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In Australia, dog ownership often goes hand-in-hand with a love for the great outdoors. Whether it’s walking on the beach, going camping, or having a barbecue in the park, we tend to keep our canine companions close as we soak up the sun.

But many of us forget a key fact about our dogs: they are predators. Even the fluffy little 5kg ball that spends most of its time in your lap derives from an apex predator – and its predatory instincts can kick in at any time.

And while many of our dogs don’t have the same hunting skills as their distant ancestors (who had to hunt for a living), wildlife doesn’t know that.

The impacts of domestic dogs on wildlife aren’t well studied, and likely vary depending on the environment. Nonetheless, there’s good evidence domestic dogs, when left unobserved, can have detrimental effects in the places they visit.

With that in mind, here are some things to consider next time you take your pup out for a bushwalk.

How dogs impact ecosystems

There are five main ways domestic dogs can negatively impact the natural environments they visit. These are:

1. direct physical harm through predatory behaviour
2. disturbance through chasing and harassment
3. increased exposure to diseases
4. interbreeding, which can alter the gene pool of wild canid populations
5. increased competition for resources.

The good news is the last three points aren’t particularly relevant in Australia. For one thing, there’s little overlap between diseases common in domestic dogs and Australian wildlife. There’s also little resource overlap, except perhaps in some areas where feral or semi-feral dogs live alongside dingoes.

And regarding potential interbreeding, while it was once thought this could threaten the dingo gene pool, recent research suggests it’s not nearly as common as we thought.

As such, the main harms Aussie dog owners should focus on are physical harms through predatory behaviour and disturbance to ecosystems.

Dogs can kill

We know dogs are capable of injuring and killing wildlife, but it’s difficult to determine how common this is, because many events go unreported. While smaller animals such as lizards, gliders and possums are at higher risk, larger species such as koalas can also fall prey to dogs.

One study that looked at wildlife coming into care at Queensland rehabilitation centres reported dog attacks as the cause in about 9% of cases. These cases often resulted in severe injury or death.

Dog owners should be especially wary of small, localised populations of vulnerable species. A study in Argentina’s Patagonia region details several cases of dogs decimating local penguin populations after gaining access to protected island areas during low tide.

Not to mention, dog attacks on wildlife can bring risk to dogs as well. Kangaroos can defend themselves with their powerful limbs, monitor lizards are equipped with sharp claws and teeth, and many snake species are highly venomous.

The impact of harassment

You might think it’s harmless for your dog to chase wildlife if it never manages to catch the animals it chases, but that isn’t true. Wild animals optimise their behaviours to meet their needs for foraging, breeding and resting, and being chased by a dog can disrupt this.

For example, certain threatened bird species will nest on the beach and find foraging opportunities based on the tides. One dog forcing one bird to abandon this important activity may have a small impact. But if it happens repeatedly throughout the day, it can become a much bigger problem. It may even drive animals out of the area.

Research conducted in Sydney has shown the mere presence of a leashed dog is enough to temporarily, yet dramatically, reduce the number of bird species detected.

Keep an eye on your furry pal

Responsible dog ownership involves making sure our dogs have a minimal impact on others, including wildlife. How can we achieve this when our dogs are simply engaging in behaviours that come naturally to them, and may even be rewarding for them?

Training your dog to have general obedience – especially to come when called – is worth sinking considerable time and effort into. This can save both your dog and any wildlife they may be after. For instance, calling a dog away from a snake is one of the most effective ways of managing snake bite risk.

One pilot study in Victoria found positive outcomes from a program that helped owners train their dogs to be more obedient around wildlife.

That said, recall training is an art form, and recalling a dog that likes to run off and chase animals can be a huge challenge.

Another solution is to rely on leashes when passing sensitive areas, or where there’s a risk of wildlife harassment. In Australia, many beaches that allow dogs have signs with information about vulnerable birds in the area and how to protect them from your dog.

This could mean keeping your dog off rock platforms, leashing them when you see birds foraging on the beach, or keeping them out of fenced areas. Some areas are simply too vulnerable for dogs to run amok, so always look for signs and read them carefully.

If you’re hiking, use a long line (a leash that’s more than five metres long) and look for signs of your dog detecting something of interest. Often their ears will come up high and forward, and they will freeze and stare intently.

At this point, it doesn’t matter what they’re excited about: take the opportunity to leash them or shorten their leash, and get their attention before they can take off. Investing in a long leash will allow your dog more freedom without putting wildlife at risk.

If your dog does injure an animal, you should quickly contact a wildlife rescue organisation or take the animal to a veterinary practice or sanctuary. For small animals, even minor injuries from a dog will usually require veterinary attention.

It’s our responsibility to be respectful visitors when we’re out in nature, and to make sure our dogs are too. 

Melissa Starling, Postdoctoral Researcher in Veterinary Science, University of Sydney

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

It’s been a rainy winter in many parts of Australia, wreaking havoc on kids’ sporting competitions. As mums, it has been frustrating to see so many of our kids’ sport matches (and training sessions) cancelled because of waterlogged grounds.

When footy, rugby, league tag, soccer or netball get cancelled because of ground closures, our kids miss out on valuable exercise and growth opportunities. It means less time to develop sport skills, practise teamwork, boost resilience and mental health, engage with positive role models and play with friends. It often means more time on the couch, and parents lamenting the money they spent on registration fees and sports uniforms.

With climate change predicted to bring more intense rainfall events, this situation isn’t going away. The good news is a growing body of research offers insights into how we can address this problem through smarter urban design and green infrastructure.

What’s green infrastructure?

The term “green infrastructure” can mean many things but in this context it refers to nature-based infrastructure we can build to better filter and absorb rainwater.

The fundamental principle is that concrete doesn’t absorb water. Rain that falls on it just gets channelled to stormwater drains (which can quickly overflow), or to the nearest bit of green space. Often, that’s the local sporting field.

The solution? Create more soil-based or nature-based spaces that allow for rainwater to be absorbed into the earth well before it gets to the local sports grounds.

This can include:

• green roofs and rooftop farms, which use roof space to grow plants and food

• green walls, where the walls of buildings are repurposed as places to support plants

• urban forest projects

• urban parks

• planting and preserving more street trees, which help absorb rainwater through their roots

• using less concrete in our urban spaces

• rain gardens, which are specially designed gardens that can rapidly absorb rainfall during wet weather

• special vegetated channels called swales, which absorb rainwater.

Green infrastructure doesn’t just reduce flooding. It can also make our urban spaces more sustainable, cut urban heat, lower noise pollution and even reduce people’s stress.

Some cities and suburbs have made great strides in installing and tending to green infrastructure.

But why aren’t these principles of urban design more widely implemented?

Yes, it costs money – but it’s worth it

Too often, governments do not advocate for investment in green infrastructure. According to the World Economic Forum, less than 0.3% of current urban infrastructure spending goes to nature-based solutions.

Yes, green infrastructure requires investment but our current concrete-based approach to cities is also enormously expensive. One study found:

Nature-based infrastructure costs around 50% less than equivalent built infrastructure while delivering the same — or better — outcomes. As well as the lower initial costs, nature-based infrastructure tends to be cheaper to maintain and more resilient to climate change.

Research has also found green infrastructure can deliver broader health benefits to the community that may represent savings to the public health bill.

New South Wales already has a planning framework, released last year, that aims to:

provide a standardised, robust and comprehensive approach to identify, quantify and monetise common costs and benefits associated with green infrastructure and public spaces.

That’s a strong start. But more could be done to embed green infrastructure principles into development application processes. This could encourage the development of green infrastructure that can absorb rain. That, in turn, could mean fewer closures of waterlogged sports grounds.

It is also possible to improve drainage on existing sports grounds. Managers of the Maryland SoccerPlex in the United States, for example, used a green infrastructure technique known as “sand slit drainage” – which involves installing special pipes and adding sand to the field – to vastly upgrade drainage. This allows people to play sports throughout the rain season.

Can’t we just make sports grounds out of artificial grass?

Sure, fake grass sports grounds would allow fields to accommodate some games when real grass fields wash out – but it would be a huge loss for biodiversity, quality of life, our health and the broader sustainability of our neighbourhoods.

Residents in some parts of NSW have already voiced concerns artificial grass can radiate heat on very warm days. It also produces plastic pollution.

Instead, we need to rethink the design of sport fields. We should view them as valuable green spaces. They are part of the green infrastructure network and help regulate urban temperatures and enhance ecological systems in and around our cities.

They should be seen as sponges to absorb rainwater – but they cannot be the only ones. Without more green infrastructure in our cities, our sports ground sponges will quickly become overloaded and waterlogged.

Jua Cilliers, Head of School of Built Environment, Professor of Urban Planning, University of Technology Sydney and Mehrafarin Takin, PhD student in the School of Built Environment, University of Technology Sydney

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

Australia’s forestry industry raised eyebrows this month when it released plans to remove trees from native forests, potentially including national parks, and claim carbon credits in the process.

Forestry Australia, the industry body behind the plan, claims it would make ecosystems more resilient and help tackle climate change. But decades of research findings clearly suggest the proposal, if accepted, will have the opposite effect.

Scientific evidence shows some proposed practices make forests more fire-prone and undermine forest health. And the carbon released when cutting down and processing trees would undercut any climate benefits of the plan.

Australia cannot risk any more declines in biodiversity resulting from harvesting native forests, or actions that further threaten its emissions-reduction goal. On this basis, the Forestry Australia proposal should be rejected.

Understanding Australia’s carbon credit scheme

Under a federal government scheme, people and businesses can undertake projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or store carbon, in exchange for financial rewards known as carbon credits.

Projects can include changing the way vegetation is managed, so it removes and stores more carbon from the atmosphere.

The government has invited proposals for new ways to generate carbon credits under the policy.

Forestry Australia’s proposal involves a number of activities conducted in national parks, state forests and on private land. In return for conducting these activities, land managers – such as government agencies and private landowners – would be granted carbon credits.

One part of the method involves “adaptive harvesting”. Forestry Australia says the approach would reduce carbon emissions and improve carbon storage in forests “while allowing for a level of ongoing supply of wood products”.

Adaptive harvesting purports to reduce environmental impacts but still produce wood products. Techniques can include delaying logging until trees are older, resting areas from harvesting and minimising areas cleared for roads and log landings.

The proposal also involves “forest thinning”, or removing trees. In a statement to The Conversation, Forestry Australia’s acting president William Jackson said thinning involves “selectively reducing the number of trees to enable the healthy trees to grow”.

Forestry Australia says it has not proposed timber production from national parks. However, it did not say what would happen to trees cut down in thinning operations, including whether they would be sold or left on the forest floor.

Forestry Australia has also proposed to change the way harvested wood is used, so it stores carbon for longer.

So, instead of harvesting low-grade logs used for woodchips and paper, it would harvest more valuable logs to be made into longer-lived timber products, such as roof trusses and floorboards.

However, plantation forests already produce about 90% of logs harvested in Australia, raising questions over the demand for native forest logs.

Logging does not make forests resilient

Announcing Forestry Australia’s proposal, its president Michelle Freeman said forests were “more resilient if they are actively managed”.

But several adaptive harvesting practices are scientifically shown to harm native forests.

For example, analyses following the 2009 wildfires and after the 2019-2020 wildfires show thinning generally makes forests more fire-prone. Foresters have themselves highlighted this problem. And the heavy equipment used to log forests disturbs and degrades soil and the understorey.

What’s more, young trees – the usual targets of thinning – provide understorey habitat for many species, including endangered mammals, such as Leadbeater’s Possum and many species of birds.

And thinning undermines a forest’s ability to withstand other threats, such as climate change.

A big climate risk

Forestry Australia’s proposal is problematic if Australia hopes to achieve its emissions-reduction target of 43% by 2030, based on 2005 levels.

First, logging releases carbon stored in trees and soil. So, even if some carbon was stored under the plan – through activities such as regeneration – this would be undermined by carbon released when removing trees.

Second, there is a risk carbon credits may be granted for activities and emission reductions that would have happened anyway.

Take the proposal to provide carbon credits for adaptive harvesting. Most of these activities, such as forest regeneration, are already required by regulation and forestry codes of practice.

And in the case of the proposal to conduct regeneration activities after bushfires, forests will regenerate naturally if they are left alone.

A similar issue arises if forest managers are offered carbon credits to encourage timber to be turned into long-lived wood products. These products are more lucrative than, say, woodchips. So the financial incentive to create them already exists – and there’s a good chance suitable logs would have been used for these products regardless of whether carbon credits were offered.

What’s more, the average life of these longer-lived timber products is still far less than the standing trees.

Rules under Australia’s carbon credit scheme are meant to prevent credits being given for activities that would have occurred anyway. However, serious concerns have been raised over the effectiveness of these rules.

The answer is clear

Australia’s native forest logging industry has long been in decline and operates at a financial loss in most states.

Adding to the industry’s demise, Victoria and Western Australia have called an end to logging in public native forests and southeast Queensland is reportedly set to follow.

The flailing, damaging native forest logging industry is on the way out and plantations already provide almost all our sawn wood supply. Propping up the industry via a badly designed carbon credit method does not make economic or climate sense.

In response to the points raised in this article, Forestry Australia’s acting president William Jackson provided the following statement. It has been edited for brevity.

Adaptive harvesting practices are proposed only for state forests and private native forests, within areas where timber harvesting is expressly permitted and regulated under state-based legislation.

Thinning is conducted for ecological reasons, cultural values or fire management or other reasons. Forestry Australia disagrees with the view that thinning makes forests more fire prone. The inclusion of thinning in native forests in the method is supported by clear evidence from Australian and international research showing that thinning of forests, when combined with prescribed burning to reduce fuel hazards, can significantly reduce wildfire risks and impacts in dry forests.

Not all forests are in the condition to regenerate naturally due to the impacts of climate change, invasive species and wildfire. The method encourages active and adaptive management to assist in restoring the health and resilience of these forests.

This method would maximise carbon market opportunities to more landowners, from state government agencies managing state forests and national parks, as well as community groups, not-for-profits, private landowners and First Nations Peoples.

David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University; Brendan Mackey, Director, Griffith Climate Action Beacon, Griffith University, and Heather Keith, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology, Griffith University

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

Since European colonisation, 29 million hectares (54%) of the forests and woodlands that once existed in New South Wales have been destroyed. A further 9 million ha have been degraded in the past two centuries. This amounts to more than 60% of the state’s forest estate.

We will never know the full impacts this rampant clearing and degradation have had on the state’s wildlife and plants. But it is now possible to put into perspective the impacts of logging practices in the past two decades on species that have already suffered enormous loss.

Cutting down native vegetation for timber destroys habitat for forest-dependent species. Our research, published today, has found ongoing logging in NSW affects the habitat of at least 150 species considered at risk of extinction, due mostly to historical deforestation and degradation.

Thirteen of these species are listed as critically endangered. This means there is a 20% probability of extinction in ten years (or five generations, whichever is longer) without urgent conservation action.

The bare and highly disturbed areas created by logging also increase risks of erosion, fire and invasion by non-native species.

Other states and countries ban native forest logging

Despite these impacts, Australia still logs native forests.

Many countries have now banned native forest logging. They have recognised the enormous impact of intact forests on biodiversity and climate change, and rely entirely on plantations for wood production. New Zealand, for example, banned native forest logging two decades ago, in 2002.

In Australia, South Australia has protected native forests since the 1870s. The ACT banned logging in the 1980s. As of 2024, Western Australia and Victoria have ended their native forest logging operations (except logging for fire breaks, salvage logging after windstorms, and logging on private land).

The reasons are clear: native forestry is unpopular and unprofitable, contributes heavily to climate change and is a major cause of species decline.

Yet government-owned logging operations in NSW, Tasmania and Queensland continue to erode their remaining forest estates.

Logging impacts on habitats and species add up

The current practice of impact assessment means logging activities are evaluated individually, without looking at the broader history of land management. On their own, small areas of logging might seem insignificant. However, logging these small areas can add up to a much larger long-term habitat loss.

To assess what logging today means in terms of impacts on species, we need to assess how much habitat has been lost or degraded over long time periods.

We used historical loss and degradation as a baseline to evaluate recent logging events (from 2000 to 2022) across NSW. We found continued logging is having impacts on 150 threatened species.

Forty-three of these species now have 50% or less of their intact habitat remaining in NSW. They include the three brothers wattle, regent parrot and growling grass frog. Two species, Sloane’s froglet and Glenugie karaka, have less than 10% of intact habitat remaining.

Some species’ distributions had high overlaps with recent logging. They include the floodplain rustyhood (75% overlap with logging), Orara boronia (26%), Hakea archaeoides (24%), long-footed potoroo (14%), southern mainland long-nosed potoroo (12%) and southern brown bandicoot (9%). Species with the most distribution by area that overlapped with logging included koala (400,000 ha), south-eastern glossy black-cockatoo (370,000 ha) and spot-tailed quoll (southeast mainland population, 310,000 ha).

Our research shows the importance of a historical perspective. Almost all the forest-dependent species we assessed have suffered terribly from land clearing and fires over the past two centuries. They now survive in small parts of their natural range.

Logging this remaining habitat is forcing many of these species into an extinction vortex. Environmental impact assessments and decisions about land use (such as converting land into conservation zones, solar farms or logging areas) must consider the historical legacies of logging for these species.

How can we retain our remaining forest estate?

Australia is a signatory to many international conservation goals. For instance, the Global Biodiversity Framework aims to “ensure urgent management actions to halt human-induced extinction of known threatened species and for the recovery and conservation of species”. The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration committed us to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.

Logging native forests stands in stark contrast to these undertakings.

In Australia, the states regulate forestry and, strangely, own the forestry business themselves. However, the Commonwealth has the power to intervene and halt native forest logging. With the federal government in the throes of reforming nature laws and an election coming up, the choice is simple: lock in extinction by continuing rampant logging, or lock in species recovery by working with land managers to secure the future of these species.

Australia has a chequered recent history when it comes to protecting its environment. We have one of the highest mammal extinction rates in the world and the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions of all OECD member countries. We are also the only developed nation identified as a deforestation hotspot.

Native forests are essential for carbon sequestration, biodiversity and the cultural wellbeing of First Nations and local communities. An easy win for all these interests is within our reach. Shifting from native forest logging to sustainable plantations will help protect these essential forests while still meeting wood demands.

Michelle Ward, Lecturer, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University; David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, and James Watson, Professor in Conservation Science, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland

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

In a world increasingly illuminated by artificial light, the beautiful night skies of a small coastal town in South Australia have attracted international recognition. Carrickalinga on the Fleurieu Peninsula is Australia’s first official Dark Sky Community. The title rewards a dedicated community effort to combat light pollution and preserve the natural environment at night.

The journey began three years ago when I was a PhD candidate at the Australian National University, working on the value of night skies. I was a regular visitor to Carrickalinga, but this time conversations at a picnic one evening turned to the clarity and brilliance of the stars. I was inspired to work with the locals to nominate Carrickalinga as a “Dark Sky Place”.

My recent research suggests restoring dark skies would be worth US$3.4 trillion (A$5.16 trillion) to the world, annually. That’s largely because light pollution is disrupting nocturnal pollinators, altering predator-prey interactions, and changing the behaviours of nocturnal species.

Light pollution has detrimental effects on wildlife, human health, and ecosystem functions and services. But there are simple solutions. By embracing responsible lighting practices, everyone can contribute to a healthier future in which the wonders of the night sky are accessible to all.

Understanding light pollution

Light pollution refers to human alteration of outdoor light levels. Excessive or misdirected artificial light brightens the night sky, diminishing our ability to see stars.

Research shows the problem is getting worse. Light pollution increased by 7–10% a year from 2011 to 2022. More than a third of people on Earth cannot see the Milky Way.

Light pollution not only affects our view of the cosmos, but also wastes energy and money, contributes to climate change and has significant repercussions for both ecological and human health.

Nocturnal animals such as bats and certain birds rely on darkness to navigate and find food. Insects, crucial for pollination and as a food source for other wildlife, are also affected. Artificial light at night is contributing to their decline.

In humans, studies have shown artificial light interferes with circadian rhythms, leading to sleep disorders and other health issues.

The global Dark Sky movement

DarkSky International, formerly known as the International Dark Sky Association, is a global network of volunteers combating light pollution. The non-profit organisation established in 1988 is based in Tuscon, Arizona in the United States. But more than 193,000 people across more than 70 countries are involved, including astronomers, environmental scientists and the public.

The International Dark Sky Places Program was born in 2001 when Flagstaff, Arizona was named the first International Dark Sky City. Now the program certifies five types of Dark Sky Places: sanctuaries, reserves, parks, communities, and urban night sky.

DarkSky says the aim is to “preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting”. It recognises places that demonstrate a commitment to reducing light pollution through public education, policy, and promoting responsible lighting practices.

There are now well over 200 Dark Sky Places across the globe. This covers more than 160,000 square kilometres in 22 countries on six continents.

Australia’s Dark Sky Places

Australia is home to several Dark Sky Places, each recognised for their exceptional night skies and dedication to reducing light pollution. These include:

1. Warrumbungle National Park (2016) – Australia’s first Dark Sky Park, near Coonabarabran in west-central New South Wales.

2. The Jump-Up (2019) – Dark Sky Sanctuary in Winton, western Queensland

3. River Murray (2019) – Dark Sky Reserve, including parts of South Australia’s Riverland

4. Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary (2023) – Dark Sky Sanctuary, northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia

5. Carrickalinga (2024) – Australia’s first Dark Sky Community, Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia

6. Palm Beach Headland (2024) – Australia’s first Urban Night Sky Place, outer Sydney, New South Wales. 

SEE:

Our journey in Carrickalinga

Since 2021, the Carrickalinga community has worked tirelessly towards achieving International Dark Sky Community certification. The journey involved several key initiatives:

• Sky Quality Metering Program: regular measurements of sky brightness to monitor light pollution levels

• Community engagement: presentations to community groups and the district council to raise awareness about light pollution, information stalls at local markets, community consultation process (led by the District Council of Yankalilla)

• Educational materials: printed flyers, video, and a “Star Party” including a presentation on First Nations cosmology

• Policy development: collaboration with the district council to create a lighting policy including public lighting design that complies with both Australian standards and DarkSky requirements.

Carrickalinga is currently upgrading existing public lighting to reduce light pollution. This will involve a new lighting design plan that reduces correlated colour temperature, ensuring shielded downward-facing lights minimise skyglow, glare and light trespass.

Reducing light pollution by upgrading lighting fixtures does not compromise safety. Dark sky does not mean dark ground.

Light pollution has become such a problem because our lights are unnecessarily bright and poorly designed. Fixing the problem simply involves changing the colour from white to amber, shielding and targeting lights so they do not shine upwards and outwards, and reducing wattage where it is surplus to requirements for people’s safety.

How you can help

Achieving and maintaining dark sky status is not difficult but it does require ongoing community effort. Here are the five principles for responsible outdoor lighting, which apply equally to domestic as well as public lighting:

• Useful – use light only if it is needed and has a clear purpose

• Targeted – direct light so it falls only where it is needed

• Low light levels – light should be no brighter than necessary

• Controlled – use light only when it is needed

• Warm colours – use warm coloured lights wherever possible and avoid short-wavelength (blue–violet) light.

An inspirational journey

Achieving International Dark Sky Community status was a significant achievement in preserving the natural night environment and educating the local community about light pollution. This accomplishment demonstrates the power of community action and serves as a model for others.

By protecting our night skies, we safeguard a vital part of our natural and cultural heritage and also promote healthier ecosystems and communities. Carrickalinga’s journey serves as an inspiring example of what can be achieved through collective effort and dedication to preserving our planet’s natural beauty.

I would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of Carrickalinga Dark Sky Community volunteer Sheryn Pitman, who works for Green Adelaide in the South Australian Department for Environment and Water, and helped write this article.

Sharolyn Anderson, Research scientist and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of South Australia

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

What will our climate look like in the future? It is hard to overstate not only the importance of answering this question, but also the challenges involved in doing so.

We know the climate is changing rapidly. But without information about where we are headed, planning – at personal, organisational and societal levels – becomes tricky, to put it mildly.

Because climate risks are also understood as financial risks, many countries around the world – including Australia – are moving to make climate risk reporting mandatory. Accordingly, this need for a plan can no longer be ignored.

But the way we currently communicate climate risk has some serious limitations.

Recent research led by Tanya Fiedler explores these limitations, and proposes that a new approach – incorporating the power of narratives – would be more useful and practical for organisations.

We all struggle with uncertainty

Why is painting a picture of our future climate to help us make decisions so difficult? Part of the answer lies in the way individuals make decisions under uncertainty.

People tend to find it difficult to cope with uncertainty and ambiguity, often struggling when presented with probabilities. This can impact our decisions, leading to undesirable outcomes.

Research has also shown we find it difficult to respond to warnings that fall outside our lived experience.

The other part of the answer lies in the inherent complexity – and uncertainties – involved in developing a useful picture of the future.

The most common way to explore our future climate is to use global or regional climate models – complex mathematical simulations of our climate system. These have proven extraordinarily valuable to simulate how our climate will change due to increases in greenhouse gases.

They can project how temperature, rainfall, winds, fire risk and even hail risk are likely to change in future.

But projections are by definition uncertain, and using different models can provide different visions of the future.

The problem with zooming in

This uncertainty tends to increase both as you zoom in to particular locations and become interested in extremes.

For example, how average winter rainfall is expected to change over southwest Western Australia could be relatively clear, but how extreme rainfall (capable of causing major floods) will change is far less clear.

When looking at the level of a postcode or single address we might not even know whether extreme rainfall will increase or decrease.

That’s a problem for organisations trying to work out how to manage and prepare for such risks, often at the scale of an individual building. Modelling is precise, but not necessarily accurate enough for that sort of localised information.

This doesn’t mean climate models aren’t useful or don’t provide valuable information. It just means organisations may need to enhance the value of that information by combining it with other evidence.

Introducing ‘storylines’

Fortunately, there is a way to address both the behavioural and modelling issues that capitalises on how we most intuitively make sense of the world. This is through “storylines”.

Storylines were developed in the climate sciences to describe uncertain physical climate futures. They do this by employing expert judgement to prioritise an understanding of the “causal networks” that drive changes and extremes.

The valuable information held in climate model projections is combined with other types of evidence relevant to a location, to develop a plausible (and useful) story about what the future might entail.

Flood risk, for example, depends on a wide range of factors. These can include:

• the amount and intensity of rain
• whether heavy rain fell in the recent past
• changes to the catchment such as vegetation, soils and the nature of any upstream developments, including new roads or buildings.

A business only using changes in rainfall drawn from a climate or national-scale flood model for its risk assessment might “hard-wire” a future scenario that turns out to be unreliable at the scale they need.

Under an alternative “storylines” approach, their best course of action to understand flood risk would be to work with experts to develop a narrative that describes changes in rainfall in addition to all other locally relevant factors.

This narrative can then be tested using traditional flood modelling methods to provide more robust and useful insights into how the local catchment will be impacted under conditions of changing rainfall.

The quantitative disciplines like finance, economics and accounting may struggle with the idea that a narrative might provide more decision-useful information than a number. Yet, research has shown that narratives can make an uncertain future more tangible than numbers, and thereby better aid with planning and decision-making.

We need a new toolkit

Answering the question “what will our future climate look like?” challenges us to think differently and to look for solutions outside the toolbox of established financial tools and techniques.

It challenges us to work – through interdisciplinary dialogue - with experts, disciplines and knowledge we might feel uncomfortable with.

Storylines could transform the way organisations understand and report their exposure to climate risk. This is unlikely to be easy, and we recognise taking quantitative information from a commercial provider may seem simpler. But it is a more honest and rigorous way of planning for the future climate.

Tanya Fiedler, Scientia Senior Lecturer (Climate Accounting) UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney; Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, UNSW Sydney; Ben Newell, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney, and Michael Grose, Climate Projections Scientist, CSIRO

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

The remote icy wilderness at the bottom of the world is exposed to pollution and foreign organisms on floating ocean debris.

Recognising the threat to Antarctica’s remote coastline and unique marine ecosystems, we wanted to find out where this material is coming from. It turns out it’s travelling further than you might think.

Using ocean modelling techniques, we show floating objects such as kelp, plastic and other debris can drift to Antarctica from South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Our new research shows Antarctica’s coastlines more connected to land in the Southern Hemisphere than previously thought. Cold and icy conditions may have prevented foreign organisms from colonising Antarctic waters to date. But these conditions are changing rapidly.

Antarctica’s unique environment

Antarctica’s coastal waters are extremely cold and mostly covered by sea ice. Yet these waters are also home to a surprisingly wide range of unique species found nowhere else on Earth.

In recent years, some non-native species have been found in Antarctic waters. They can arrive on ships, either in ballast water or encrusted onto ship hulls, or on drifting ocean debris.

Some of these species, including kelp, are known to drift from islands just north of the Antarctic continent. But it’s been unclear whether species can reach Antarctica from further afield, until now.

Why does this matter?

In a warming world, Antarctica is one of the few refuges for slow-growing, cold-water specialist species. If foreign species were to successfully establish in the cold polar waters, they could compete with native species and dramatically change marine ecosystems.

Aside from a small number of research stations and tourist hotspots, much of Antarctica’s coastline remains untouched. The arrival of foreign species and other human-made debris threatens this unique wilderness.

The amount of plastic and other debris in the ocean is increasing each year. This could mean more non-native species are finding ways to hitch a ride to the icy continent.

Identifying the sources of drift objects rafting to Antarctica helps us better understand the risks to native species.

Southern Ocean circulation

Antarctica is encircled by a giant ocean current – the Antarctic Circumpolar Current – which flows eastward around the icy continent, separating it from warmer waters to the north.

The strength of this strong eastward flow and the associated sharp oceanographic fronts was previously thought to isolate the polar continent from drifting objects to the north. Yet the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is also eddy-rich and subject to powerful storm systems. Both provide possible pathways for these objects to cross.

Virtually generated drifters

Previously, rafts reaching Antarctic waters have been genetically tested to reveal their source location. These analyses confirmed kelp could drift from sub-Antarctic islands including South Georgia and the Kerguelen Islands.

But not all objects can be tested this way, and only a small fraction of the Antarctic coastline is visited by scientists each year. Scaling up such an approach to determine all possible source locations is not feasible.

Instead, we turned to ocean modelling. We considered the known source locations around the Southern Ocean islands and also landmasses further north, such as Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa.

Both ocean currents and surface waves control the drift of objects across the Southern Ocean towards Antarctica. So both of these influences were factored in to our model.

In our virtual world, we released millions of drift objects into the ocean and watched them move around the globe.

We tracked these objects for three model years or until they arrived at the Antarctic coastline – whichever came first.

These simulations revealed floating objects can drift to Antarctica not only from the sub-Antarctic islands, but also from New Zealand, Tasmania, South America and South Africa.

Only a tiny fraction of the simulated particles actually make it to Antarctica, but they do so every year. This suggests floating objects are regularly arriving at Antarctic coastlines, and have done for some time.

But as the world warms and ice melts, any invasion of foreign organisms may be more successful.

Warmer waters and lower sea ice spells trouble

The modelling allows us to assess which regions of the Antarctic coastline are most at risk from these rafting non-native species.

Concerningly, most of the simulated rafts arrive at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. This region has relatively warm ocean temperatures where the coastline is ice-free for long periods each year.

Cold ocean temperatures and abrasive sea ice present a natural barrier to foreign invaders seeking homes around Antarctica. But with little sea ice at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, there’s a greater chance non-native species will settle in.

What does this mean for the future?

Antarctic sea ice has shown a dramatic decline in recent years. In addition, the Antarctic Peninsula has already warmed more rapidly than most places around Antarctica, with record high temperatures in recent years.

Dwindling sea ice and a warming Antarctic coastline means remote species could have more opportunities to colonise the icy continent. If this were to happen, we could see dramatic shifts in some Antarctic coastal ecosystems.

Hannah Dawson, Postdoctoral Research Associate in oceanography, University of Tasmania; Adele Morrison, Senior Lecturer in Climate and Fluid Physics, Australian National University; Ceridwen Fraser, Professor in marine science, University of Otago, and Matthew England, Scientia Professor and Deputy Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, UNSW Sydney

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

When fish are taken from our oceans faster than they can reproduce, their population numbers decline. This over-fishing upsets marine ecosystems. It’s also bad for human populations that rely on fish for protein in their diets.

To manage fishing areas sustainably, we need accurate data on how many fish exist and how abundant they will be in future. Fisheries scientists use complex mathematical models to determine this.

But an investigation by my colleagues and I, published today in the journal Science, casts serious doubt on the accuracy of these models.

We studied 230 fisheries around the world. We found populations of many overfished species are in far worse condition than has been reported, and the sustainability of fisheries was overstated. Urgent action is needed to ensure our oceans are not fished below their capacity to recover.

Alarming findings

A sustainable fishing operation would ensure the numbers of fish caught does not outstrip the capacity of a fish population to reproduce. In cases where an area has been overfished, stocks should be given time to rebuild.

To determine appropriate catch rates, computer models are used to assess fish stocks. The models are fed data such as fish biology, catch history, and rates of fish breeding, growth and death.

Our investigation tested how accurate estimates of fish stocks actually are. It involved examining data from 230 of the world’s largest fisheries, spanning 128 fish species. They include fishing areas off Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, Argentina and South Africa.

We focused on the depletion in the “biomass”, or total weight, of fish stocks. When fish catch falls to below 10% of its biomass when fishing began, the fish stock is widely said to have collapsed.

For each fish stock, we took data that provided the best estimate of stock depletion at a given year in the past. The data was produced by scientists and reported to fisheries managers and databases.

We compared this historical data to updated modelling produced years later. The updated data was the most recent assessment of that fish stock, but was also “backdated” to the same year as the historical data. The more recent estimates should be more accurate because they are based on data collected over a longer period, and after improvements in the modelling process.

So what did we find? The earlier stock assessments were often too optimistic about the number of fish in the ocean.

For sustainably fished stocks, the earlier estimates were generally accurate. But for stocks that were overfished, most earlier data turned out to be substantially overestimated. In many cases, fish stocks were regarded at the time to be recovering when they were in fact declining.

Among over-fished stocks, we estimated the number of collapsed stocks was likely 85% larger than currently recognised.

How has this discrepancy come about? The models used to make stock assessments are complex and involve many inputs. This can lead to uncertain or inaccurate results – a problem that accumulates each time a value is entered into the model.

As I outline below, the consequences can be devastating.

The case of the jackass morwong

The jackass morwong (also known as deep sea perch) is found off southern Australia and New Zealand. In 2009, models estimated the total stock size for south-eastern Australia at 4,680 tonnes – 22% of the 21,200 tonnes that existed when fishing began. This estimate informed decisions by fisheries managers about how many fish could sustainably be caught in future years.

But modelling in 2014 indicated stock size in 2009 was more likely to have been 3,330 tonnes, and the initial stock size was probably about 28,800 tonnes. That means in 2009, stocks were likely to have depleted to 12% of original levels, not 22%.

The inaccurate estimates mean the “total allowable fish catch” set by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority for jackass morwong is likely to have been unsustainable. Fishing continued with little constraint and the morwong population continued to decline for a decade.

By 2022, however, the declining fish numbers were clear. That year, the authority announced five ocean areas would close to trawl fishers, in a bid to protect the jackass morwong and other fish species. The federal government also allocated about A$24 million to buy back fishing vessel permits.

This probably could have been avoided if accurate stock models had been applied and the full extent of depletion recognised a decade earlier.

Fundamental change is needed

Our research shows the global problem of overfishing is far worse than currently recognised. So what should be done?

Clearly, scientists should try to improve the accuracy of models used to assess fish stocks.

And management of fisheries should be far more cautious, to protect fish stocks around the world. This is vital for sustainable fisheries, healthy oceans, and our own food security.

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.

Australia’s unique biodiversity is under siege. The national list of species threatened with extinction is growing, with eight animals and five plants added just last month.

Among them is the pig-nosed turtle, a peculiar creature found in catchments of the Northern Territory. Once teeming with life, these seasonal floodplains are now fragmented and degraded from land clearing, water extraction and feral animals.

The crisis facing the pig-nosed turtle is a microcosm of the broader challenges confronting Australia’s wildlife. A staggering 2,224 species and ecological communities are currently threatened with extinction, with turtles among the most vulnerable.

The survival of the pig-nosed turtle and countless other species depends on our ability to act decisively. By prioritising environmental protection and making sustainable choices, we can ensure a future in which Australia’s unique biodiversity thrives.

More endearing features of the pig-nosed turtle

The pig-nosed turtle is the last of its kind. It is the only remaining species in its family.

The species is found in the tropical northern rivers of Australia and the southern rivers of New Guinea.

Its peculiarities are not confined to its strange nose. The top of its shell is covered with skin, which means it is more delicate than most turtles. It can even get sunburnt.

Most freshwater turtles simply have paws with webbed fingers, whereas sea turtles have flippers with fused bones. But pig-nosed turtles are different again, with flippers mostly made of elongated fingers. This makes them the bats of the turtle world.

Mother turtles lay eggs in the sandy bank beside the water and then leave them alone. When the water level rises and the eggs are swamped, the baby turtles hatch out explosively.

Species such as these unique turtles are culturally important and have been part of First Nations culture for thousands of years. So their decline represents a loss not just for the environment but also for Australia’s cultural heritage.

Turtle troubles

In the Northern Territory, pig-nosed turtle populations have very low genetic diversity. This makes them highly susceptible to threats such as diseases.

Their range is already restricted to relatively few locations, leaving them more at risk from disturbances.

Along with climate change, damage to nesting areas by Asian water buffalo and cattle, and the possible future threats of disease and water extraction, these factors all contributed to the new listing of pig-nosed turtles as vulnerable to extinction.

Climate change has already altered flood patterns, contributing to a decline in habitat quality. But it threatens to make the turtle’s existence even more perilous in the future, because temperature during egg incubation determines a hatchling’s sex. If it’s too warm, they all become female.

We have previously reported on the threatened species listing process including particular challenges for freshwater turtles in Australia. We noted the pig-nosed turtle’s dependence on continuous water flows, even in the dry season. This is threatened by development of Australia’s northern rivers.

Until recently, Australia recognised eight (32%) of its 25 freshwater turtle species as threatened with extinction. But we believe almost half (48%) of all Australian freshwater turtle species now meet the criteria for listing as threatened with extinction under Commonwealth legislation.

Unfortunately there are some species for which no scientific research has been done, and others for which we simply don’t have enough data to evaluate their status adequately. So the true number of threatened species could be greater still.

Conservation efforts undone by weak environmental laws

Citizen science initiatives such as the 1 Million Turtles Community Conservation Program show that Australians care deeply about turtles and are willing to contribute to their survival.

People all over Australia are rescuing turtles from roads and creating islands to protect turtle eggs from foxes. Building on this enthusiasm, we can create a powerful movement to protect these iconic animals.

But the progress of conservation programs can be easily undone if we don’t put better legislation in place to protect our wildlife.

How we can turn things around

Australia has the worst mammal extinction record in the world. We cannot afford to repeat this mistake with our turtles, frogs or other unique wildlife. And yet the number of threatened species continues to grow, pushing us further from the “zero extinctions” goal.

The pig-nosed turtle was added to the threatened species list along with three freshwater fish, three lizards, one frog, one rainforest tree, two flowering shrubs, a daisy and an orchid species. That brings the total to 661 animals, 1,457 plants and 106 ecological communities.

Current environmental laws are clearly inadequate. Tougher penalties for habitat destruction, more investment in conservation, and greater efforts to tackle climate change will be crucial if we are to halt and reverse species decline.

Australia has an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to protecting natural and cultural heritage. This will require a collaborative effort involving governments, scientists, Indigenous communities and the public. It’s not too late for our beloved pig-nosed turtle, but the window of opportunity is closing.

Deborah Bower, Associate Professor in Zoology and Ecology, University of New England; Carla Eisemberg, Senior Lecturer in STEM Pathways, Charles Darwin University, and Ricky Spencer, Associate Professor of Ecology, Western Sydney University

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

Please be advised that the following article contains images of an Indigenous person who has died, which are used with family permission.

Our journey began in 2018 at Bush Heritage Australia’s Hamelin Station, a relaxed setting on Malgana Country for knowledge sharing and storytelling. An inspirational weekend under the stars sowed the seeds for a partnership to heal Country. Our focus was on restoring seagrass, which grows in extensive meadows in shallow waters.

In 2010-11, an extreme marine heatwave had hit the Western Australian coastline. The seagrass (wirriya jalyanu) was badly damaged. This affected the health of culturally significant species such as dugongs (Dugong dugon, wuthuga) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas, buyungurra), which feed on the seagrass.

On that weekend in 2018, we (university researchers and Traditional Owners) learned we had a common goal: to look after Sea Country. Ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation are Western “science speak” and are part of a global solution to manage the impacts of climate change. These concepts are also at the core of Indigenous culture and lore.

Our co-designed project won funding to employ Malgana land and sea rangers in Gathaagudu/Shark Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage area. The project was a partnership between the newly founded Malgana Aboriginal Corporation and University of Western Australia researchers. The aim was to develop and test ways to restore seagrass meadows, drawing on both Western science and Indigenous knowledge.

Our new research paper describes how this partnership succeeded.

‘Being on Country is medicine for us’

Our partnership recognised that Indigenous Peoples have deep ecological knowledge of Country. Malgana people shared their valuable insights on Sea Country.

Storytelling or songlines demonstrate a long oral history and connection of Malgana people to their Country. The stories are consistent with Western science-based knowledge from diverse fields such as ecology, geology, hydrology and molecular biology.

The partnership enabled trainee Indigenous rangers to return to Country. At the same time, they were able to gain industry qualifications through TAFE.

Knowledge-sharing workshops on Country helped Malgana rangers connect or reconnect with Country. The workshops covered cultural protocols, Traditional ecological knowledge, Malgana language, seagrass growth, flowering and seeding ecology.

We also undertook research to understand relatedness, or genetics, of two large seagrasses, wire weed (Amphibolis antarctica) and ribbon weed (Posidonia australis), across Gathaagudu. DNA testing has shown an ancient ribbon weed clone is the world’s largest plant, spanning at least 180 kilometres. Our genetic study of wire weed is not yet published.

We developed restoration methods for both species. Our approaches took into account their different reproductive traits and genetic information.

Our restoration methods included planting cuttings or runners, sowing seeds and modifying the environment by providing hessian substrate for seedlings to attach.

A Wirriya Jalyanu Festival marked the end of our project funding. Its theme was Art Meets Science. The festival shared knowledge of Sea Country through a mix of science, culture, language and artistic activities for all ages.

Sharing this knowledge with the wider community improved their understanding of this World Heritage area. We came away with a deeper understanding of their love and shared responsibility for its care.

‘If we look after country, then Country will look after you’

Partnerships that share Western and Traditional knowledge can restore seagrass meadows. The methods need to be scaled up to heal Sea Country, given the scale of loss caused by a single extreme climate event.

Local Indigenous ranger programs have environmental, cultural, social and economic benefits. Healing Country helps heal the intergenerational trauma of Indigenous Peoples through connecting or reconnecting to Country.

A next step is to empower the Malgana rangers and local Indigenous-led businesses to support and monitor large-scale ecosystem restoration and its impacts on biodiversity.

Continuous funding for these ranger programs is desperately needed to provide job security. Broadening partnerships with local rangers and communities allows for year-round observation and action On Country.

Since Europeans colonised Australia, Indigenous Peoples have been disrespected, which has contributed to enormous damage to our unique wildlife and ecosystems. The dynamic nature of these problems means we need diverse knowledge inputs. Partnering with local Traditional Custodians for two-way learning is a respectful way forward.

Western science and Traditional ecological knowledge together lead to a better understanding of Country. Applying these combined knowledges can increase biodiversity and help meet ambitious global solutions to climate change, such as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

Elizabeth Sinclair, Senior Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia; Gary Kendrick, Winthrop Professor, Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia; Martin Breed, Associate Professor in Biology, Flinders University; Patricia Oakley, Malgana Elder, Indigenous Knowledge, and Sean McNeair, Offshore Operations Manager, Indigenous Knowledge

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

Have you ever liked or shared a social media post about nature? It could have been a photo of a rare orchid or an unusual bird. Or you might share a stunning photo of an “undiscovered” natural place.

It feels good to do so. You’re sharing something beautiful, an antidote to negativity. But not even this simple act is problem-free.

Social media have become a huge force. It’s come with many positives for nature, such as greater visibility and interest in citizen science and public knowledge about the species we share the planet with. Australia’s largest citizen science project, the Aussie Bird Count, collected reports of 3.6 million birds in backyards in one week, for example, making good use of social media.

There is, unfortunately, a dark side to this effortless sharing of information. It is possible to love species to death, as our new research has found.

How? Viral photos of undisturbed natural beauty can lead thousands of people to head there. As more people arrive, they begin destroying what they loved seeing on screen.

And then there’s the competitiveness among photographers and content-makers hoping to gain influence or visibility by posting natural content. Unethical techniques are common, such as playing the calls of rare bird species to lure them out for a photo.

Social media do not directly cause damage, of course. But the desire for positive feedback, visibility or income can be very strong incentives to act badly.

Can social media really damage species?

The critically endangered blue-crowned laughingthrush now lives in only one province in China. Its wild population is now around 300.

So many people went to find and photograph this rare bird that the laughingthrush was forced to change how it nested to avoid flashlights and the sound of camera shutters.

Or consider bird call playback. For scientists, playing a bird’s calls is a vital tool. You can use calls to entice seabird colonies back to former nesting grounds or to monitor threatened or hard-to-spot species.

It’s very easy for birdwatchers and photographers to misuse this power by using bird ID apps and a speaker to draw out rare species. It might seem harmless, but drawing shy woodland birds out into the open risks predation, or can entice a mother off her nest. Playing calls can also make birds aggressive, change important behaviours, or disrupt their breeding.

Baiting, drones, poaching and trampling

The list of bad behaviours goes on and on.

Wildlife photographers are known to use baiting to get their photo – putting out food sources (natural or artificial), scent lures and decoys to boost their chances. But when baiting is done routinely, it changes animal behaviour. Baiting by tourist operators who offering swimming with sharks has led to reduced gene flow, changed shark metabolism and increased aggression.

Drone photography, too, comes with problems. Drones terrify many species of wildlife, causing them to break cover, try to escape or to become aggressive. In Western Australia, for instance, an osprey suffered injuries after a photographer flew their drone into it.

Then there are the world’s rare or fragile plants. Social media give us beautiful images of wildflower meadows and rainforests. But when we collectively go and see these places, we risk trampling them. Unlike animals, plants can’t run away.

Take orchids, a family of flowering plants with many human admirers. During the 18th century, “orchidelerium” gripped Europe. Rich people paid orchid hunters to roam the globe and collect rare species.

In our time, orchids face a different threat – social-media-driven visitors. Orchids are very particular – they rely on specific fungal partners. But this makes them highly vulnerable if their habitat changes. One study found that of 442 vulnerable orchid species, 40% were at risk from tourism and recreation.

Sharing locations is a big part of the problem. Even if you deliberately don’t make reference to where you took the photo, the GPS co-ordinates are often embedded in a photo’s metadata.

In 2010, a new species of slipper orchid (Paphiopedilum canhii) was discovered in Vietnam. Photos with location information were posted online. Just six months after discovery, more than 99% of all known individuals had been collected. The orchid is now extinct in the wild.

What should be done?

Broadly, we need to talk about the need to make ethical choices in how we present nature on social media.

But there is a specific group who can help – the admins of large social media groups devoted to, say, wild orchids, birdwatching or scuba diving. Admins have significant influence over what can be posted in their groups. Better moderation can go a long way.

Site admins can make expectations clear in their codes of conduct. They could, for instance, ban photos of rare orchids until after the flowering season, or put a blanket ban on posts with locations, as well as explain how photos can have embedded location data.

Park and land managers have other tools, such as banning drones from specific areas and making it harder to access environmentally sensitive areas. There’s a very good reason, for instance, why the location of wild populations of Wollemi pines is a secret.

Many of us won’t have given much thought about how social media can damage the natural world. But it is a real problem – and it won’t go away by itself.

Dr Belinda Davis from Western Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions contributed to this article.

Robert Davis, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology, Edith Cowan University; Bill Bateman, Associate Professor, Behavioural Ecology, Curtin University, and Claire Greenwell, Adjunct Associate in Ornithology and Marine Ecology, Murdoch University

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

The world’s oceans are home to microscopic organisms invisible to the human eye. The tiny creatures, known as “prokaryotes”, comprise 30% of life in the world’s oceans.

These organisms play an important role in keeping the oceans in balance. But new research by myself and colleagues shows this balance is at risk.

We found prokaryotes are remarkably resilient to climate change – and as a result, could increasingly dominate marine environments.

This could reduce the availability of fish humans rely on for food, and hamper the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon emissions.

A fine balance

Prokaryotes include both bacteria and “archaea”, another type of single-celled organism.

These organisms are thought to be the oldest cell-based lifeforms on Earth. They thrive across the entire planet – on land and in water, from the tropics to the poles.

What prokaryotes lack in size they make up in sheer abundance. Globally, about two tonnes of marine prokaryotes exist for every human on the planet.

They play a crucial role in the world’s food chains, helping support the nutrient needs of fish humans catch and eat.

Marine prokaryotes grow extremely fast – a process that emits a lot of carbon. In fact, prokaryotes to an ocean depth of 200 metres produce about 20 billion tonnes of carbon a year: double that of humans.

This massive carbon output is balanced by phytoplankton – another type of microscopic organism which turns sunlight and carbon dioxide into energy, through photosynthesis.

Phytoplankton and other ocean processes also absorb up to one-third of the carbon humans release into the atmosphere each year. This helps limit the pace of global warming.

How prokaryotes respond to warming is key to understanding how the fine balance of the world’s oceans may change in a warmer world. This was the focus of our research.

What we found

We wanted to predict how climate change would affect the “biomass”, or total global weight, of marine prokaryotes. We also wanted to examine how it would affect their carbon output.

To do this, we built computer models that integrated decades of observations from dozens of scientific surveys across the world’s oceans.

So what did we find? Prokaryotes are likely to be climate change winners, relative to other marine life.

For each degree of ocean warming, their biomass will decline by about 1.5%. This is less than half the projected 3–5% decline we predicted for larger plankton, fish and mammals.

It means future marine ecosystems will have lower overall biomass, and will increasingly be dominated by prokaryotes. This could divert a greater share of available nutrients and energy toward prokaryotes and away from fish, reducing the supply of fish humans eat.

We discovered another important change. For every degree of warming, we predict prokaryotes in the top 200 metres of the world’s oceans would produce an additional 800 million tonnes of carbon per year.

This is equivalent to the present-day emissions of the entire European Union (after converting CO₂ to carbon).

What does all this mean?

Due to human-caused climate change, Earth’s oceans are expected to warm by between 1°C and 3°C by the end of this century, unless humanity changes course.

If the amount of carbon produced by prokaryotes does increase as predicted, it could reduce the potential of oceans to absorb human emissions. This means achieving global net-zero emissions will become even more difficult.

What’s more, present projections of declines in global fish stocks under climate change generally do not consider how warming may restructure marine food webs by favouring prokaryotes. This means the predicted declines are likely to be underestimated.

Declines in fish populations present a major problem for global food supply, because the oceans are a major source of protein for about 3 billion people.

What should happen now

Our analysis is an important step in uncovering the changing role of marine prokaryotes. But significant uncertainties remain.

Our analysis is built with existing observations. Climate change is already changing conditions in marine ecosystems in ways our models may not have captured.

We also don’t know how quickly prokaryotes will adapt and evolve to new environments. But existing research shows that in a matter of weeks, bacteria can develop new traits that make it easier for them to survive.

Clearly, scientists must continue to improve their understanding of prokaryotes, and how they may be affected by climate change.

Ryan Heneghan, Lecturer in Environmental Modelling, Griffith University

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

Species are disappearing at an alarming rate around the world. But Australia’s extinction crisis is especially severe – since European colonisation, we have lost about 100 species of animals and plants. The loss of 33 mammal species is largely due to canny invasive predators such as foxes and cats as well as destruction of habitat.

To try to stem the losses, many scientists and conservationists are turning to rewilding. This promising approach involves reintroducing species to their former habitats or relocating them to new areas where they have a better chance of survival.

To date, rewilding in Australia has worked best on islands free of foxes and cats and in fenced-off safe havens, which act like islands on the mainland.

But is there a way we could bring back vulnerable native species beyond the fence?

In research published today, we show how the humble mesa has potential to act as a reintroduction site for threatened species. You might associate these flat-topped, steep-sided landforms with American gunslinger westerns. But Australia has plenty of its own mesas.

What’s special about mesas?

By our count, there are now 23 fenced safe havens across Australia, and the number has been growing in recent years.

These sites work. But they require ongoing human input. You have to fence the land, make sure it stays fenced, and control for feral predators. When funding runs out, the havens can fall into disrepair and predators may eventually break back in.

We need supplementary approaches to add to our rewilding toolkit – outside the fences.

The reason we began investigating mesas is their shape. By definition, a mesa is an isolated flat-topped landform, elevated from its surrounding landscape by steep sides. The Spanish word “mesa” translates to “table” in English, reflecting their distinctive shape. But don’t be confused – a mesa is different to a tableland such as the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland. A mesa is generally smaller and stands alone.

We theorised the steep, largely vegetation-free sides of a mesa could act as natural barriers, slowing down fox and cat incursions. Better still, the isolation of these landforms might give extra protection to species vulnerable to fire.

Luckily for us, these landforms aren’t reserved for lonely cowboys on horseback and an Ennio Morricone soundtrack. We scoured satellite images and found 91 mesas just in New South Wales, each with a flat top larger than ten hectares.

Sky-islands: putting mesas to the test

To test our theories, we chose Mount Talaterang. This remote mountain in Morton National Park has a flat top of 317 hectares, making it one of the largest mesas we found in New South Wales.

We set up cameras on top of the mesa as well as in the surrounding bushland at the bottom of the steep slopes and gathered four months of data.

The results were exciting. As we had hoped, the top of the mesa was almost entirely free of invasive mammals. There were no foxes or rabbits. Feral cats were present atop the mesa, but in significantly lower numbers than in the lowlands. Better still, we spotted higher numbers of small native mammals such as antechinus species and spotted-tailed quoll atop the mesa than in the bush below.

By contrast, we spotted far more invasive mammals in the bush below the mesa. Specifically, we sighted foxes 633 times, and cats 338 times, whereas no foxes were recorded on the mesa, and we recorded only 5 sightings of cats.

On the mesa, we captured 26 instances of antechinuses and 20 of quolls, but saw zero antechinus and only one quoll in the lowlands.

What’s next?

These findings come from a single mesa, so we should be cautious about drawing wide conclusions. But because the difference is so pronounced, we hope our research spurs greater interest in testing whether mesas such as Mount Talaterang could offer a wilder way of rewilding, where we harness natural landforms for protection.

Mount Talaterang lies within Morton National Park. This park covers part of the historic range of locally threatened or regionally extinct species such as the southern brown bandicoot, long-nosed potoroo, parma wallaby, and the eastern quoll, which may be suitable future rewilding candidates.

To boost the chances of successful rewilding, we need to know more about what life would look like for these threatened species if we release them on a mesa. Would there be enough food? Are there reliable water sources? Will climate change make it harder to survive on top of these landforms?

Mesas crop up around the world, from South Africa to South America and Europe. But the rewilding potential of mesas in these regions has not yet been explored, to our knowledge.

We hope our research triggers new interest in these “sky islands” and other ways of rewilding species which we can use to supplement the proven methods of traditional fenced havens and islands.

Rob Brewster (WWF-Australia), Francesca Roncolato (WWF-Australia), Tom Jameson (University of Cambridge) and Mathew Crowther (University of Sydney) contributed to this research. WWF Australia partly funded this research through its Australian Wildlife and Nature Recovery Fund 

Patrick Finnerty, Postdoctoral research fellow in conservation, University of Sydney and Thomas Newsome, Senior lecturer in ecology, University of Sydney

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

This week, a Senate committee examining Australia’s disaster resilience tabled its long-awaited report in parliament.

The 151-page report makes ten recommendations. These concern funding arrangements, mental health supports, emergency volunteering models, and the need to establish a national asset register.

Overall, the report captures a broad selection of issues in disaster management. It acknowledges the views and perspectives of many stakeholders.

However, its recommendations largely focus on volunteers involved in the immediate disaster response. This will not make Australians more resilient to disasters, because communities need long-term support to develop their capacity to bounce back. Deeper structural reform is required.

A wide-ranging inquiry

The report was titled “Boots on the ground: Raising resilience”. It was commissioned in November 2022 to inquire into Australia’s disaster preparedness, response and recovery workforce models, as well as alternatives.

The committee also had to consider the role of the Australian Defence Force, volunteer groups, not-for-profit organisations and state-based services, as well as the support required to improve Australia’s resilience and response to natural disasters.

Over almost two years, the inquiry received 174 submissions from charities, government agencies, academics, emergency services and the general public. It also conducted 17 public hearings across all states and territories.

Understanding the needs of communities

We analysed more than 150 of these submissions to the inquiry in our research last year into the role of community organisations in disasters.

Our focus was on the contributions place-based, frontline community organisations such as neighbourhood houses or centres can make to building disaster resilience.

Community organisations are both first and last responders, and play a vital but often overlooked role in disaster response, recovery and resilience-building.

We have now analysed the report to see how well it responds to issues raised in submissions. Unfortunately, we found it fails to adequately respond to the needs of communities.

Firstly, the report acknowledges community sector organisations’ calls for additional resourcing and identifies funding shortcomings for their essential work in disasters. But it falls short of recommending any funding measures specifically for this sector. None of the recommendations in this report will fix the problem of persistent underfunding for frontline, place-based community services.

Secondly, it identifies the urgent need for mental health and trauma-informed approaches, and recommends the creation of a national disaster mental health hub. While investment in mental health is always welcome, more information is required to determine how this recommendation will work in practice.

Thirdly, the report lacks any recommendations to formally integrate or fund community organisations’ participation in disaster governance. This is despite evidence of the need to give community organisations a genuine seat at the table so they can share their expertise on local needs and capacities. This reflects our research, which shows community organisations still sit on the periphery of formal disaster management arrangements.

Our research: beyond ‘tinny heroes’ and ‘mud armies’

During our research, we identified common themes in the submissions. Let’s take a closer look at the top three things communities want.

1. Community organisations’ contributions are crucial, but invisible and undervalued

Community organisations play crucial long-term roles in building disaster resilience. But their efforts are often undervalued, under-recognised, and poorly defined within disaster management policy frameworks. This theme emerged time and time again.

Many submissions highlighted the frustration of communities and frontline staff at the lack of understanding in government agencies about their roles, or downplaying their local knowledge.

These submissions also highlighted the absence of formal policies to clarify the roles of community organisations in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Most submissions called for increased funding to enable community organisations to sustain their support and to be consulted in the creation of any disaster response strategies.

Compelling testimony to the Senate committee from organisations such as Resilient Lismore, North Townsville Community Hub and Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre in Fitzroy Crossing demonstrated how they were overlooked in formal disaster management processes.

2. Communities’ and first responders’ mental health is being affected

Compounding, cascading events are affecting communities’ and first responders’ mental health. Many submissions identified a need for greater mental health support. This would include trauma-informed training and care that is more coordinated, proactive and planned.

Community organisations provide person-centred, trauma-informed care to individuals in disaster response, and throughout the long tail of disaster recovery.

3. Disaster resilience is an under-realised opportunity and asset

Multiple submissions from community organisations called for a shift in thinking away from a reactive cycle of response and recovery.

The authorities need to stop treating disasters as one-off events and move towards a long-term focus on disaster preparedness.

Communities sought more resources to expand their work, including through volunteer coordination. Many operate with limited, short-term funding, and experience high staff turnover and burnout.

The work of community organisations is especially relevant given declining rates of volunteering fuelled by an ageing population, the impact of COVID, and the cost-of-living crisis. Exhausted volunteering networks cannot be expected to continue offering services without better support.

A missed opportunity

With memories of devastating fires and floods fresh in the minds of many Australians, the Senate inquiry came at an opportune time.

Australia is also expected to experience worsening disasters as climate change accelerates, so it has never been more important to strengthen our resilience.

While the senate committee’s report is welcome, its recommendations are far narrower than the themes and issues contained within it.

It’s disappointing that once again, voices of those who have engaged in the process are not adequately reflected in recommendations that would deliver policy change. The community sector is stretched beyond its limits and experiencing consultation fatigue.

Unfortunately there is little here for place-based community organisations on the frontline as they approach the next disaster.

Despite the narrow recommendations, there is still an opportunity for the government response to address broader issues canvassed in the report. It is never too late to invest in community organisations and this will deliver long-term benefits for Australians as climate change intensifies.

The authors wish to acknowledge law Professor Rowena Maguire and human rights expert Associate Professor Bridget Lewis for their contributions to this article.

Monica Taylor, PhD Candidate in Law, Queensland University of Technology and Fiona Crawford, Adjunct Lecturer at the Centre for Justice, Queensland University of Technology

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

Much of the climate conversation in Australia to date has centred on actions to limit global warming, recognising that each increment of warming contributes to worsening climate extremes.

In a recently released book, Living Hot: Surviving and Thriving on a Heating Planet, authors Clive Hamilton and George Wilkenfeld argue while emissions reduction should continue, Australia should refocus its efforts on “adaptation”, or building resilience to the effects of climate change.

Certainly, Australia cannot ignore adaptation. Extreme weather, driven by climate change, repeatedly batters much of the country – and some areas get little reprieve between natural disasters.

But Australia’s emissions-reduction efforts must continue in haste, at large scale. Real change is possible. It will require everything, everywhere, all at once.

Mixed progress

The world is on track to warm by almost 3°C on pre-industrial levels, unless current national pledges to reduce emissions are ramped up.

Climate change is already leading to more intense and frequent extreme weather events in Australia’s global region, the Asia-Pacific.

However, the region’s progress on climate action has been mixed at best. As such, many countries are seeking to adapt to their “new normal”.

Indonesia, for example, is moving its capital city from sinking Jakarta to the new city of Nusantara – partly as a climate adaptation measure.

And in Malaysia, Monash University academics are exploring new ways to educate citizens and adapt buildings in the era of global warming.

Of the world’s high-income nations, Australia is one of the most vulnerable in a warmer world. We must focus on both cutting our emissions, and fundamentally rethinking how we live.

Mitigation and adaptation: two sides of a coin

When we prioritise both cutting emissions and adapting to climate change, twin benefits can flow.

Research by our organisation, Climateworks Centre, shows how this applies to conserving ocean ecosystems around Indonesia, the largest archipelago-nation in the world.

Mangroves, with their strong root systems, help protect coastal communities and lands from extreme weather events. They can also provide significant long-term “sinks”, or storage, for carbon.

Protecting these important ocean ecosystems can bolster Indonesia’s climate resilience and avoid more carbon entering the atmosphere. It’s a win-win for both adaptation and mitigation.

Similarly in Australia, the choices we make around land use can help us both mitigate and adapt to climate change. This understanding underpins the world-leading “Land Use Trade-offs” model, originally developed by CSIRO.

Climateworks and Deakin University released a new version of the model in 2023. It maps the best way to use and manage land in Australia to meet climate targets, agricultural demand and biodiversity goals.

For example, well-designed solar arrays can produce clean energy and increase livestock productivity, by sheltering sheep and protecting pasture.

Technology is outpacing expectations

Hamilton and Wilkenfeld argue humanity relies on a technology-only approach to climate action at our own peril.

There is truth here. However, technological advances to date cannot be understated. In fact, many renewable technologies have consistently outpaced our expectations – such as affordable solar, batteries, electric vehicles and LED lights.

There is also great potential for technology to lower emissions in Australia’s heavy industry.

In 2022, an initiative co-convened by Climateworks found 70 million tonnes of emissions reduction was possible in just five industrial regions of Australia – representing an 88% reduction – if timely, effective action was taken. This action also sets Australia up to make good on its superpower ambition, as a producer of green steel and hydrogen.

Living Hot highlights the immense increase required in Australia’s renewable energy supply if everything currently powered by fossil fuels is to be powered by clean sources. We agree. Australia’s electricity and grid needs are far bigger than we have planned for to date.

This pressure on the grid can be reduced, however. We could use energy far more efficiently in our homes, businesses and industries.

And in some cases, these changes bring multiple benefits. Well-designed homes are cooler in summer and warmer in winter. They are also cheaper to run, more resilient to climate-driven extremes and use less energy.

Regional cooperation is key

The authors of Living Hot argue nothing Australia does “can appreciably change the climate Australians will live through in 2050 and beyond”.

In isolation, this could well be the case. But Australia can have a significant impact on global efforts to tackle climate change, if it responds to calls from our region to cooperate meaningfully on emissions reduction.

Over the last two decades, emissions in the Southeast Asian region have grown nearly 5% a year as nations in the region rapidly industrialise.

Left unchecked, this emissions-intensive growth risks pushing global warming past thresholds crucial for stabilising Earth’s climate.

Australia and our region can provide many of the minerals and materials needed in the transition to clean energy. To achieve this, Australia should work collaboratively with our Indo-Pacific neighbours, such as helping them acquire the specialised skills needed to decarbonise.

Looking to COP31

Australia is bidding to host the 2026 United Nations climate conference, COP31, in partnership with our Pacific neighbours.

If we succeed, it would provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to champion the urgency of both ambitious climate mitigation and adaptation in our region.

For the Pacific, climate adaptation is existential. Tuvalu is maintaining its identity, even though its land could disappear in mere decades. But in Southeast Asia, the greater challenge, and economic opportunities, remain in mitigating emissions.

Dramatic emissions reduction – enough to slow, and eventually stop global warming – will give nations longer to adapt.

Australia has a lot to lose in the face of climate change, but also a lot to gain. We are one of the sunniest and windiest places on the planet, with a vast landmass and rich reserves of critical minerals needed in the energy transition.

A more certain, safer future for all is within our grasp. It requires both going as hard as possible on reducing emissions, and adapting to the changes ahead.

Luke Brown, Head of Policy and Engagement, Climateworks Centre and Anna Malos, Climateworks Centre - Country Lead, Australia, Monash University

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

The deep complexities of climate change raise a myriad of challenges for humanity – not least of which is how best to respond. Should we throw ourselves into slashing carbon emissions and stabilising Earth’s climate as soon as possible? Or accept our fate and go into survival mode?

A recently published book tackles this question. In Living Hot: Surviving and Thriving on a Heating Planet, public ethicist Clive Hamilton and energy expert George Wilkenfeld urge Australia to get serious about climate adaptation.

Many of the pair’s arguments make perfect sense. The path to decarbonisation is challenging, and progress has been far too slow. And of course, the world has already heated far too much and more damage is already locked in – so adapting is vital.

However, I disagree with the central thesis of the book: that humanity cannot adapt adequately to climate change if we keep trying so hard to reduce emissions. This is not an either-or proposition: we must do both.

Not a zero-sum game

Climate mitigation refers to efforts to reduce the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Adaptation involves adjusting our lives to cope with life on a hotter planet – such as higher seas and more extreme weather.

Much of Living Hot is devoted to outlining the barriers and limits to Australia’s mitigation task.

I agree with some of the authors’ analysis. Efforts to capture carbon and store it underground are an ineffective distraction. And some emissions-reduction activities can damage the environment, such as mining critical minerals and building renewable energy infrastructure.

However, I find other parts of the book problematic.

Hamilton and Wilkenfeld argue that hopes of returning to a safe climate are “wishful thinking”. They say Australia has been too slow on climate action and has wasted its chance of becoming a renewable energy superpower. They believe attempts to “electrify everything” – replacing our coal- and gas-powered economy with renewable energy, and electric vehicles and appliances – will likely fail.

Overall, the pair believe while Australia should still strive to meet its international obligations to reduce emissions, our primary focus should now be on planning to live on an overheated planet. Or in their words: “our only choice now is to focus on adaptation”.

I have several issues with this argument. First, it’s broadly accepted in the academic literature that reducing emissions is vital if adaptation is to be successful. As the old adage goes, prevention is better than cure.

It stands to reason that the hotter the planet, the harder adaptation becomes.

Second, Hamilton and Wilkenfeld devote a large portion of the book to outlining the problems with mitigation, but apply a far less critical lens to the many barriers and limits to adaptation.

Transforming society to adapt to climate change will be no easy task. The book does note some complexities involved in, say, retrofitting homes to make them more resilient to disasters, or relocating flood-prone communities. It touches on the futility of building river levees and seawalls, and the general challenges of building community consensus for change.

But to me, this part of the analysis feels underdone. Exactly how will we get Australians on board with adaptation actions such as pre-emptively relocating entire regions, when we have barely embraced far easier changes, such as eating less meat?

Hamilton and Wilkenfeld argue the challenges inherent in mitigation – such as cost and political resistance, or our slowness to act – are essentially now insurmountable. Yet this same logic is not applied to the adaptation discussion.

All this leaves me wondering why Hamilton and Wilkenfeld didn’t argue for a two-pronged approach: full-throttle emissions reduction coupled with transformative adaptation.

Hamilton himself has done much in the past to raise public awareness of the need to heed the science and cut emissions. By approaching mitigation and adaptation hand-in-hand, we could harness community concern about climate change to kickstart and bolster adaptation actions.

Australians are increasingly climate-literate. It seems far-fetched to imagine people would accept the argument that mitigation has essentially failed and we must now accept catastrophic heating.

Despondency is not ‘natural’

At the end of Living Hot, Hamilton and Wilkenfeld discuss the “personal oddesey” of researching and writing the book. They write:

Making ourselves peer into the abyss of an Australian society struggling to cope with an unending series of extreme events meant reconfiguring our picture of what the future will be like.

I get it. The grief is real, the terror is real. In fact, I’ve written a book about it.

Yet I disagree when Hamilton and Wilkenfeld write it is “natural to be despondent when thinking about climate change”.

Yes, feeling disillusioned about climate crisis is common, and valid. So too is feeling overwhelmed, cynical, horrified, depressed, confused, isolated or angry.

But as my research has shown, feelings of climate distress are not “natural”. They arise from emotional violence inflicted on us by political systems that know a public that feels disillusioned, overwhelmed and burnt-out is less likely to fight the expansion of fossil-fuelled capitalism.

And not everyone feels the same way about the climate crisis. For example, men and women experience it very differently.

And those of us insulated from climate impacts, such as older, white people living in affluent nations, might be less inclined to act.

Others do not have this luxury. Those on the frontlines of the climate crisis – young people, Pacific Islanders, disaster survivors, First Nations peoples, and others vulnerable to climate change – cannot give up. Many already live with the catastrophic impacts of global warming, or will still be alive when the worst effects are felt. They do not call for us to lower our mitigation ambitions. They keep fighting.

As part of a recent collaborative research project, I spoke to wildlife carers about their efforts to care for animals during the Black Summer bushfires. These people went to extreme lengths – compromising their finances, physical and mental health – to save or care for as many animals as they could.

Of course, the number of animals they were able to save pales in comparison to three billion displaced or incinerated. Still, these people didn’t quit.

It’s in these acts of perseverance, in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, where we can truly find hope.

Blanche Verlie, Horizon Research Fellow and Lecturer, University of Sydney

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

Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of fossil fuels. While this coal and gas is burned beyond our borders, the climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions affect us all.

My colleagues and I at global research and policy institute Climate Analytics were commissioned to find out just how big Australia’s carbon footprint really is. Our detailed analysis of the nation’s fossil fuel exports and associated emissions is the most comprehensive to date. The report, released today, clearly shows Australia plays a major role in climate change.

We found Australia is the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, after Russia and the United States. But it gets worse when the fuel is used. Australia exports so much coal that our nation is the second-largest exporter of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions.

Unfortunately, just when we need to be cutting emissions, Australia is doubling down on fossil gas extraction mainly for LNG production and export. Federal government policies enabling and/or promoting continued high fossil fuel exports threaten to sabotage international efforts to limit global warming.

Australia’s fossil fuel carbon footprint

Australia’s contribution to global warming can only be understood by considering its fossil fuel exports alongside its domestic emissions.

Our research found Australia’s coal and gas exports were responsible for 1.15 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions in 2023. An additional 46 million tonnes of CO₂ were emitted domestically in the process of extracting, processing and distributing those fossil fuels purely for export. That takes the total to 1.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ attributable to fossil fuel exports.

In other words, Australia’s global fossil fuel carbon footprint is three times larger than its domestic footprint. Around 80% of the damage is done overseas.

The International Energy Agency has clearly said there should be no new fossil fuel development if the world is to limit warming to 1.5°C – the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. Yet Australia continues to approve new fossil fuel exploration and production.

Overall, exports of Australian fossil fuels – and hence fossil fuel CO₂ emissions – are expected to continue at close to current levels through to 2035, under current government policies.

Thermal coal exports, which are burned mainly for electricity production, are expected to slightly decline by 2035 from their all-time high in 2023. But exports of metallurgical coal, used in steel-making, and LNG are expected to stay about the same in 2035 as they are today.

Blowing the carbon budget

Between 2023 and 2035, Australia’s fossil fuel exports alone would consume around 7.5% of the world’s estimated remaining global carbon budget of about 200 billion tonnes of CO₂. This is the amount of CO₂ that could still be emitted from 2024 onwards if we are to limit peak warming to 1.5°C with 50% probability.

But rather than decreasing, CO₂ emissions from Australia’s fossil fuel exports are set to increase under current government policies. In other words, in the next 11 years, by 2035, exported fossil fuel CO₂ emissions will exceed by 50% that of the entire 63 year period from 1961 to 2023.

If we include domestic CO₂ emissions from current policies, this means by 2035 Australia, with 0.3% of the world’s population, would consume 9% of the total remaining carbon budget.

Undermining the Paris Agreement

In December, at the COP28 international climate conference in Dubai, governments including Australia agreed on the first “global stocktake” of greenhouse gas emissions. It called for:

transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.

The stocktake also called on all countries to align their nationally determined contributions with the 1.5°C limit.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s response at the time was to call for Australia to be a “renewable energy superpower”. But his government appears to believe this includes embracing a gas export strategy.

Current government policy is not aligned with Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit. Our new report shows the government’s focus on maintaining high levels of fossil fuel exports is completely inconsistent with reducing global CO2 emissions to levels compatible with the 1.5°C goal.

Australia mainly exports fossil fuels to Japan, China, South Korea and India. These countries, which accounted for about 43% of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in 2022, are also signatories to the Paris Agreement. So they have set 2030 emissions reduction targets and net-zero goals of their own. Continuing to import fossil fuels is incompatible with their own commitments.

Japan’s LNG imports fell 8% in 2023 to their lowest levels since 2009 and are expected to drop by a further 25% by 2030. Given the current energy security and LNG debate, it should be noted Japanese companies on-sold more LNG in 2020–22 than they purchased from Australia.

Thwarting national emissions reduction efforts

Australia’s planned expansion of fossil fuels, notably its gas exports, will add to the country’s domestic emissions and make it harder for it to meet even its own domestic target. That’s because a sizeable chunk of domestic fossil fuel CO₂ emissions (7.5%) comes from processing gas for export.

Our analysis also shows Australia’s plans are completely inconsistent with the global stocktake’s call for a transition away from fossil fuels. The government and gas industry’s arguments that more fossil gas is needed to get to net zero are also at odds with the science.

Time for a fossil fuel phase-out

Australia has a massive interest in the world as a whole decarbonising fast enough to limit warming to 1.5°C.

For example, children born in Australia today face much more extreme heat, floods and other disasters during their lifetimes than previous generations. This exposure can be very substantially reduced by limiting warming to 1.5°C. The choices Australia, as a major fossil fuel exporter, makes now in this critical decade will determine what happens to them.

By failing to initiate an orderly phase-out of fossil fuel exports, Australia also risks undermining its own stated ambition of becoming a renewable energy superpower.

It is in our nation’s interests to develop and implement an orderly exit – just as we are doing for our domestic emissions – working cooperatively with affected communities and overseas buyers. Doing anything less will only hurt us in the end.

Bill Hare, Adjunct Professor of Energy, Murdoch University

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

Even now, decades after we first began trying to avert the worst of global warming, more than 80% of the world’s total energy comes from fossil fuels.

You might think this would make fossil fuel production extremely profitable. But it’s not always the case. Much of the most accessible oil has already been extracted and burned. Many countries want to shore up domestic sources of fossil fuels to boost energy security. Energy price fluctuations and competition from new energy sources such as solar, wind and fossil gas have made it harder for some fossil fuel companies to make money, especially in coal.

This is where fossil fuel subsidies come in. Australia gave A$14.5 billion in subsidies to major fossil fuel producers and consumers in 2023–24 alone.

You might have wondered – why would some of the largest companies on Earth need subsidies? Here’s why.

Private companies, public money

Globally, private companies dominate fossil fuel production, though fossil fuel-rich nations often have state-owned companies, such as Saudi Arabia’s Aramco and Russia’s Rosneft.

Why would governments give fossil fuel companies money? Many reasons. But the most important is that wealthy countries have historically needed huge volumes of fossil fuels for manufacturing, transport and power. Many countries have some sources of fossil fuels inside their borders, but only a few are self-sufficient. This has enabled fossil fuel giants such as Saudi Arabia to become wealthy beyond belief.

Many governments have used subsidies to boost their energy security and encourage local producers to seek out new sources of coal, gas and oil. These subsidies can make all the difference in making fossil fuel companies competitive internationally. For instance, Canada spent billions on subsidies to boost its oil sands and fracking projects.

Subsidies were essential in the United States’ fracking revolution. Novel approaches to extracting fossil gas and oil – boosted by major tax incentives – turned the US from a major importer of oil and gas into a net exporter by 2019.

You can see why the US did this. At a stroke, it went from being dependent on energy provided by foreign nations to being independent.

Once subsidies are in place, they become very hard to remove. Indonesia’s lavish fuel subsidies now account for 2% of the nation’s GDP. When the national government tried to walk these back, there were riots.

And there’s another reason, too. Fossil fuels are still playing an important role in boosting the economy in most nations. Subsidising them has long been seen as a way to maintain economic growth and stability.

Globally, these subsidies are estimated at a staggering $10.5 trillion each year.

This figure has grown sharply in recent years, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As European nations tried to wean themselves off Russia’s gas, energy prices surged worldwide. In response, some countries introduced new subsidies to support businesses and consumers.

The top-line figure of $10.5 trillion includes two types of subsidy – explicit (meaning real dollars change hands) and implicit (for example, governments building roads and railways to encourage crude oil transport).

Explicit subsidies

Explicit fossil fuel subsidies are direct financial incentives from governments to fossil fuel producers and consumers. These incentives come in different forms, such as tax breaks, direct payments, grants and price controls. All of them aim to reduce the financial burden associated with fossil fuel production and use.

In Australia, explicit subsidies include fuel tax credits and exploration tax reductions. Fossil fuel companies can get subsidies to offset the losses they make during the years it takes to find and begin extracting new fossil fuels.

In the US, oil and gas companies benefit from the oil depletion allowance, which permits them to deduct a percentage of their gross income from oil and gas sales as an expense. They can also claim tax deductions for intangible drilling costs, such as the wages of workers and material needed to find new sources of oil and gas.

China, too, uses direct subsidies, discounted land-use fees, and preferential loans as explicit subsidies to boost coal production and consumption. The national government also supports fossil fuel consumption through direct payments to consumers.

Implicit subsidies

Implicit subsidies are often described as “imaginary”. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that they’re not a direct transfer to fossil fuel producers.

For instance, the cost of burning fossil fuels is borne by the global community and the natural world, in the form of climate change, damage to human health and other harms. Most fossil fuel companies don’t have to pay a cent for the pollution their products cause – so in effect, they are being granted an indirect subsidy.

Implicit incentives also include government investment in facilities such as transport networks, pipelines, oil refineries and port infrastructure, which will accelerate fossil fuel production and delivery. Think of the Middle Arm development in Darwin, funded by both the federal and territory government.

Why are these subsidies still being paid?

As the world grapples with a worsening climate crisis, fossil fuel subsidies are under great scrutiny.

It’s politically difficult to withdraw subsidies once given. This is why governments around the world have instead begun to give subsidies and tax incentives to green energy developers, including the enormous $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act in the US, the European Union’s Green Deal, and China’s massive subsidies of green technologies such as electric vehicles and solar panels.

The goal here is to make renewable energy and electrified transport steadily more affordable and competitive – just as fossil fuel subsidies did for oil, gas and coal.

Bernard Njindan Iyke, Lecturer in Finance, La Trobe University

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

Speaking on ABC’s Q&A on Monday night, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz claimed Australia was “giving away its natural resources”, something he found “mind-boggling”.

He said that if Australia made the fossil fuel industry pay for the value of the resources it extracts and its fair share of taxes, “you wouldn’t have the problems that you have today”.

Stiglitz appeared to be referring to our profits-based petroleum resource rent tax, also known as the “gas tax”.

Having formally researched and advised specialist forums on this issue for many years, I agree with him that yes – we are giving away our wealth, both to foreign countries and companies owned overseas.

It’s great to see an international heavyweight like Stiglitz pointing out some of the glaring issues with our system. To fix it, the federal government needs to get rid of its profit-based offshore gas tax altogether and revert to the royalties-based system we used to have.

How do we tax gas?

Australia’s petroleum resource rent tax, or gas tax, is a secondary taxation on offshore gas resources. It’s a tax on profits, that is to say, it’s only collected when gas companies’ incomes exceed their expenditures.

Australia now consistently ranks among the top liquefied natural gas exporters in the world. But our tax take from the industry has long been too low.

So low, in fact, it triggered a federal government review in 2017. Former treasury official Michael Callaghan headed up the review as an independent expert.

I recall being quizzed by Callaghan in early 2017 at my Monash office in Melbourne over my submission to the review, which advocated for major reform of existing gas tax concessions.

But at the same time in Canberra, gas industry executives were lobbying hard, insisting there be no change to gas taxing due to “sovereign risk”.

Callaghan ultimately tendered a report recommending tax design reforms. But the changes later implemented by the government were little more than window-dressing, for as the revenue table below shows, gas tax revenues are still too low.

Figures from 2018 show a sizeable gap between Australia’s gas tax revenue of about A$1.1 billion, and that of our nearest competitors. Qatar collected gas royalties that same year of more than $50 billion, and Norway’s special gas tax netted the country $19.5 billion.

It is obvious, even to dispassionate observers like Stiglitz, that Australia’s lacklustre gas tax legislation results in a gas industry that doesn’t pay its fair share for community-owned natural resources.

Why did we move away from royalties?

We used to tax the offshore gas industry under a system of federal royalties that were based on the market value of petroleum production.

The profits-based tax concept was developed by economists Ross Garnaut and Anthony Clunies Ross in the 1970s, for the oil industry in the newly independent Papua New Guinea.

Garnaut was economic advisor to the Hawke-Keating Government, and in 1983 advocated the repeal of federal royalties. The profits-based tax that replaced it was first applied to profits on Australian oil production in 1987, where it raised reasonable revenue.

But it was later applied to offshore gas production, which is less profitable than oil due to costly liquefaction, storage infrastructure, and specialised high-pressure gas transport requirements.

This characteristic low profitability of the gas industry delays the triggering of the gas tax. Companies can operate for years without paying it. In other words, Australia is not being paid for much of its “stock” of gas that is mainly sold for export.

A fair share of taxes

A return to federal royalties on offshore gas production would increase government revenues, and provide a fairer outcome for the community.

Some of us may recall the 2014 repeal of mining’s profits-based Minerals Resource Rent Tax, due to its low revenues. The government repealed the profits-based tax in 2019 for onshore gas, and could easily do the same for offshore gas.

Joseph Stiglitz’s observations on the way we tax our natural resources offer another opportunity for us to reflect. We are missing the opportunity to fairly tax things we can only extract once, to the detriment of our community.

Diane Kraal, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Business Law and Taxation Dept, Monash Business School, Monash University

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

One of the most significant achievements of the 26th United Nations climate conference in Glasgow (COP26) three years ago was the launch of the Global Methane Pledge. The goal is to reduce global methane emissions at least 30% by 2030.

Methane (CH₄) is the second most significant climate pollutant after carbon dioxide (CO₂). In the words of one of the architects of the pledge, then US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, “tackling methane is the fastest, most effective way to reduce near-term warming and keep 1.5°C within reach”.

Australia signed up to the methane pledge in October 2022. It was a good start, but a promise is not a plan. To date, Australia has no official methane reduction targets, nor an agreed strategy to deal with this dangerous pollutant.

The Climate Council’s report, released today, sets out actions Australia can take right now to cut methane emissions. We need to get on with it.

Why should we care about methane?

Methane in the atmosphere is rising at a record rate: up about 260% since preindustrial times to a high not seen for at least 800,000 years.

Research just released shows if we don’t act, the problem will only worsen. It suggests increases in atmospheric methane are outpacing projected growth rates – threatening the global goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

The gas is likely responsible for at least 25 to 30% of warming Earth has experienced since the Industrial Revolution.

Methane is a “live fast, die young” gas, persisting in the atmosphere for a relatively short amount of time. But while it’s there, it punches above its weight in warming. Over 20 years, methane is about 85 times more effective at trapping heat than the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

After 100 years, it’s still about 28 times more effective at trapping heat.

This means methane has an outsized impact on warming in the short term, turbocharging unnatural disasters such as floods, bushfires and heatwaves.

Where does methane come from?

Roughly half of global methane pollution comes from human activities. The rest comes from natural sources such as wetlands and soils.

Australia produces more than its fair share of methane because we have such large fossil fuel and agriculture industries. We are the world’s 12th largest methane polluter, producing four to five times as much methane as would be expected based on population alone.

In the year to December 2023, Australia produced nearly four million tonnes of methane. The main sources from human activity were agriculture (52%), fossil fuel mining (25%) and waste (11%). The good news is there are plenty of ways to reduce emissions in each sector that we can and should implement right now.

What can we do about it?

The largest source of methane emissions in agriculture is the burps of ruminant animals – mainly cows and sheep.

Promising research suggests each animal’s methane production can be cut by as much as 90% using daily feed supplements. These include supplements from the red seaweed Asparagopsis, and the chemical marketed as 3-NOP.

Other approaches to reducing methane emissions from animals also show promise. They include vaccines that target methane-producing microbes in their guts, methane-reducing pasture species, and selective breeding.

These solutions should be scaled up and farmers encouraged to use them – for instance, by being eligible for carbon credits under the Emissions Reduction Fund.

Providing consumers with point-of-sale information about the climate impacts of their food choices could also serve to reduce the nation’s methane emissions. And the market can be encouraged to develop clear regulatory pathways for securing approval of animal-free protein and other lower-impact foods.

More than 90% of our food waste ends up in landfill where it produces methane when it rots. Composting is much better for the environment. Investing in organic collection services for food and garden waste, and tightening regulations to capture gas at landfill sites, can address much methane pollution from the waste sector.

We can’t control what we don’t measure. Currently, methane emissions are largely reported to the Clean Energy Regulator using indirect and outdated methods. The International Energy Agency estimates Australia could be under-reporting methane emissions from the coal and gas sector by up to 60%.

Fortunately, new global satellite capacity and, in Australia, the Open Methane visualisation tool, mean we can measure methane at its source far more accurately than before.

The federal government should make all coal and gas corporations directly measure and report their methane emissions from existing mines, in line with international best practice.

Every coal mine and gas plant produces methane during mining and processing. While we work towards phasing out fossil fuel mining, a few practical actions can reduce methane pollution:

• require underground coal mines to capture and destroy the methane vented into the atmosphere
• ban all non-emergency flaring and venting of gas
• require all gas mining companies to address leaky infrastructure
• ensure mining companies seal inactive mines.

Time for action

Without concerted action, global methane pollution from human activities is expected to rise 15% this decade. On the other hand, meeting the commitments of the Global Methane Pledge can reduce warming in the next few decades.

If the goals of the pledge are met, we could shave about 0.25°C off the global average temperature by mid-century, and more than 0.5°C by 2100.

The federal government should establish a national methane reduction target and a dedicated action plan. This should be part of our updated national emissions reduction target, due to be set in 2025.

We can’t take our foot off the pedal in cutting carbon dioxide. But at the same time, in the words of United Nations head Antonio Guterres, we have to do “everything, everywhere, all at once”.

Lesley Hughes, Professor Emerita, Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University

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

When wildfire smoke is in the air, doctors urge people to stay indoors to avoid breathing in harmful particles and gases. But what happens to trees and other plants that can’t escape from the smoke?

They may respond a bit like us, it turns out: Some trees essentially shut their windows and doors and hold their breath.

As atmospheric and chemical scientists, we study the air quality and ecological effects of wildfire smoke and other pollutants. In a study that started quite by accident when smoke overwhelmed our research site in Colorado, we were able to watch in real time how the leaves of living pine trees responded.

How plants breathe

Plants have pores on the surface of their leaves called stomata. These pores are much like our mouths, except that while we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.

Both humans and plants inhale other chemicals in the air around them and exhale chemicals produced inside them – coffee breath for some people, pine scents for some trees.

Unlike humans, however, leaves breathe in and out at the same time, constantly taking in and releasing atmospheric gases.

Clues from over a century of research

In the early 1900s, scientists studying trees in heavily polluted areas discovered that those chronically exposed to pollution from coal-burning had black granules clogging the leaf pores through which plants breathe. They suspected that the substance in these granules was partly created by the trees, but due to the lack of available instruments at the time, the chemistry of those granules was never explored, nor were the effects on the plants’ photosynthesis.

Most modern research into wildfire smoke’s effects has focused on crops, and the results have been conflicting.

For example, a study of multiple crop and wetland sites in California showed that smoke scatters light in a way that made plants more efficient at photosynthesis and growth. However, a lab study in which plants were exposed to artificial smoke found that plant productivity dropped during and after smoke exposure – though those plants did recover after a few hours.

There are other clues that wildfire smoke can impact plants in negative ways. You may have even tasted one: When grapes are exposed to smoke, their wine can be tainted.

What makes smoke toxic, even far from the fire

When wildfire smoke travels long distances, the smoke cooks in sunlight and chemically changes.

Mixing volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and sunlight will make ground-level ozone, which can cause breathing problems in humans. It can also damage plants by degrading the leaf surface, oxidizing plant tissue and slowing photosynthesis.

While scientists usually think about urban regions as being large sources of ozone that effect crops downwind, wildfire smoke is an emerging concern. Other compounds, including nitrogen oxides, can also harm plants and reduce photosynthesis.

Taken together, studies suggest that wildfire smoke interacts with plants, but in poorly understood ways. This lack of research is driven by the fact that studying smoke effects on the leaves of living plants in the wild is hard: Wildfires are hard to predict, and it can be unsafe to be in smoky conditions.

Accidental research – in the middle of a wildfire

We didn’t set out to study plant responses to wildfire smoke. Instead, we were trying to understand how plants emit volatile organic compounds – the chemicals that make forests smell like a forest, but also impact air quality and can even change clouds.

Fall 2020 was a bad season for wildfires in the western U.S., and thick smoke came through a field site where we were working in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

On the first morning of heavy smoke, we did our usual test to measure leaf-level photosynthesis of Ponderosa pines. We were surprised to discover that the tree’s pores were completely closed and photosynthesis was nearly zero.

We also measured the leaves’ emissions of their usual volatile organic compounds and found very low readings. This meant that the leaves weren’t “breathing” – they weren’t inhaling the carbon dioxide they need to grow and weren’t exhaling the chemicals they usually release.

With these unexpected results, we decided to try to force photosynthesis and see if we could “defibrillate” the leaf into its normal rhythm. By changing the leaf’s temperature and humidity, we cleared the leaf’s “airways” and saw a sudden improvement in photosynthesis and a burst of volatile organic compounds.

What our months of data told us is that some plants respond to heavy bouts of wildfire smoke by shutting down their exchange with outside air. They are effectively holding their breath, but not before they have been exposed to the smoke.

We hypothesize a few processes that could have caused leaves to close their pores: Smoke particles could coat the leaves, creating a layer that prevents the pores from opening. Smoke could also enter the leaves and clog their pores, keeping them sticky. Or the leaves could physically respond to the first signs of smoke and close their pores before they get the worst of it.

It’s likely a combination of these and other responses.

The long-term impact is still unknown

The jury is still out on exactly how long the effects of wildfire smoke last and how repeated smoke events will affect plants – including trees and crops – over the long term.

With wildfires increasing in severity and frequency due to climate change, forest management policies and human behavior, it’s important to gain a better understanding of the impact.

Delphine Farmer, Professor of Chemistry, Colorado State University and Mj Riches, Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental and Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University

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

Climate change has killed billions of corals and fundamentally changed coral reefs. The response, especially in Australia, has been to fix the symptoms, not address the cause – climate change for which humans are responsible.

Much money and research effort is expended in replacing, regrowing and supporting corals, in the hope reefs may survive a warmer world.

These technological and scientific “solutions” give hope that something can be done. But as we argue in Nature Climate Change today, there is little evidence these measures will create resilient or healthy reef ecosystems over the long term.

Humanity must take dramatic action on climate change. By focusing so much attention on treating the symptoms – such as replacing dead corals – we risk squandering money, time and public trust in science.

We believe coral restoration may be, at best, a feel-good measure that satisfies a human urge to do something about climate change – and at worst, a dangerous distraction from climate action. A fundamental rethink is needed.

What to do about our troubled reefs?

The world’s coral reefs have suffered devastating damage due to climate change and resulting warmer seas. This includes the Great Barrier Reef, which last summer experienced yet another mass bleaching.

Clearly, something must be done.

In recent years, a popular solution has emerged in the form of direct scientific interventions. These include:

• growing baby corals in a nursery to later plant them on an ocean reef

• selective breeding, which involves identifying heat-tolerant corals, collecting their eggs and sperm, and breeding heat-tolerant offspring

• minimising stressors, for example, cloud-seeding or building structures to shade coral, pumping cooler water onto reefs or removing natural predators such as crown-of-thorns starfish.

Such interventions attract substantial research and philanthropic funding. But many scientists, including us, are concerned about their growing popularity.

There is little compelling evidence these interventions improve outcomes across coral reef ecosystems.

For example, a 2020 study synthesised current knowledge in coral reef restoration. It found 60% of projects had monitored restored sites for less than 18 months. Most projects were small-scale, with a median restored area of 100 square metres.

It concluded coral restoration projects were poorly designed, lacked clear and achievable objectives, and improvements were needed in monitoring and reporting.

Another study last year found some forms of coral rehabilitation “may be feasible, affordable, and ethical”, but the benefits were small and the measures expensive.

The researchers said legislation and policy should concentrate on “bolstering ecosystem resilience by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other drivers of reef degradation”.

We don’t always have to ‘do something’ on reefs

In some areas of science, such as human health, people have been shown to prefer solutions that involve active intervention: that is, adding something new, regardless of evidence for or against its efficacy. The same “intervention bias” may be influencing how we try to help coral reefs.

A vast literature on coral reefs calls for action in the form of scientific intervention.

However, resilience, recovery and change are an inherent feature of natural ecosystems. This was demonstrated by a review of 400 studies of disturbed ecosystems, which showed human restoration provided no consistent benefits over natural recovery.

Recent evidence from the northern Great Barrier Reef, following a major bleaching event, supports the idea that, in the short-term at least, nature can recover on its own. There, coral cover jumped from 10% in 2016, the lowest ever recorded, to an ephemeral but record high of 36% just six years later.

This is not to say the bounce-back will last. Heatwaves will continue to kill regrown corals, rendering this natural success temporary. That’s why drastic emissions reduction is essential.

What is a healthy reef?

Intervention on coral reefs usually aims to increase live coral cover. This approach rests on the assumption that more coral leads to healthy reefs.

Corals are undoubtedly a foundational and iconic part of coral reefs. But corals and reefs are not the same. Corals are important, iconic organisms. Coral reefs are highly diverse, complex ecological systems composed of thousands of animal, plant and bacteria species.

The science is not clear on whether more corals will return reefs to a “healthy” state, especially given such scientific interventions are usually small in scale. There is also evidence suggesting reefs can grow, even when coral species decline.

More science is needed to determine what a “healthy” reef is. A pretty reef with plenty of coral? A usable reef with plenty of fish? Or a reef that is unspoiled by human activity?

And there’s another important research question to answer: how can humanity come to terms with reefs transformed by climate change?

Towards transformative solutions

We do not seek to divide reef scientists into camps “for and against” coral restoration.

But we are not confident that specific, targeted coral interventions will have wider benefits. What’s needed is broader, evidence-based investigation into transformation across reefs and human communities - to bring about real, large-scale solutions.

We realise our position may be considered controversial. But the stakes are high – and an evidence-based approach to caring for coral reefs is urgently needed.

Robert Paul Streit, Research Fellow in Just Ocean Governance, The University of Melbourne; David Roy Bellwood, Professor, James Cook University, and Tiffany Morrison, Professorial Research Fellow, James Cook University and Professor, The University of Melbourne

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

The Southern Ocean is wild and dynamic. It experiences Earth’s strongest winds and largest waves. It is home to city-sized icebergs and the biggest ocean current on the globe, as well as tiny turbulent flows that fit inside a teacup.

The Southern Ocean is also crucial to Earth’s natural systems. It forms the dense water that fills the world’s deep oceans. It stores heat and carbon resulting from human-caused global warming, and controls the flux of heat to the huge ice sheet of Antarctica – the greatest threat to runaway global sea-level rise.

The scale and complexity of the Southern Ocean can be hard to comprehend. But our new paper may help. It summarises the present state of understanding of the Southern Ocean, how it is changing, and where the knowledge gaps lie.

Scientists and others regularly voyage to the Southern Ocean’s furthermost icy reaches – but more research is needed. The scientific and broader community must join together to advance Southern Ocean science and protect this vital natural asset.

Masses of ice at risk

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest ice mass on Earth, equivalent to 58 metres of the global sea level.

The ice sheet flows onto the Southern Ocean surface in the form of giant ice shelves. Many of these ice shelves are being eaten away from below by a warmer ocean, or crumbling and becoming icebergs at a faster rate than before.

Beyond the ice shelves, millions of square kilometres of the Southern Ocean surface is frozen into a layer of sea ice. This acts as a giant solar reflector and shields ice shelves from powerful Southern Ocean waves.

After decades of seemingly defying warming temperatures, the Southern Ocean’s sea ice has dramatically declined in recent years. This puts ice shelves and the ice sheet under even greater stress.

Filling Earth’s oceans

Much of the sea ice is produced in small regions of open water, called “polynyas”, formed by strong and cold winds blowing off Antarctica. These winds cool the ocean surface below the freezing point, causing ice to form.

As the ice forms it ejects salt into the ocean surface. This extra salt, in addition to cooling effects from the atmosphere, makes the surface seawater heavier, or more “dense”.

The dense water sinks in turbulent plumes (imagine an upside-down volcano) and cascades through underwater canyons into the deep ocean, while mixing with overlying waters.

The resulting dense water mass, produced in only a few relatively small regions of Antarctica, accounts for an extraordinary 40% of the global ocean volume. It is ultimately lifted back to the ocean surface by centimetre-scale turbulent eddies – of the type you see when mixing milk into your tea.

In the deep ocean, this mixing is largely driven by ocean tides that slosh over the rough seafloor and produce internal waves.

Climate system at risk

It takes many hundreds of years for the ocean water to cycle from the surface Southern Ocean to the deep and back. Water returning to the surface today is like a time capsule, reflecting the cooler, pre-industrial climate when it first sank to the ocean depths.

The water that sinks today has absorbed more carbon to store in the deep ocean, helping to limit global warming.

However, models and observations suggest reductions in sea ice and ice shelves are weakening this crucial climate system. They are making the water warmer, less salty and more buoyant, so less prone to sinking. This means less carbon storage and a warmer atmosphere in the years ahead.

So much we don’t know

Making measurements in the Southern Ocean is immensely challenging due to its remote location and hostile conditions. This means in many cases data is sparse, and so scientists don’t know exactly how quickly changes are occurring.

Our review identified several areas as a key priority for future Southern Ocean research. They include observations of ocean temperatures and melting beneath ice shelves, as well as long term measurements of dense water formation.

More data is needed to monitor changes and provide early warning of significant climate events, such as ice sheet collapse. Crucially, more data is also needed to inform and assess the computer models on which government, industry and society rely to predict future climate.

Unfortunately, ocean observations are expensive. For example, Australia’s premier research vessel, the RV Investigator, costs more than A$100,000 a day to run. And the new SWOT satellite – a joint project of the European Union and United States to measure the ocean surface at unprecedented resolution – cost more than US$1 billion.

These costs also highlight the need for enhanced national and international collaboration. This would make the best use of available resources, and promote technological innovation to develop more cost-effective observing systems such as drones and drifting robotic instruments.

The federal government’s scientific priorities and funding decisions should reflect the crucial importance of Southern Ocean science.

We are currently in the UN Decade of Ocean Science, which aims to improve predictions of ocean and climate change. Improved understanding of the Southern Ocean is vital to this effort.

Luke Bennetts, Lecturer in applied mathematics, University of Adelaide; Callum Shakespeare, Senior Lecturer in Climate and Fluid Physics, Australian National University, and Catherine Vreugdenhil, ARC DECRA Research Fellow in Fluid Dynamics, The University of Melbourne

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

Last week, a strong typhoon left a trail of destruction across the Philippines, Taiwan and China. Super Typhoon Gaemi began as a tropical storm but intensified rapidly, leaving at least 65 people dead and triggering environmental fears after it sank an oil tanker in Manila Bay.

The Philippines was hard hit. More than 470 millimetres of rain fell in 24 hours in some regions. The intense storm affected more than 3.3 million Filipinos and forced more than 1 million to leave their homes.

Why was it so bad? President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had a clear view, saying: “This is what the effects of climate change are”.

Climate change certainly played a role. The typhoon intensified fast over very warm seas, reaching top wind speeds of 230 kilometres per hour. Early analysis indicates the storm was likely strengthened by climate change, given the backdrop of the warmest ocean temperatures on record.

But as extreme weather becomes more common and intense, there’s a growing risk leaders in affected countries can use climate change to dodge responsibility for adaptation. Climate change warms the seas and warm water is fuel for more severe hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons. But the damage a storm does can be made much worse if governments do not design and prepare cities and infrastructure – as we have just seen in the Philippines.

Hiding in plain sight

The Philippines has the highest disaster risk of any country. The Pacific archipelago nation stretches 1,850km north to south and lies directly in the path of many typhoons. The nation is also on the Ring of Fire, putting it at risk from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

But disaster risk isn’t just about how many disasters strike. It’s also about how vulnerable a country is, on both social and infrastructure fronts. Recent research has found the capital of the Philippines, Manila, is particularly vulnerable.

Manila is one of the densest cities in the world, housing more than 42,000 people per square kilometre. An estimated 15 million people now live in the metropolitan Manila region – ten times the population in 1950. Several large rivers and about 30 tributaries run through the city.

As the city has grown, concrete surfaces have multiplied and green space has shrunk. Gutters, stormwater drains and flood management infrastructure have not kept pace.

The scale of flooding this week has brought back memories of Typhoon Ketsana (known as Ondoy in the Philippines) which hit Manila in 2009. Some areas went under three metres of floodwater.

Super Typhoon Gaemi has had a similar impact. Roads became impassable. Rivers broke their banks. Residents of informal settlements – often built near rivers – had to flee. The city’s drains could not cope.

Intense rainfall in the catchments forced dam managers to open floodgates, compounding flooding from urban rainfall.

Floodwaters carry debris and waste through cities and homes. When they recede, they leave behind a higher risk of disease.

Flood damage is projected to worsen by the end of the decade, as urbanisation continues without enough infrastructure investment.

The Philippines government claims poor waste management contributed to the flooding, saying dumped garbage blocked waterways and clogged drainage systems.

Certainly, poor waste management can make flooding worse. But we cannot simply say the scale of this disaster is due to waste management issues, just as we can’t say climate change was solely to blame. Sprawling, wide-reaching disasters like this have many causes.

What would it take to cut disaster risk?

As climate change loads the dice for more and worse disasters, leaders in the Philippines will have to tackle their nation’s systemic vulnerabilities to disaster, as will other frontline nations.

We’re starting to see evidence climate-boosted disasters hit people in emerging urban centres harder. Typhoons are at their most lethal when they strike fast-growing megacities in emerging economies.

In 2007, the world passed an urbanisation milestone. For the first time in recorded human history, more people lived in cities than in rural areas. Since then, urbanisation has only accelerated, as people from rural areas head to burgeoning megacities such as Lagos in Nigeria and Dhaka in Bangladesh. But residents of these cities are often more at risk from flooding and other climate-boosted extreme weather events.

What can we do? As Filipinos braced for Typhoon Gaemi, many frantically looked for information. Data on dangerous flood areas from open access hazard assessment tools proved useful to boost individual preparedness.

But governments must actually plan for and tackle root causes of flooding to make fast-growing cities better able to resist the disasters of the future.

University of Sydney Masters students Sheryn See and Isaac Besarra contributed to this article.

Emily Nabong, PhD Researcher in Civil Engineering, University of Sydney and Aaron Opdyke, Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Engineering, University of Sydney

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

Ever since Polynesian pioneers took to the ocean on wooden rafts, people have been hooked on riding waves. Today, surfing is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports and one of the latest additions to the Olympic games.

Surfing is especially valuable to Australia. My new research shows surf-related expenditure contributes nearly A$3 billion to the Australian economy every year. And the mental health benefits to Australian surfers are in the order of $6 billion a year.

Yet many surf breaks are subject to coastal erosion, water pollution and other threats. The surfing event in Tahiti for this year’s Olympics is a case in point: it involved drilling into delicate coral reef to build a new judging tower.

It’s vital to recognise and measure the true benefits of surfing in dollar terms, so decision-makers realise it makes sense to invest in protecting Australia’s surf breaks.

The economics of surfing

Waves are essentially free. All you need is a surfboard and you’re set. Well, you might want to grab yourself a leg rope and a wetsuit too.

If you have a wave virtually at your doorstep, it’s likely you’re paying a real estate premium. Otherwise, you’re probably spending your weekends chasing waves up and down the coast. You may even have your family in tow. The costs soon add up.

Using an online survey of 569 Australian surfers, my team and I explored the influence of recreational surfing on the economy and people’s wellbeing. We found the average Australian surfer spends more than $3,700 a year, within Australia, on surfing-related purchases. Half goes on equipment, while the rest is spent on domestic travel. A further $1,975 is spent on international travel.

There are an estimated 727,000 Australian adult surfers, which brings the total spend to $2.71 billion every year being pumped into the domestic economy. If we factor in flow-on effects, such as business-to-business spending, the overall contribution of recreational surfing comes to $4.88 billion.

Economic impacts can inform government priorities and public decisions affecting coastal management. For example, the 2023 Margaret River Pro drew $8 million and 3,500 visitors to the region. These figures, as well as local and international support, encouraged the organisers to renew the contest until 2028.

Mental health and wellbeing

Besides direct economic impacts, surfing contributes to participants’ wellbeing in multiple ways.

In our survey, more than 94% of respondents reported improvements in their physical and mental health, as well as their ability to deal with stress and difficulty in their lives.

More than 75% of surfers reported an improvement in their sense of belonging to a community and ability to foster positive relationships.

One way to measure wellbeing in economic terms is by comparing workplace productivity and healthcare costs between groups. Previous research has quantified the benefits of being in nature to mental health, using data from national parks visits. When applying this approach to surfing, the researchers found gains in surfers’ mental health worth $7,650 per person per year – or $5.6 billion across Australia’s surfers.

Deadly but delicate

The first-time inclusion of surfing in the 2020–21 Tokyo Olympics was hailed as a landmark recognition of the sport’s cultural significance. A year later, surfing was admitted as a permanent Olympic sport.

But built infrastructure, such as ports and sea walls, human-induced climate change, coastal erosion and water pollution are endangering waves around the world.

The tiny village of Teahupo'o, in Tahiti, is home to one of the world’s “heaviest” waves. But some residents feared the Olympics would irreversibly damage their pristine environment. In response, visitor numbers were capped and construction minimised.

The world-renowned wave of Mundaka, in Spain’s Basque Country, disappeared in 2005 as a result of dredging activity in the nearby rivermouth. The wave eventually came back, but the area had already suffered a slowdown in economic growth, including the cancellation of a professional contest.

In Australia, three surf breaks were lost to construction of Perth’s Ocean Reef marina in 2022. Local residents’ calls for an artificial reef are now being considered.

Protection for a precious resource

Australia is blessed with more than 1,440 surf breaks and a surf-loving culture.

But if we want those waves to exist for future generations, we must look after them now.

A good starting point could be to include surf breaks in the Australia State of the Environment Report. The review already evaluates pressures on recreational fishing, snorkelling and scuba diving – but not surfing, despite it attracting more participants than the other three sports combined.

Form a legal standpoint, only a few of our waves are protected: the iconic Bells Beach in Victoria comes under the Heritage Act 2027. A dozen of “surfing reserves” in New South Wales are safeguarded by the Crown Lands Act 1989. In Queensland, coastal protection policies are being developed for the Noosa and Gold Coast World Surfing Reserves.

Across the world, more countries are adopting protections for surfing’s recreational and environmental values. In Brazil, the waves at Doce River Mouth were recently granted special protection, as a new bill acknowledged the ocean as a living being with intrinsic rights.

The goal to better understand and protect the value of surf breaks is in line with the 2021–30 Oceans Decade, a United Nations initiative to leverage scientific knowledge for ocean sustainability.

It’s often said “only a surfer knows the feeling” of riding a wave, but research quantifying the benefits of surfing can help decision-makers appreciate the need to preserve a truly irreplaceable resource.

Ana Manero, Research Fellow, Australian National University

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

Globally, many Indigenous people want to help protect their traditional lands and waters, drawing on knowledge stretching back millenia. Indigenous people have an obligation to look after species and habitats that are culturally important to them.

But how can Indigenous voices be supported to make land management decisions? And how do we ensure the process is Indigenous-led and culturally safe? New research by myself and colleagues can help.

We engaged Indigenous people from Bundjalung Country on Australia’s east coast. In a process they led, the Bundjalung people identified which culturally significant species they considered priorities for “collaborative management” – that is, management built on mutual respect for both Western science and Indigenous knowledge systems.

We hope this process might be used elsewhere, to give Indigenous people a genuine say in decisions about managing Country.

‘They hold the stories’

Bundjalung Country stretches from Grafton in northern New South Wales to the Logan River in Queensland and inland to Warwick.

The term Country describes the lands, water and seas to which Indigenous people are connected. Country contains complex ideas about lore, custom, language, spiritual belief, culture, material sustenance, family and identity.

For Indigenous Australians, some plants, animals and habitats hold special cultural significance. This may be, for example, because they are used in ceremonies, they feature in Creation stories or are used as a traditional food source.

The importance of this concept was was summed up during our project by Bundjalung man Oliver Costello, who said:

[Culturally significant entities] are the teachers of Country, they hold the stories and are the indicators for the health of Country. If you look after Country, it will look after you.

Our study set out to establish a process by which Indigenous people can come together to identify culturally significant species. The list of priority species would then be used to inform collaborative land and sea management with governments, conservation groups and others.

The process should be led by Indigenous people themselves, and aligned with their obligations and values.

We partnered with the Bundjalung-owned Jagun Alliance. This was crucial to ensuring the project was conducted in a culturally safe manner and developed with an Indigenous lens.

Our project adhered to cultural protocols and protected Indigenous cultural and intellectual property at all times.

What we did

First, we convened a meeting of five non-Bundjalung Indigenous experts with extensive experience in Indigenous-led work biodiversity work.

They identified six objectives for decision-making around culturally significant species. The objectives involved not just environmental values, but also social, spiritual, economic and cultural values.

We hosted several on-Country workshops with Bundjalung people and distributed an online survey, to determine which species might be prioritised for collaborative management. Of the responses we received, 32 yielded usable data.

The culturally significant plant and animal species identified as the top priority by Bundjalung respondents were:

• koalas
• goannas
• platypuses
• echidnas
• wedge-tailed eagles
• coastal emus
• pipis
• long-necked turtles.

Participants were also asked which habitats were most important for collaborative management. Some 70% identified wetlands, followed by grasslands and big scrub (a mosaic of lowland rainforest, swamp forest and wet eucalypt forest extensively cleared by colonists).

Once the results were in, Bundjalung knowledge-holders identified threats to these species, as follows:

• the lack of Bundjalung decision-making in land management actions
• lack of cultural burns
• impacts on Country such as dams, roads, housing and farming
• invasive species
• climate change.

The Bundjalung also identified management actions which should be integrated into Western management under a collaborative approach:

• community gathering on Country, such as holding ceremonies and harvesting traditional resources
• regular cultural burns
• releasing water into catchments to support cultural objectives
• active management of cultural sites and pathways.

Unlike the current threatened species approach, which largely manages only parts of the problem, the actions identified by Bundjalung people were holistic and landscape-wide. This means these actions can benefit many species and habitats.

Bundjalung people were then invited to a meeting to share findings from the work. This provided an opportunity to heal from past trauma over a shared vision for Country.

Spotlight on the koala

In Bundjalung language, the koala is known as the boorabee.

The boorabee is the only culturally significant species identified by Bundjalung people with an active “national recovery plan”. This plan guides and coordinates conservation efforts by governments and others.

The koala recovery plan calls for Indigenous-led action, which offers Bundjalung people an avenue for collaborative management. Likewise, many management actions proposed by the Bundjalung are clearly aligned with the plan.

The koala and coastal emu are listed as threatened species under various pieces of state and federal legislation. However, a species need not be imperilled to be central to Indigenous-led management.

Where to now?

Our process helped a group of Bundjalung people agree on their conservation priorities, and how to act on them.

It’s important to note, however, that the Bundjalung community consists of ten clans – it is not a homogeneous group. As such, our findings may not be supported by all Bundjalung people.

We hope our findings help policymakers understand what Indigenous-led action could look like, if integrated into biodiversity management. The structured process we undertook may benefit other groups – although applied elsewhere, it may involve different objectives, modes of engagement and results.

Indigenous Australians are ready to sit at decision-making tables to improve the management of Country. They intimately understand our precious environment – and their contribution could be transformative.

Teagan Goolmeer, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne

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

Wildfire blowups, fire whirls, towering thunderstorms: When fires get large and hot enough, they can actually create their own weather.

In these extreme fire situations, firefighters’ ordinary methods to directly control the fire don’t work, and wildfires burn out of control. Firefighters have seen many of these risks in the enormous Park Fire burning near Chico, California, and other wildfires in summer 2024.

But how can a fire create weather?

I’m an atmospheric scientist who uses data collected by satellites in weather prediction models to better anticipate extreme fire weather phenomena. Satellite data shows fire-produced thunderstorms are much more common than anyone realized just a few years ago. Here’s what’s happening.

The wildfire and weather connections

Imagine a wildland landscape with dry grasses, brush and trees. A spark lands, perhaps from lightning or a tree branch hitting a power line. If the weather is hot, dry and windy, that spark could quickly ignite a wildfire.

When vegetation burns, large amounts of heat are released. This heats the air near the ground, and that air rises like a hot air balloon because hot air is less dense than cool air. Cooler air then rushes in to fill the void left by rising air.

This is how wildfires create their own wind patterns.

What happens next depends on the stability of the atmosphere. If the temperature cools rapidly with elevation above the ground, then the rising air will always be warmer than its surroundings and it will keep rising. If it rises high enough, the moisture will condense, forming a cloud known as a pyrocumulus or flammagenitus.

If the air keeps rising, at some point the condensed moisture will freeze.

Once a cloud has both liquid and frozen water particles, collisions among these particles can lead to electrical charge separation. If the charge buildup is large enough, an electrical discharge – better known as lightning – will occur to neutralize the charges.

Whether a fire-induced cloud will become a thunderstorm depends on three key ingredients: a source of lift, instability and moisture.

Dry lightning

Wildfire environments typically have limited moisture. When conditions in the lower atmosphere are dry, this can lead to what’s known as dry lightning.

No one living in a wildfire-prone environment wants to see dry lightning. It occurs when a thunderstorm produces lightning, but the precipitation evaporates before reaching the ground. That means there is no rain to help put out any lightning-sparked fires.

Fire whirls

As air rises in the atmosphere, it may encounter different wind speeds and directions, a condition known as wind shear. This can cause the air to spin. The rising air can tilt the spin to vertical, resembling a tornado.

These fire whirls can have powerful winds that can spread flaming ash, sparking new areas of fire. They usually are not true tornadoes, however, because they aren’t associated with rotating thunderstorms.

Decaying storms

Eventually, the thunderstorm triggered by the wildfire will begin to die, and what went up will come back down. The downdraft from the decaying thunderstorm can produce erratic winds on the ground, further spreading the fire in directions that can be hard to predict.

When fires create their own weather, their behavior can become more unpredictable and erratic, which only amplifies their threat to residents and firefighters battling the blaze. Anticipating changes to fire behavior is important to everyone’s safety.

Satellites show fire-created weather isn’t so rare

Meteorologists recognized the ability of fires to create thunderstorms in the late 1990s. But it wasn’t until the launch of the GOES-R Series satellites in 2017 that scientists had the high-resolution images necessary to see that fire-induced weather is actually commonplace.

Today, these satellites can alert firefighters to a new blaze even before phone calls to 911. That’s important, because there is an increasing trend in the number, size and frequency of wildfires across the United States.

Climate change and rising fire risks

Heat waves and drought risk have been increasing in North America, with rising global temperatures more frequently leaving dry landscapes and forests primed to burn. And climate model experiments indicate that human-caused climate change will continue to raise that risk.

As more people move into fire-risk areas in this warming climate, the risk of fires starting is also rising. With fires come cascading hazards that persist long after the fire is out, such as burn-scarred landscapes that are much more susceptible to landslides and debris flows that can affect water quality and ecosystems.

Communities can reduce their vulnerability to fire damage by building defensible spaces and firebreaks and making homes and property less vulnerable. Firefighters can also reduce the surrounding fuel loads with prescribed fire.

It’s important to remember that fire is a natural part of the Earth system. As fire scientist Stephen J. Pyne writes, we as humans will have to reorient our relationship with fire so we can learn to live with fire.

Kyle Hilburn, Research Scientist in Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University

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

Transport emissions have grown in line with the population and economy. Without intervention, the Australian government expects transport to be the largest emissions source by 2030. So, cutting transport emissions is a crucial, but challenging, element of the net-zero strategy.

Independent research estimated Australia would cut road transport emissions by only 35-45% from 2019 to 2050. This is due to a projected increase in travel, a sustained rise in sales of large passenger vehicles (SUVs, utes) and a delayed uptake of electric trucks. It’s clear electrification of the on-road fleet is not going to cut it.

The federal government notes:

Additional policy measures are thus required in an attempt to meet net zero emissions in 2050 for the transport sector. One such option is mode shift, the shift of passenger and freight travel from high emission modes to lower emission modes.

Our comprehensive study of mode-shift impacts on emissions has been published in two new papers. The first used the Inland Rail project linking Brisbane and Melbourne as a case study of the emissions performance of land-based transport. We examined well-to-wheel emissions (from fuel production, distribution and use) for passenger and freight transport for three years: 2019, 2030 and 2050.

In Australia, we found electric rail is hands down the land transport mode with the lowest emissions intensity (the amount of greenhouse gas produced per kilometre travelled) for both passengers and freight. Compared to road and diesel trains, electric rail could provide deep, fast and robust emission cuts of 80% to 90% from 2030 onwards.

What’s the mix of transport modes in Australia?

The use of different transport modes is highly skewed in Australia.

Domestic passenger travel was 443 billion passenger-kilometres pre-COVID (2018-19). Most of this travel was by road (79%). Only 4% was by rail, with 17% by air.

Domestic freight activity was 785 billion tonne-km pre-COVID (2018-19). Most was by road (28%) and rail (56%). Coastal shipping (15%) made up most of the rest. Air freight was less than 0.05% of the total.

What did the study look at?

Modelling of the impacts of transport mode shifts on emissions needs to consider a broad range of inputs and information.

It must also adequately reflect local conditions. We did not identify any recent studies of the effects of mode shift on emissions in Australia. Older studies tended to use data from overseas, which may not be appropriate to assess the Australian situation.

For road transport, we investigated representative Australian passenger vehicles (cars, SUVs) and long-haul trucks (B-doubles), reflecting a power-train technology mix that changes over time. For rail transport we considered both diesel and electric freight trains and a high-speed electric passenger train, noting that these specific electric options are not yet used in Australia.

To fairly assess performance, we used the well-to-wheel approach. It includes both direct emissions and indirect emissions from producing and distributing fossil fuels, hydrogen and electricity.

The analysis was based on statistical modelling. That is, instead of estimating single emission values, we quantified the most likely value, as well as a plausible range in emissions performance.

If a distribution is wide (spanning a wide range of possible emission values), there is a lot of uncertainty and variability in the emissions performance. The impact of shifting to this transport mode is less certain.

A narrow distribution means we can be more certain the transport mode will perform as expected. There is less risk of over-promising and under-performing.

It is also very important that the estimates reflect Australian conditions. For instance, we specifically modelled the changing Australian on-road fleet mix and their emissions performance, as well as the emission intensities of the electricity grid. We included various mode-specific aspects such as vehicle weight and capacity, passenger occupancy, freight payload, battery charging losses, hydrogen distribution losses, travel distance and annual passenger and freight volumes.

What did the study find?

Electric rail is the land-based mode with the lowest emission intensity for both passenger and freight transport. Shifting from road to e-rail is estimated to cut emission intensity for passenger transport (grams of CO₂-equivalent per passenger kilometre) by 75% in 2019 and 90% in 2030 and 2050. For freight transport, shifting from road to e-rail cuts emission intensity by an estimated 45% in 2019 and 80% in 2030 and 2050.

All modes improve their emission performance over time. It is clear, though, that the paths to lower emissions are quite different.

Australia is rapidly decarbonising its electricity grid. This immediately affects e-rail emissions. In comparison, the effect on road transport is delayed, due to slow fleet turnover and increasing sales of ever bigger cars and SUVs.

This is an important finding as it means the total cumulative emissions from 2030 to 2050 are estimated to be much lower for electric rail. The level of uncertainty about its performance is also the lowest. This means e-rail would also provide the most robust emission cuts of all modes considered.

The emissions performance of diesel freight trains sits between electric rail and long-haul trucks. It would cut emissions by 45% emission compared to road in 2030. But this difference closes to 10% in 2050 as only marginal improvements are expected for diesel trains over time.

What does this mean for policy?

Mode shift from road to rail has unused potential in Australia, since road transport dominates both passenger travel and non-bulk freight.

This study suggests governments should seriously consider rapidly expanding and electrifying rail from an environmental and climate change perspective. Compared to road, electric rail provides deep, immediate and robust emission cuts of 80% to 90% from 2030 onwards.

Some barriers would need to be overcome to make this a reality. These include steam-age (low speed) railway track alignments and additional travel distances and times due to long and winding routes.

Robin Smit, Adjunct Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney

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

So you’re thinking of buying an electric car. Perhaps you want to save money on fuel, or reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, or both. After all, for Australia to reach net zero it needs to electrify vehicles (and expand public transport use).

But you’ve heard arguments against electric cars: they have limited range and many owners can’t easily charge at home. They cost too much, resale values are poor and insurance costs are higher than for other cars. They’re also heavier and cause more damage to our roads.

Alarmingly, the mining of some minerals used to make them involves modern-day slavery.

Are these concerns warranted? Let’s walk through them.

Driving range

In 2014, an electric vehicle’s top driving range was between 160 and 210 kilometres. Today, most new models can travel 300–600km under real-world conditions.

In Australia, the average privately owned car travels 12,100km a year. That’s about 33.2km a day. Current models have more than enough battery capacity to cover most trips.

Access to chargers

What about longer trips? Many drivers still worry about finding a public charger. It’s common to see long queues at public charging stations (when they are working) or owners searching for a charger.

Public charging infrastructure is struggling to keep up with rising demand. While not an issue for short trips (90% of owners charge at home or work), it’s a challenge for longer travel.

Private home chargers are getting cheaper but not everyone has off-street parking. Some resort to the legally questionable strategy of running power cables over sidewalks or through trees.

Apartment block residents typically have requests to install private chargers rejected for safety reasons (mainly fire risks). Many also can’t install solar panels, which would greatly reduce charging costs.

Purchase costs

While electric vehicles cost more than petrol or diesel vehicles today, this won’t be true in future. In 2023, the average price of a new petrol car in Australia was A$40,916, compared to $117,785 for battery electric vehicles.

But the problem with averages is they’re skewed by outliers. And there are lots of very expensive outliers on the electric vehicle market. You can own a Porsche Taycon Turbo S for $374,000, or a Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 for $327,000.

Three models account for about 70% of electric vehicle sales in Australia: the Telsa Model Y (from $60,900), Tesla Model 3 (from $58,900) and the BYD Atto 3 (from $48,011). The Model 3 entered our market in 2019 at $66,000, so it’s clear prices are dropping, and dropping fast. You can buy the GWM ORA or MG4 Excite MY23 for $39,990.

Prices becoming cheaper is common for most new technology. It’s just we notice it more with electric vehicles because they cost more than most technology we buy, including phones and TVs.

Second-hand value

Concerns about resale value may be justified. In the year to January 2024, the value of used electric vehicles fell 21%, which was more than for fossil fuel vehicles.

A higher initial price does not necessarily carry over to the second-hand market. Early adopters valued EV technology, but most buyers have different priorities.

As the technology improves and misconceptions fade, resale values could rebound.

Insurance costs

Insurance costs are also higher than for other vehicles – typically around 20% more.

The vehicles generally cost more to buy in the first place and newer technology is more costly to produce and replace. The supply chain for parts is still developing, with fewer trained technicians and service centres to maintain these vehicles.

As the market grows and service infrastructure improves, insurance costs should fall.

Environmental damage?

One recent study suggests electric vehicles are actually more environmentally damaging than petrol and diesel vehicles. They are typically heavier, resulting in more tyre wear and heavier braking. As this produces small particulate matter with a diameter of 10 microns (PM10) or less (a typical human hair is 50–70 microns wide), the suggestion is electric vehicles will produce more of it.

But such studies often compare particulate emissions from EVs to tailpipe emissions from their fossil fuel counterparts. They ignore the latter’s tyre and braking concerns, which means comparing apples to oranges. More scientific studies suggest electric vehicles, particularly smaller ones, produce less PM10 from non-exhaust sources than their non-electric equivalents.

Slavery in the supply chain

Unfortunately, the modern-day slavery concern is very real.

Electric vehicle batteries require cobalt. About 70% of the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. About 20% of this mining activity involves small, informal, subsistence mines with little or no mechanisation and often using child labour.

The minerals from such mines are scattered throughout the world’s supply chains. Those who raise slavery concerns against electric vehicles are usually silent on other affected products such as phones and laptops. Much more must be done to reduce these concerns about battery supply chains.

The good outweighs the bad

On balance, you’re justified in buying an electric vehicle, assuming you want one. Overall operating costs are far lower than for other vehicles. Public charger issues affect a small percentage of trips.

While prices are dropping quickly, this doesn’t mean the bottom is falling out of the market. Price reductions simply represent greater supply of cheaper electric vehicles. Previous market-leading manufacturers can no longer charge hefty premiums for their products.

And demand isn’t decreasing. The share of electric vehicles on the road continues to increase.

Further, the technology is evolving. Trials of vehicle-to-grid charging, where vehicles return power to the grid or directly to a person’s house, have been taking place across Australia. This ability to power your house will help reduce energy bills, saving owners even more money.

Aside from justifiable concerns about human rights abuses, most of the perceived barriers to EV uptake aren’t really barriers at all, or soon won’t be.

John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney and Andrea Pelligrini, Lecturer, Sustainable Mobility, University of Sydney

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

In the past few years in Australia, seasonal rainfall and temperatures have left a lot of people confused. Sometimes, the hot, dry conditions usually associated with an El Niño have not eventuated. Similarly, there have been years where a La Niña did not lead to the cool, wet conditions expected.

It’s important for scientists to better understand all weather processes at play, so we can manage expectations around what Australia might experience when climate drivers such as El Niño and La Niña are forecast in future. That’s where our new research comes in.

We examined the state of play in November 2020 and November 2021. La Niña conditions occurred in both years. November 2021 followed the La Niña script and was wet and cool, but November 2020 departed from expectations and was dry and warm. We set out to determine why.

We found the differences could be explained by fluctuations in the path of storms over the Australian continent. These fluctuations can be hard to predict well in advance, which makes it difficult to say for certain how a particular La Niña or El Niño event will affect Australia.

A tale of two Novembers

For large parts of Australia, the presence of a La Niña or El Niño shifts the odds of experiencing wet or dry conditions. Our analysis of Novembers 2020 and 2021 shows how actual outcomes can differ from, or align with, expectations.

The first step in our analysis was to examine other climate drivers, including the Indian Ocean Dipole and Southern Annular Mode. We wanted to know if these drivers were in the same phase – negative, neutral or positive – during those two Novembers a year apart.

So what did we find? In addition to La Nina, both Novembers occurred during positive Southern Annular Mode phases and very weak negative Indian Ocean Dipole phases. These phases are typically associated with more rainfall in Australia. So this didn’t explain why November 2020 was hot and dry.

Next, we looked to the Madden Julian Oscillation. When this driver is located in the Australian region, it has been linked to more rainfall in Australia. Although the oscillation was in different phases during November 2020 and 2021, we found in general, this driver does not strongly influence rainfall across all of Australia in November.

It was time to look for answers elsewhere.

Jet streams: a key piece in the puzzle

Next, we examined weather systems – in other words, the movement of high and low pressure systems across the globe.

These systems are partly controlled by jet streams, which are bands of wind in the upper atmosphere. The effect of jet streams on weather systems, including storms, means they influence rainfall in the regions they pass over.

We found there was a strong jet stream over Australia in November 2021. This would have assisted the development of any rain-bearing low-pressure systems moving in from the west, allowing these systems to travel across the Australian continent. These systems brought rain and contributed to the very wet conditions.

In November 2020, the jet stream was largely absent over Australia. Instead, it was pushed south of the continent, which means rainfall systems received little help and were also largely steered south. That contributed to the dry month.

But why did the jet streams develop in the first place? They form in part due to temperature differences, and are found in the zones where the temperature contrast between warm and cool air is strongest.

In November 2021, Australia experienced cooler temperatures over land, but above-average sea surface temperatures in the waters off northern Australia. This pattern set up the zone of strongest temperature contrasts over the continent, which led to a persistent jet stream there.

In November 2020, Australia was relatively warm both over land and on the sea surface to the north. This meant that the strongest temperature contrasts (and the jet stream) now sat at the junction between the warm continent and cooler Southern Ocean.

But wait, there’s more

So why were temperatures over Australia so different?

To help answer this question we shifted our analysis from the monthly timescale to the daily timescale. That’s because atmospheric features such as jet streams vary strongly from day to day.

We found for about the first three weeks of November 2021, a large low-pressure system – also known as a trough – was sitting south of Australia. It pumped cold air onto the continent, cooling it down.

This maximised the north-south temperature difference between the warm sea surface temperatures to the north of Australia and the cool of the continent. And as we know, this aided the development of the jet stream over Australia.

In November 2020, the continent started off relatively warm. And for a large portion of the month, there was a large high-pressure system over Australia, pulling warmer air from the tropics over the continent.

This system would have also promoted clear skies over Australia and enhanced heating coming from the sun, contributing to the warm Australian continent in November 2020.

More puzzle pieces to fit

November 2020’s hot, dry conditions were not the only time a climate driver has failed to bring the conditions some had anticipated. Just last year El Niño did not deliver expected dry conditions, leaving many people scratching their heads.

Climate drivers play an important role in shaping rainfall. But they’re not the whole story. As our research shows, sometimes they are confounded by changes in weather patterns, which might mean that our expectations of a wet month or season don’t always play out.

When it comes to Australia’s climate puzzle, these findings show there’s more to understand about the role of weather.

Carly Tozer, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO and James Risbey, Researcher, Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO

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

A surprising technique has helped scientists observe how Earth’s oceans are changing, and it’s not using specialized robots or artificial intelligence. It’s tagging seals.

Several species of seals live around and on Antarctica and regularly dive more than 100 meters in search of their next meal. These seals are experts at swimming through the vigorous ocean currents that make up the Southern Ocean. Their tolerance for deep waters and ability to navigate rough currents make these adventurous creatures the perfect research assistants to help oceanographers like my colleagues and me study the Southern Ocean.

Seal sensors

Researchers have been attaching tags to the foreheads of seals for the past two decades to collect data in remote and inaccessible regions. A researcher tags the seal during mating season, when the marine mammal comes to shore to rest, and the tag remains attached to the seal for a year.

A researcher glues the tag to the seal’s head – tagging seals does not affect their behavior. The tag detaches after the seal molts and sheds its fur for a new coat each year.

The tag collects data while the seal dives and transmits its location and the scientific data back to researchers via satellite when the seal surfaces for air.

First proposed in 2003, seal tagging has grown into an international collaboration with rigorous sensor accuracy standards and broad data sharing. Advances in satellite technology now allow scientists to have near-instant access to the data collected by a seal.

New scientific discoveries aided by seals

The tags attached to seals typically carry pressure, temperature and salinity sensors, all properties used to assess the ocean’s rising temperatures and changing currents. The sensors also often contain chlorophyll fluorometers, which can provide data about the water’s phytoplankton concentration.

Phytoplankton are tiny organisms that form the base of the oceanic food web. Their presence often means that animals such as fish and seals are around.

The seal sensors can also tell researchers about the effects of climate change around Antarctica. Approximately 150 billion tons of ice melts from Antarctica every year, contributing to global sea-level rise. This melting is driven by warm water carried to the ice shelves by oceanic currents.

With the data collected by seals, oceanographers have described some of the physical pathways this warm water travels to reach ice shelves and how currents transport the resulting melted ice away from glaciers.

Seals regularly dive under sea ice and near glacier ice shelves. These regions are challenging, and can even be dangerous, to sample with traditional oceanographic methods.

Across the open Southern Ocean, away from the Antarctic coast, seal data has also shed light on another pathway causing ocean warming. Excess heat from the atmosphere moves from the ocean surface, which is in contact with the atmosphere, down to the interior ocean in highly localized regions. In these areas, heat moves into the deep ocean, where it can’t be dissipated out through the atmosphere.

The ocean stores most of the heat energy put into the atmosphere from human activity. So, understanding how this heat moves around helps researchers monitor oceans around the globe.

Seal Behaviour shaped by ocean physics

The seal data also provides marine biologists with information about the seals themselves. Scientists can determine where seals look for food. Some regions, called fronts, are hot spots for elephant seals to hunt for food.

In fronts, the ocean’s circulation creates turbulence and mixes water in a way that brings nutrients up to the ocean’s surface, where phytoplankton can use them. As a result, fronts can have phytoplankton blooms, which attract fish and seals.

Scientists use the tag data to see how seals are adapting to a changing climate and warming ocean. In the short term, seals may benefit from more ice melt around the Antarctic continent, as they tend to find more food in coastal areas with holes in the ice. Rising subsurface ocean temperatures, however, may change where their prey is and ultimately threaten seals’ ability to thrive.

Seals have helped scientists understand and observe some of the most remote regions on Earth. On a changing planet, seal tag data will continue to provide observations of their ocean environment, which has vital implications for the rest of Earth’s climate system.

Lilian Dove, Postdoctoral Fellow of Oceanography, Brown University

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