A long hot summer –

fueled by climate change

As the death toll from wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui climbed, the northern hemisphere had already faced a summer of climate-fueled extremes. Canada is suffering the worst wildfire season on record, with scenes eerily reminiscent of Australia’s Black Summer. Large parts of South Asia faced a brutal heatwave in April, and the Horn of Africa continues to struggle through one of its worst ever droughts. Communities all over the globe are facing more extreme weather events due to our rapidly warming climate.

 

And while climate change continues to supercharge the weather, there will be no escape for the land-down-under. Australia is confronting a long hot summer during 2023-2024, influenced by El Niño’s unrelenting extreme heat conditions. The vast bushland of the Central Coast has become an inferno before and there is no guarantee that it won’t happen again – destroying human life, property and native fauna.

16 August 2023

ALAN HAYES

 

THE CSIRO has shown, in a recent study, that the relationship between El Niño and climate change results in both El Nico and La Nica events becoming more frequent and intense – driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

 

An El Niсo event can intensify heat waves, increase the severity of bushfires, and contribute to drought conditions. The influence of El Niсo is primarily felt in eastern Australia, resulting in warmer-than-usual temperatures and reduced rainfall. This combination not only heightens the risk of extreme heat but also elevates the danger of bushfires, particularly in south-eastern regions.

 

Climate Councillor, Climate Scientist and author, Dr Joelle Gergis said, “We face a dramatic season ahead… things continue to unfold, but Australia being the most vulnerable nation in the developed world makes us really on the frontline of the impacts of climate change.”

 

So, what is El Nico?

 

El Niсo occurs when the sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific are significantly warmer than average, leading to a shift in rainfall – away from the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Australia, and toward the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

 

CSIRO lead researcher Wenju Cai said their research yielded significant results, with evidence that El Niño and La Niña events had become more frequent and intense due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.

 

The CSIRO study, published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, examined extensive outputs from models without greenhouse warming, each for hundreds to over thousands-of-year time scales, to examine how unusual the last 60 years have been.

 

They found that strong El Niños increased from two events in the pre-1960 to four events in the post-1960, and strong La Niñas from one event to nine events.

 

Dr Cai said that the impacts of El Niño and La Niña were expected to be more intense because of climate change.

Many Australians have already experienced first-hand the compounding impacts of climate change - the Black Summer bushfires of 2019/20 came off the back of a 2018/19 El Niсo event.

 

In fact, 2019 was the hottest and driest year on record for Australia, which contributed to the extreme bushfire season. From 2020 to 2023, we saw a protracted (multi-year) La Niсa episode that led to record-breaking rainfall and flooding along the east coast. These heavy rains have spurred rapid growth of grass and bushland, which leaves much of the country in a precarious position as

Australia enters the next El Niсo period - as grasslands and bushlands dry out they are primed to burn.

Greg Mullins, Climate Councillor and founder of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA) group said, “the El Niño event is like adding fuel to the fire – literally. With the warmer and drier conditions, it brings, it’s likely we’re looking at an extended and potentially volatile fire season.”

This coming summer!

 

An El Niño event has arrived, according to the World Meteorological Organization, raising fears of record high global temperatures, extreme weather and, in Australia, a severe fire season.

 

The El Niño is a reminder that bushfires are part of Australian life – especially as human-caused global warming worsens.

 

The evidence for human-induced climate change is irrefutable. While the global climate has changed significantly in the past, the current changes are occurring at an unprecedented rate.

 

In geologic time scales, before the influence of humans, a significant shift in climate has been associated with an increase in fire activity in Australia. There is every reason to expect fire activity will increase with human-induced climate change as well.

 

Climate change will continue to test our fire management systems. And the return of an El Niño has fire crews on alert.

 

When it comes to solving the problem, Australia must be much smarter than it has been for the past 200 years. This means Australia must urgently cut carbon pollution from the burning of coal, oil and gas this decade to protect ourselves, and all future generations, from worsening extremes.

 

The fossil fuel Achilles’ heel.

 

The cry to stop burning coal to produce electricity has our politicians pontificating about the move to renewal energy – a sustainable solution that will solve the problem of greenhouse emissions.

 

There is no denying that coal is a ‘dirty’ four-letter word and that burning it has contributed significantly to climate change – but humans need electricity to power our modern world.

 

The short-term answer to the problem, while we convert to a sustainable future, suggested by some politicians and those mining and energy companies still keen to ensure a ‘healthy bottom line’, is to convert aging power stations to coal seam gas (CSG). Fugitive CSG emissions are no big deal, the gas miners claim – right? Wrong!

 

Rumour has it that the amount of methane that leaks into the atmosphere from CSG is similar to the amount produced by four cows farting as they happily gaze in a meadow – so it doesn’t contribute as much to greenhouse emissions as does the burning of coal. CSG leaks ‘equal to that of cows’ is a claim straight from the oil and gas lobby group the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) – no surprises there!

 

Because CSG burns more cleanly than coal, producing less carbon dioxide, there has been a ferocious argument that converting our power stations to CSG will reduce greenhouse emissions until we solve the problem of a truly renewal future and meet COP26 guidelines by 2030 and 2050.  Another furphy!

 

Even a small proportion of methane from CSG leaking into the atmosphere - as little as 4% of lifetime production – then the advantage of burning CSG to produce power is lost. Why? Because methane has more than twenty times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. And its leaking from gas appliances in homes across Australia.

 

It has now been uncovered that leaking methane from  gas-burning stove tops is releasing the greenhouse-gas equivalent of hundreds of thousands of cars, and cooking on gas stovetops is posing a risk to health, according to new research.

 

In findings that have taken researchers by surprise, more than three quarters of methane emissions from stovetops were leaking into houses while the appliances were not in use. It has also been found that many pipes, within homes, which supply the gas to cooktops and heaters also had leaks.

 

Unmeasured methane leaks from platforms and pipelines off Australia’s coast also releases large amounts of the dangerous greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, but we will never know exactly how much, and it will certainly not be included in Australia’s emissions calculations. This doesn’t include the climate-heating methane gas that is leaking or being vented from more than 100 places across 35 fossil fuel sites in Queensland and New South Wales, according to an investigation by environmental organisations – the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) commissioned the US-based Clean Air Task Force (CATF), a global non-profit organisation, to use optical gas imaging (OGI) technology, which uses a special filter to pick up methane’s infrared energy and make it visible on a screen, captured footage of extensive leaking at facilities run by Santos, Origin and gas pipeline company Jemena.

 

The mining companies, who own the sites, denied methane gas was leaking into the atmosphere from their facilities, yet the ACF field-trip found that methane leaking or deliberately venting from:

 

• At least 25 leaks/vents along Jemena’s JGN and Darling Downs pipelines.

 

• At least 10 leaks/vents from Origin’s coal seam gas wells and Shell/QGC gas-gathering pipelines in Queensland.

 

• Methane being released from four of the seven Santos’ coal seam gas wells surveyed in the Pilliga/Bibblewindi forest in NSW.

 

• Multiple cases of continuous venting at the APA-operated compressor station at the Wallumbilla Gas Hub.

 

“These findings reinforce fears that emissions of methane – the major component of so-called ‘natural gas’, which has more than 80 times the global warming impact of CO2 over a short time horizon – are well above reported levels,” said ACF’s lead investigator Annica Schoo.

 

“Our field trip showed leaking and venting of this invisible, highly potent gas is widespread.

 

“But Australia is at the back of the global pack when it comes to methane mitigation, with regulations too weak to stop companies releasing methane freely from their facilities.

 

“Methane emissions are believed to account for about 30% of the global temperature rise since the industrial revolution.

 

“We documented methane leaks at every stage of the gas extraction and distribution process.

 

“The fact is, we just don’t know how much climate-heating methane is leaking from coal and gas in Australia because the regulations are so weak and under-reporting is rife.

 

“The best science says Australia needs to cut methane emissions by 75% by 2030, so we call on the Albanese government to put a hold on all new coal and gas approvals pending an accurate determination of the CO2 and methane that is coming from coal and gas facilities.

 

“The government must establish a methane action plan that requires companies to accurately measure and report on methane emissions, install methane abatement technology at existing facilities and rehabilitate leaking abandoned mines.

 

“The plan should require companies to find and fix leaks as soon as they can.”

 

Friends of the Earth Australia’s Offshore Fossil Gas Campaigner, Jeff Waters, said, “Nobody measures the offshore gas leaks from Australia; nobody measures the methane lost from regular venting.

 

“Governments need to heed this warning and start measuring our emissions more adequately, and someone - anyone - needs to stop the industry from flagrantly polluting our air with their venting, flaring, and worst of all, their leaks.”

What is the answer?

 

While our governments rush to build super batteries and solar farms to charge them, and wind farms to feed the energy grid and to even charge the massive storage batteries, continuous supply to home and industry is not guaranteed. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind is not constant, so, invariably, fossil fuel continues its iniquitous hold on our energy needs.

 

Ironically, these expensive super batteries, which only power a limited number of homes for a small amount of time each evening during the peak period, are expensive to build and have a lifespan of no more than fifteen years. And what about solar farms and wind farms? Their life expectancy is 20 to 25 years.

 

Yet the answer to affordable and environmentally safe electricity production, which produces zero greenhouse emissions, and can be fed directly into our energy grid is ‘Concentrated Solar Thermal Power’(CSTP).

 

The Grapevine has previously reported on CSTP and dealt with its benefits, in depth, in our 12 July edition.

 

Rather than turning the sun’s energy directly into electrical current – as occurs with solar PV – CSTP concentrates the sun’s heat up to 600˚C and then stores that heat in large salt tanks. The hot salt is then used to create steam to drive a turbine, just like a coal-fired power station. It is a synchronous technology because it uses a traditional spinning turbine (identical to those used in coal-fired power plants). This creates much-needed system-strength and frequency services to the grid. In essence, when coal fired power stations close, concentrated solar thermal is a technology that could continue to provide essential system services.

 

Unlike huge battery installations, solar and wind farms, Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plants have a life expectancy of 40 to 50 years, which is comparable with our aging coal-fired facilities. So, why are our governments hesitant in using this technology?

 

CSTP plants are less expensive to build than coal or gas-fired power plants and they guarantee continuous power and it’s not as if the Federal Government is unaware of the technology – the CSIRO have a pilot facility at Newcastle and they are funding the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute (ASTRI), a division of the CSIRO.

 

CSTP plants typically have 10-15 hours of thermal energy stored, allowing them to cover the crucial overnight electricity market, which is currently serviced by coal, and operate 24/7.

 

Dominic Zaal, director of ASTRI, said, “Another important feature of CSTP, which makes it popular in transitioning utility grids, is the system-strength and inertia that it provides to the grid. This is thanks to the synchronous generation from the spinning turbine which creates frequency control and ancillary services (FCAS) at no charge. This negates the need for expensive battery projects, which are currently providing an increasing proportion of FCAS and which themselves require condensers to simulate synchronous power generation.”