in the north and east. Fresh in the country’s memories are the devastating floods that hit the state of Queensland in late 2010 and early 2011. Apart from the tragic deaths, those floods also paralysed much of the state’s coal mining capacity.
Why is this happening? Because our climate is changing.
Carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high last year, as we jointly pumped out 31.6 gigatonnes of the greenhouse gas responsible for global warming into the atmosphere, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). And yet, the Australian government is considering expanding the country’s coal mining capacity in Queensland in a bid to export more of the climate-destroying coal to energy-hungry countries such as India or China.
Greenpeace Australia released a report in September revealing that if the coal in the untapped Galilee Basin in Queensland is mined, Australia could create more carbon pollution than the entire emissions of the United Kingdom or Canada.
That’s a lot of global warming.
And it means a hotter heatwaves, more flooding, more cyclones (hurricanes), heavier snowfalls and persistent droughts. Extreme weather is already gripping the planet and is likely to get worse unless governments take action and cancel the fossil fuel projects they are planning and embrace renewable energy.
But it is not only Australia. Greenpeace International published last month a report, Point of No Return, identifying 14 major coal, oil and gas projects that will add an extra 6.34 gigatonnes of global CO2 emissions annually by 2020. Cyclone Rusty, formed in a region known as “cyclone alley”, is not evidence of climate change alone. But it is the latest incarnation of the kind of extreme weather that our fossil fuel addiction is causing.
Ironically, a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, quoted by Reuters, said global warming may have caused extreme events such as the 2011 drought in the US and a 2003 heatwave in Europe by slowing vast, wave-like weather flows in the northern hemisphere. And as the evidence of climate change stacks up, mining companies are getting scared also.
BHP Billiton said last December that the potential for rising sea levels and more cyclones due to climate change played a key role in the company’s decision to replace a jetty at its Hay Point coal export terminal in the north-east of Australia. So instead of embracing renewable energy, companies like BHP are preparing for the worst.
The absurdity of this is staggering. Australia might be able to export its coal, but the climate change it will cause is like a boomerang – it will always come back.
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February 27th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Oh, dear…
You say:
“Carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high last year, …, … Extreme weather is already gripping the planet…”
Yet, even the IPCC confirms what we’ve all known;
“The UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office,…”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nothing-off-limits-in-climate-debate/story-e6frg6n6-1226583112134
According to NOAA, ocean heat content has not increased for at least 10 years:
http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/
So, not only has the atmosphere not warmed, neither has the ocean.
Thus any weather we’ve seen for the last decade can’t be the result of global warming because there has not been any. You only go halfway to reality when you say:
“Cyclone Rusty, formed in a region known as “cyclone alley”, is not evidence of climate change alone.”
Cyclone Rusty is all natural – there is a reason the area is called “Cyclone Alley”.
And what do the climate ‘experts’ say about so called extreme weather?
According to the Bureau of Meteorology:
“Since 1910 there have been 22 cyclones that have caused gale-force winds at Broome. On average this equates to about one every four years although the frequency has been less in recent times, there being only two cyclones from 1990 to 2004. At Broome the cyclone season runs from late November to April … . The strongest wind gust recorded at Broome during a cyclone since 1939 is 161 km/h in February 1957. Other significant impacts occurred in 1910, 1926, 1935, 1957 and Rosita in 2000 (see table below).”
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/wa/broome.shtml
What was that? Cyclone frequency impacting Broome has been lower than average in recent years?
What about the Pilbara?
“The Pilbara coast experiences more cyclones than any other part of Australia. Since 1910 there have been 49 cyclones that have caused gale-force winds at Port Hedland. On average this equates to about one every two years. About half of these cyclones have an impact equivalent to a category 1 cyclone. Seven of these, Jan. 1939, March 1942, Joan Dec. 1975, Leo March 1977, Dean Feb. 1980, Connie Jan. 1987 and George March 2007 caused very destructive wind gusts in excess of 170 km/h. Along the Pilbara coast the cyclone season runs from mid December to April peaking in February as shown in figure 2 below. The strongest wind gust recorded at Port Hedland during a cyclone is 208 km/h during Joan (1975).”
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/wa/pthed.shtml
The very nice graph at the BOM clearly shows how that the period of the 1940s and 1950s was far more active in ‘cyclone alley’ than recent years.
Doomsday predictions are like boomerangs as well. Mother Nature will please itself what it does, extreme weather has always happened in this area of the world … only more often in the past where carbon dioxide concentrations were lower!.
I really wish your writers would do some actual research before you write these alarming and factually deficient articles designed to alarm the ill informed. Otherwise you lose our respect and become just like any other lobby group with an axe to grind and other people’s money to spend.
February 28th, 2013 at 6:52 am
Much ado about nothing … Rusty proves to be a floppy boomergang …
“An all-clear has been issued in Port Hedland after Tropical Cyclone Rusty missed the Pilbara mining town, causing only minor damage as it crossed the coast to the east.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-28/weakening-rusty-heads-for-marble-bar/4544188
Of course, it still has high winds that will cause damage and threaten life … and our thoughts go out to residents … but cyclones have always threatened this … that’s why they call it ‘cyclone alley’ … and has nothing to do with CO2 and coal exports.
March 2nd, 2013 at 8:51 am
Further to your claim that extreme weather is already ‘griping the planet”, a study by Soelen et al published this week (“Reconstructing tropical cyclone frequency using hydrogen isotope ratios of sedimentary n-alkanes in northern Queensland, Australia”) shows that in North Queensland cyclones have remained stable for a long time:
“This suggests that on average tropical cyclone frequency did not change during the past 200 years”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018213000953
So, not only have air and sea temperatures not increased in over a decade, cyclones haven’t changed in two centuries.