In 2022, humans produced an estimated 62 million tonnes of electronic waste – enough to fill more than 1.5 million garbage trucks. This was up 82% from 2010 and is expected to rise to 82 million tonnes in 2030.

This e-waste includes old laptops and phones, which contain precious materials such as gold. Less than one quarter of it is properly collected and recycled. But a new technique colleagues and I have developed to safely and sustainably extract gold from e-waste could help change that.

Our new gold-extraction technique, which we describe in a new paper published today in Nature Sustainability, could also make small-scale gold mining less poisonous for people – and the planet.

Soaring global demand

Gold has long played a crucial role in human life. It has been a form of currency and a medium for art and fashion for centuries. Gold is also essential in modern industries including the electronics, chemical manufacture and aerospace sectors.

But while global demand for this precious metal is soaring, mining it is harmful to the environment.

Deforestation and use of toxic chemicals are two such problems. In formal, large-scale mining, highly toxic cyanide is widely used to extract gold from ore. While cyanide can be degraded, its use can cause harm to wildlife, and tailings dams which store the toxic byproducts of mining operations pose a risk to the wider environment.

In small-scale and artisanal mining, mercury is used extensively to extract gold. In this practice, the gold reacts with mercury to form a dense amalgam that can be easily isolated. The gold is then recovered by heating the amalgam to vaporise the mercury.

Small-scale and artisanal mining is the largest source of mercury pollution on Earth, and the mercury emissions are dangerous to the miners and pollute the environment. New methods are required to reduce the impacts of gold mining.

A safer alternative

Our interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers has developed a new technique to extract gold from ore and e-waste. The aim was to provide a safer alternative to mercury and cyanide and reduce the health and environmental impacts of gold mining.

Many techniques have previously been reported for extracting gold from ore or e-waste, including mercury- and cyanide-free methods. However, many of these methods are limited in rate, yield, scale and cost. Often these methods also consider only one step in the entire gold recovery process, and recycling and waste management is often neglected.

In contrast, our approach considered sustainability throughout the whole process of gold extraction, recovery and refining. Our new leaching technology uses a chemical commonly used in water sanitation and pool chlorination: trichloroisocyanuric acid.

When this widely available and low-cost chemical is activated with salt water, it can react with gold and convert it into a water-soluble form.

To recover the gold from the solution, we invented a sulphur-rich polymer sorbent. Polymer sorbents isolate a certain substance from a liquid or gas, and ours is made by joining a key building block (a monomer) together through a chain reaction.

Our polymer sorbent is interesting because it is derived from elemental sulphur: a low-cost and highly abundant feedstock. The petroleum sector generates more sulphur than it can use or sell, so our polymer synthesis is a new use for this underused resource.

Our polymer could selectively bind and remove gold from the solution, even when many other types of metals were present in the mixture.

The simple leaching and recovery methods were demonstrated on ore, circuit boards from obsolete computers and scientific waste. Importantly, we also developed methods to regenerate and recycle both the leaching chemical and the polymer sorbent. We also established methods to purify and recycle the water used in the process.

In developing the recyclable polymer sorbent, we invented some exciting new chemistry to make the polymer using light, and then “un-make” the sorbent after it bound gold. This recycling method converted the polymer back to its original monomer building block and separated it from the gold.

The recovered monomer could then be re-made into the gold-binding polymer: an important demonstration of how the process is aligned with a circular economy.

A long and complex road ahead

In future work, we plan to collaborate with industry, government and not-for-profit groups to test our method in small-scale mining operations. Our long-term aim is to provide a robust and safe method for extracting gold, eliminating the need for highly toxic chemicals such as cyanide and mercury.

There will be many challenges to overcome including scaling up the production of the polymer sorbent and the chemical recycling processes. For uptake, we also need to ensure that the rate, yield and cost are competitive with more traditional methods of gold mining. Our preliminary results are encouraging. But there is still a long and complex road ahead before our new techniques replace cyanide and mercury.

Our broader motivation is to support the livelihood of the millions of artisanal and small-scale miners that rely on mercury to recover gold.

They typically operate in remote and rural regions with few other economic opportunities. Our goal is to support these miners economically while offering safer alternatives to mercury. Likewise, the rise of “urban mining” and e-waste recycling would benefit from safer and operationally simple methods for precious metal recovery.

Success in recovering gold from e-waste will also reduce the need for primary mining and therefore lessen its environmental impact.

Justin M. Chalker, Professor of Chemistry, Flinders University

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

How often do you mow your lawn in winter? That may seem like an odd way to start a conversation about drought. But the answer helps explain why our current drought has not broken, despite recent rain – and why spring lamb may be more expensive this year.

Southern Australia has been short of rain for 16 months. Western Victoria, the agricultural regions of South Australia (including Adelaide) and even parts of western Tasmania are suffering record dry conditions. Those rainfall measurements began in 1900 (126 years ago).

Fewer and less intense rain-bearing weather systems have been crossing the southern coastline since February 2024, compared to normal. Put simply, the land has not received enough big dumps of rain.

But June has finally brought rain to some drought-affected regions. There’s even an emerald green tinge to the fields in certain agricultural areas. But it’s now too cold for plants to really grow fast, meaning farmers will be carting hay and buying extra feed for livestock until the weather warms in spring.

Too little, too late

This month, some areas received good rainfall – including places near Melbourne and, to a lesser degree, Adelaide. City people may be forgiven for thinking the drought has broken and farmers are rejoicing. But drought is not that simple.

Unfortunately, the rainfall was inconsistent, especially further inland. The coastal deluge in parts of southern Australia in early June didn’t extend far north. Traditionally, the start of the winter crop-growing season is marked by 25mm of rain over three days – a so-called “autumn break”. But many areas didn’t receive the break this year.

The lack of rain (meteorological drought) compounded the lack of water in the soil for crops and pasture (agricultural drought). Parts of Western Australia, SA, Victoria, Tasmania and southern New South Wales had little moisture left in their soils. So some rain is quickly soaked up as it drains into deeper soils.

To make matters worse, autumn was the warmest on record for southern Australia, following its second-warmest summer on record. This can increase the “thirst” of the atmosphere, meaning any water on the surface is more likely to evaporate. Recent thirsty droughts, such as the 2017–19 Tinderbox Drought in NSW, were particularly hard-hitting.

Some areas may have experienced “flash drought”, which is when the landscape and vegetation dry up far quicker than you would expect from the lack of rain alone. By May, areas of significantly elevated evaporative stress were present in southeastern SA, Victoria, southern NSW and northern Tasmania.

In late May and early June, and again this week, there have been winter dust storms in SA. Such dust storms are a bad sign of how dry the ground has become.

Some regions no longer have enough water to fill rivers and dams (hydrological drought). Water restrictions have been introduced in parts of southwest Victoria and Tasmania. The bureau’s streamflow forecast does not look promising.

A green drought

Remember that lawn mowing analogy? The winter chill has already set in across the south. This means it’s simply too cold for any vigorous new grass growth, and why you are not mowing your lawn very often at the moment.

Cool temperatures, rather than just low rainfall, also limit pasture growth. While from a distance the rain has added an emerald sheen to some of the landscape, it’s often just a green tinge. Up close, it’s clear there is very limited new growth.

Rather than abundant and vigorous new shoots, there’s just a little bit of green returning to surviving grasses. This means there’s very limited feed for livestock. To make matters worse, sometimes the green comes from better-adapted winter weeds.

There will be a lot of hay carting, regardless of rainfall, until spring when the soils start to warm up once again and new growth returns. This all adds up to fewer stock kept in paddocks or a big extra cost in time and money for farmers – and ultimately, a more expensive spring lamb barbecue.

Is this climate change?

Southern Australia (southern WA, SA, Tasmania, Victoria and southern NSW) used to experience almost weekly rain events in autumn and early winter. Cold fronts and deep low-pressure systems rolling in from the west brought the bulk of the rainfall.

Now there is a far more sporadic pattern in these regions. Rainfall in the April to October crop and pasture growing season has declined by around 10–20% since the middle of last century. The strongest drying trend is evident during the crucial months between April and July.

Further reductions in southern growing season rainfall are expected by the end of this century, especially in southwestern Australia. Southeastern regions, including southern Victoria, parts of SA and northern Tasmania, also show a consistent drying trend, with a greater time spent in drought every decade.

Drought is complex. Just because it’s raining doesn’t always mean it has rained enough, or at the right time, or in the right place. To make matters worse, a green drought can even deceive us into thinking everything is fine.

Breaking the meteorological drought will require consistent rainfall over several months. Breaking the agricultural drought will also require more warmth in the soils. Outlooks suggest we may have to wait for spring.

This article includes scientific contributions from David Jones and Pandora Hope from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Andrew B. Watkins, Associate research scientist, School of Earth, Atmopshere & Environment, Monash University; Ailie Gallant, Associate Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Weather of the 21st Century, Monash University, and Pallavi Goswami, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Atmospheric Science, Monash University

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

In just four days, one-third of the population of Tuvalu entered a ballot for a new permanent visa to Australia.

This world-first visa will enable up to 280 Tuvaluans to move permanently to Australia each year, from a current population of about 10,000. The visa is open to anyone who wants to work, study or live in Australia. Unlike other visa schemes for Pacific peoples, a job offer in Australia is not required.

While the visa itself doesn’t mention climate change, the treaty that created it is framed in the context of the “existential threat posed by climate change”. That’s why when it was announced, I described it as the world’s first bilateral agreement on climate mobility.

The Australian government, too, has called it “the first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world, providing a pathway for mobility with dignity as climate impacts worsen”.

The high number of ballot applications may come as a surprise to many, especially given there were multiple concerns within Tuvalu when the treaty was first announced. Even so, some analysts predicted all Tuvaluans would apply eventually, to keep their options open.

Grabbing the chance

The visa highlights the importance of creating opportunities for people to move in the context of climate change and disasters. The dangers of rising sea levels are clearly apparent, including coastal flooding, storm damage and water supplies. But there is a lot more at play here.

For many, especially young families, this will be seen as a chance for education and skills training in Australia. Giving people choices about if, when and where they move is empowering and enables them to make informed decisions about their own lives.

For the government of Tuvalu, the new visa is also about shoring up the economy. Migration is now a structural component of many Pacific countries’ economies.

The money migrants send back to their home countries to support their families and communities is known as remittances. In 2023, remittances comprised 28% of GDP in Samoa and nearly 42% of GDP in Tonga – the highest in the world. Currently, Tuvalu sits at 3.2%.

A long time coming

Well before climate change became an issue of concern, Tuvalu had been lobbying Australia for special visa pathways. Demographic pressures, combined with limited livelihood and educational opportunities, made it a live policy issue throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. In 1984, a review of Australia’s foreign aid program suggested improved migration opportunities for Tuvaluans may be the most useful form of assistance.

By the early 2000s, the focus had shifted to the existential threats posed by climate change. In 2006, as then-shadow environment minister, Anthony Albanese released a policy discussion paper called Our Drowning Neighbours. It proposed that Australia create Pacific migration pathways as part of a neighbourly response. In 2009, a spokesperson for Penny Wong, then minister for climate change, stated permanent migration might eventually be the only option for some Pacific peoples.

When combined with other Pacific pathways to Australia and New Zealand, nearly 4% of the population could migrate each year. This is “an extraordinarily high level”, according to one expert. Within a decade, close to 40% of the population could have moved – although some people may return home or go backwards and forwards.

How will the new arrivals be received?

The real test of the new visa’s success will be how people are treated when they arrive in Australia.

Will they be helped to adjust to life here, or will they feel isolated and shut out? Will they be able to find work and training, or will they find themselves in insecure and uncertain circumstances? Will they feel a loss of cultural connection, or will they be able to maintain cultural traditions within the growing Tuvaluan diaspora?

Ensuring sound and culturally appropriate settlement services are in place will be crucial. These would ideally be co-developed with members of the Tuvaluan community, to “centralise Tuvaluan culture and values, in order to ensure ongoing dialogue and trust”.

It has been suggested by experts that a “liaison officer with Tuvaluan cultural expertise and language skills could assist in facilitating activities such as post-arrival programs”, for instance.

Learning from experience

There are also many important lessons to be learned from the migration of Tuvaluans to New Zealand, to reduce the risk of newcomers experiencing economic and social hardship.

Ongoing monitoring and refinement of the scheme will also be key. It should involve the Tuvaluan diaspora, communities back in Tuvalu, service providers in Australia, as well as federal, state/territory and local governments.

By freeing up resources and alleviating stress on what is already a fragile atoll environment, migration may enable some people to remain in Tuvalu for longer, supported by remittances and extended family networks abroad.

As some experts have suggested, money sent home from overseas could be used to make families less vulnerable to climate change. It might help them buy rainwater tanks or small boats, or improve internet and other communications. Remittances are also beneficial when they are invested in services that lift the level of education of children or boost social capital.

Delaying a mass exodus

It is difficult to know when a tipping point might be reached. For instance, some have warned that if too few people remain in Tuvalu, this could constrain development by limiting the availability of labour and skills. A former president of Kiribati, Teburoro Tito, once told me migration was “a double-edged sword”. While it could help people secure employment overseas and remit money, “the local economy, the local setup, also has to have enough skilled people” – otherwise it’s counterproductive.

With visas capped at 280 a year – and scope to adjust the numbers if concerns arise – we are still a long way from that point. Right now, the new visa provides a safety net to ensure people have choices about how they respond to climate change. With the visa ballot open until July 18, many more people may yet apply.

Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney

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

On the question of gas, Victoria’s government faces pressure from many directions.

The Bass Strait wells supplying Australia’s most gas-dependent state are running dry. Gas prices shot up in 2020 and have stayed high. Natural gas is mainly methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

But weaning more than two million gas-using households off the fossil fuel is hard. The gas lobby pushed back against proposed changes, as did the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, while resistance from some stakeholders led to a backdown on plans to phase out gas cooktops.

That’s why the government’s decision to introduce most of the proposed changes is good news. Early plans to require dead gas heaters to be replaced with electric are gone for private housing. But from 2027, new homes have to be all-electric, while landlords will have to replace defunct gas appliances with electric and have ceiling insulation. The move will cut energy bills and accelerate the shift away from gas.

How did we get here?

This week’s announcement comes after lengthy consultation on changes first proposed in 2021.

Some early responses have been supportive, though the gas industry isn’t happy, claiming the reforms will restrict customer choice and cost households more.

Premier Jacinta Allan pitched the announcement as a way to reserve dwindling and more expensive gas supplies for industry, stating:

by 2029, these reforms will unlock just under 12 petajoules of gas every year […] by 2035, they’ll deliver 44 PJ annually – enough to meet 85% of Victoria’s forecast industrial demand.

What are the main changes?

From January 2027, all newly built homes have to be all-electric. This closes a loophole in existing rules where the all-electric rule only applied to new houses requiring a planning permit.

When a gas hot water system reaches end of life in an existing house, it will have to be replaced with an efficient electric alternative from March 2027.

The news is even better for the rental sector.

In 2021, the state government introduced minimum requirements for rentals. These are now being upgraded to include improved energy efficiency.

From March 2027, new energy efficiency rules will apply to rentals and public housing, including:

• gas hot water systems and heaters must be replaced with efficient heat pumps at end of life

• at the start of a new lease, the rental must have draught proofing, ceiling insulation installed with a minimum R5.0 rating when there is no insulation already, and an efficient electric cooling system in the main living area.

To help households transition, all upgrades are covered under the Victorian Energy Upgrades program which will help reduce capital costs.

These plans are welcome. They will cut household energy bills and help meet wider sustainability goals.

As any Victorian who has sweltered over summer or frozen through winter knows, many of the state’s houses are not great on thermal performance. Most existing homes were built before the introduction of minimum standards in the early 2000s.

Older homes are also more likely to present health risks such as mould and damp.

Trade-offs proved necessary

During the consultation period, the Victorian government floated even more ambitious plans, such as requiring all households to replace dead gas heaters with efficient electric options.

The government originally explored making electric induction cooktops mandatory in new builds. These plans didn’t get through, potentially because of the attachment some householders feel to their gas heaters and cooktops, as we found in our research.

The state government looks to have decided not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. Better to make significant improvements even with some trade-offs.

When the market isn’t enough

Policymakers usually prefer the market to find solutions rather than requiring change through regulations.

This isn’t always possible. Here, Victoria’s gas supply challenges, subpar housing stock and the pressing need to act on climate change means regulatory nudges are needed.

Could the government’s changes trigger a backlash? It’s possible, especially if the changes are framed as an added cost to landlords and their tenants. All-electric households are cheaper to run, but it costs money upfront to replace appliances. Waiting until an appliance’s end of life and providing upgrade subsidies will help reduce the cost impact. High gas-users save more – a Melbourne household quitting gas would save almost A$14,000 over ten years.

18 months until launch

The first of these changes will be in place in just 18 months.

Schemes such as this have to be structured carefully. To ensure they work as well as possible for renters in particular, we suggest measures to avoid unintended consequences, such as means-testing any subsidy schemes to avoid leaving out lower-income households.

We found many householders cannot access reliable information on retrofits and don’t always trust the skills and information given by tradespeople. This is why it’s vital to have accessible, independent, accurate and trustworthy support in understanding how best to replace gas appliances with electric – and how to assess tradie qualifications.

The government’s decision to exempt rentals with existing ceiling insulation means rentals with old or compacted insulation will miss out.

Victoria should instead look to the Australian Capital Territory, which mandates installation of new R5.0 insulation if existing insulation isn’t at least R2.

The government must also ensure renters don’t carry the upfront cost of the upgrades in higher rent. In Sweden, rent increases linked to energy efficiency upgrades were banned.

For the public to take to these changes, the government must ensure communication is clear and early and that any financial support is adequate and targeted to those most in need.

Trivess Moore, Associate Professor in Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University; Nicola Willand, Associate Professor in Housing, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, and Sarah Robertson, Research Fellow in Human Geography, RMIT University

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

How do you measure climate change? One way is by recording temperatures in different places over a long period of time. While this works well, natural variation can make it harder to see longer-term trends.

But another approach can give us a very clear sense of what’s going on: track how much heat enters Earth’s atmosphere and how much heat leaves. This is Earth’s energy budget, and it’s now well and truly out of balance.

Our recent research found this imbalance has more than doubled over the last 20 years. Other researchers have come to the same conclusions. This imbalance is now substantially more than climate models have suggested.

In the mid-2000s, the energy imbalance was about 0.6 watts per square metre (W/m2) on average. In recent years, the average was about 1.3 W/m2. This means the rate at which energy is accumulating near the planet’s surface has doubled.

These findings suggest climate change might well accelerate in the coming years. Worse still, this worrying imbalance is emerging even as funding uncertainty in the United States threatens our ability to track the flows of heat.

Energy in, energy out

Earth’s energy budget functions a bit like your bank account, where money comes in and money goes out. If you reduce your spending, you’ll build up cash in your account. Here, energy is the currency.

Life on Earth depends on a balance between heat coming in from the Sun and heat leaving. This balance is tipping to one side.

Solar energy hits Earth and warms it. The atmosphere’s heat-trapping greenhouse gases keep some of this energy.

But the burning of coal, oil and gas has now added more than two trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These trap more and more heat, preventing it from leaving.

Some of this extra heat is warming the land or melting sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. But this is a tiny fraction. Fully 90% has gone into the oceans due to their huge heat capacity.

Earth naturally sheds heat in several ways. One way is by reflecting incoming heat off of clouds, snow and ice and back out to space. Infrared radiation is also emitted back to space.

From the beginning of human civilisation up until just a century ago, the average surface temperature was about 14°C. The accumulating energy imbalance has now pushed average temperatures 1.3-1.5°C higher.

Tracking faster than the models

Scientists keep track of the energy budget in two ways.

First, we can directly measure the heat coming from the Sun and going back out to space, using the sensitive radiometers on monitoring satellites. This dataset and its predecessors date back to the late 1980s.

Second, we can accurately track the build-up of heat in the oceans and atmosphere by taking temperature readings. Thousands of robotic floats have monitored temperatures in the world’s oceans since the 1990s.

Both methods show the energy imbalance has grown rapidly.

The doubling of the energy imbalance has come as a shock, because the sophisticated climate models we use largely didn’t predict such a large and rapid change.

Typically, the models forecast less than half of the change we’re seeing in the real world.

Why has it changed so fast?

We don’t yet have a full explanation. But new research suggests changes in clouds is a big factor.

Clouds have a cooling effect overall. But the area covered by highly reflective white clouds has shrunk, while the area of jumbled, less reflective clouds has grown.

It isn’t clear why the clouds are changing. One possible factor could be the consequences of successful efforts to reduce sulfur in shipping fuel from 2020, as burning the dirtier fuel may have had a brightening effect on clouds. However, the accelerating energy budget imbalance began before this change.

Natural fluctuations in the climate system such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation might also be playing a role. Finally – and most worryingly – the cloud changes might be part of a trend caused by global warming itself, that is, a positive feedback on climate change.

What does this mean?

These findings suggest recent extremely hot years are not one-offs but may reflect a strengthening of warming over the coming decade or longer.

This will mean a higher chance of more intense climate impacts from searing heatwaves, droughts and extreme rains on land, and more intense and long lasting marine heatwaves.

This imbalance may lead to worse longer-term consequences. New research shows the only climate models coming close to simulating real world measurements are those with a higher “climate sensitivity”. That means these models predict more severe warming beyond the next few decades in scenarios where emissions are not rapidly reduced.

We don’t know yet whether other factors are at play, however. It’s still too early to definitively say we are on a high-sensitivity trajectory.

Our eyes in the sky

We’ve known the solution for a long time: stop the routine burning of fossil fuels and phase out human activities causing emissions such as deforestation.

Keeping accurate records over long periods of time is essential if we are to spot unexpected changes.

Satellites, in particular, are our advance warning system, telling us about heat storage changes roughly a decade before other methods.

But funding cuts and drastic priority shifts in the United States may threaten essential satellite climate monitoring.

Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney; Benoit Meyssignac, Associate Research Scientist in Climate Science, Université de Toulouse, and Thorsten Mauritsen, Professor of Climate Science, Stockholm University

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

A new financial year starts on July 1. For Australia’s large companies, that means new rules on climate-related disclosures come into force.

These requirements are the culmination of years of planning to ensure companies disclose climate-related risks and opportunities for their business. The Albanese government passed the legislation in September 2024.

To be clear, the time to prepare is gone. From July 1, large public companies and financial institutions must gather significant amounts of information and data to include in a new year-end sustainability report. Collecting all this information is one challenge; another is finding the specialists across many fields to compile the reports.

This is a huge change for corporate Australia. It is a whole new reporting regime, supported by volumes of technical detail. Directors will need to sign off on the report. Investors must also upskill to make sense of the disclosures. Neither of these outcomes is assured.

And it is not clear the increased disclosures will do anything to reduce actual emissions.

Climate impacts in focus

Though it’s called a sustainability report, in reality it is very much focused on climate-related disclosures. If you go looking for wider sustainability matters such as social impact, environmental performance and ethical choices, you will be disappointed.

Markets and ultimately the millions of Australians who hold shares will be watching to find out if:

1. Corporate Australia is prepared for the transition to this new regulatory regime

2. End users of the new reports are equipped to decipher and understand the huge amount of additional data.

My research suggests the answer to both questions is a resounding no.

Starting with the big end of town

The government has wisely adopted a three-year transition for the new reporting regime, with only the big end of town facing the music this year. Think the big four banks, big supermarkets and large miners.

Some large corporations have been publishing sustainability reports for years. National Australia Bank, for example, published its first one in 2017.

Over the next two years, medium and then smaller companies will join the fold. By 2027–28, companies will be required to report if they meet two of three thresholds: consolidated revenue of A$50 million, or consolidated gross assets of $25 million, or more than 100 employees.

The reasoning behind the transition is they have the benefit of watching how the larger companies adapt to the new laws.

What has to be disclosed?

Reporting entities must include:

– climate statements for the year plus any notes, and

– the directors’ declaration about these statements and notes

This sounds rather simple and straightforward, but it is not.

Arriving at a completed sustainability report involves an understanding of two detailed documents: the international standards and a new Australian Accounting Sustainability Standard.

The Australian standards are mandatory and based on the international rules. In broad terms, companies will be required to gather and disclose information on many micro-level issues, which are grouped into four categories. These are: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.

Some issues will straddle all four categories.

For example, the physical risk of climate change (floods, uninsurable properties, supply chain disruption) can be considered at the board level and in dedicated climate committees (goverance); in planning for alternative supply chains in a climate transition plan (strategy); in risk assessment (risk management) and in data prediction of the costs involved (metrics and targets).

The big challenge for corporate Australia is that the people, expertise and time required to deliver a sustainability report are in short supply.

More than a quarter of ASX 200 companies do not use the international standards. This means they are not positioned to adapt to the new reporting regime. Even for those that have been early adopters, there has been selective use of the four categories.

For the smaller companies that will follow the first reporting year, the stakes are high.

More information is not always better

The amount of new information (much of it technical) to be disclosed will be overwhelming for the producers of the sustainability reports – and for the readers, whether they are institutional or mum-and-dad investors.

The cost of collecting and making sense of the data required to meet detailed reporting requirements will lead to many companies being swamped in data. More data collected does not equal better data.

Deciding what data to collect and then making sense of it so it supports disclosures will be a major headache for most companies.

The new climate disclosure rules will have a profound impact on corporate Australia. There is a significant gap in capacity and capability to meet the requirements of the new reporting regime. And there is a corresponding need to educate the readers of these new reports to make effective use of the disclosed information.

Rachel Baird, Senior Lecturer , University of Tasmania

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

Millions of birds are killed by power lines each year. Sometimes they collide with the lines when flying and are either electrocuted or fatally injured. Other times they are electrocuted when perching on power poles.

Power line collisions are one of the leading causes of injury and death for large birds of prey. In Tasmania, an endangered population of wedge-tailed eagles lost 110 individuals to power lines between 2017 and 2023.

New research I led, the first of its kind in Australia, used GPS tracking data to predict which power lines were most dangerous for these eagles.

We hope the findings will help protect birds and other wildlife from overhead wires as electricity networks expand.

Power lines and birds: a fatal mix

Overhead power lines span more than 90 million kilometres of our planet. The network keeps growing as demand for electricity rises and renewable energy projects expand into new areas.

In the United States alone, between 12 and 64 million birds are estimated to be killed by power lines each year. These deaths can damage populations of some species.

Birds can also be killed when perched on poles – for example, if they stretch their wings and connect two energised parts.

The economic costs can be considerable – disrupting electricity services, causing fires and damaging infrastructure.

Energy companies can reduce the risks through various measures. They include attaching objects to power lines to make them more visible to birds, and redesigning poles to reduce the likelihood of electrocution.

But these solutions can be expensive, and challenging to implement on a large scale. So, prioritising the riskiest power lines is the most cost-effective solution.

The presence of bird carcasses has traditionally been used as a way to identify high-risk power lines. But this approach can give a biased picture, because people are more likely to find dead birds in accessible, less vegetated areas.

New research by my colleagues and I explores a different approach.

Tracking Tasmania’s wedgies

We used GPS tracking of animal movements to predict which power lines were most dangerous for Tasmania’s wedge-tailed eagles.

GPS tracking can record a bird’s location, altitude and speed – as frequently as every few seconds. This detailed information can show how birds behave around power lines, helping identify when and where they’re most at risk.

In 2017, my colleagues and I attached lightweight GPS trackers to 23 Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles, then analysed six years of tracking data. We identified more than 9,400 power line crossings at risky altitudes.

We then linked these crossings to different landscape features. This allowed us to build a model predicting where eagles are most likely to cross power lines at dangerous heights across Tasmania.

Power line crossings were most likely at or near open land, forest edges, rural residential developments, wet forest and freshwater sources. Risky crossings peaked in autumn and winter.

Almost half of known collisions occurred on the 20% of Tasmania’s power line network with the highest risk.

Importantly, we tested our predictions against locations where eagles had collided with power lines. The model accurately predicted many of these collision sites, confirming that areas with more low-flying eagle activity carry a greater risk of collisions.

This means our model can not only pick up on known hotspots, but can reveal risky areas that would be missed if carcass records were used exclusively to identify risk. It also means dangerous power lines can be identified before birds have died.

A powerful new tool

Our research is part of a growing number of studies examining animal movement to improve wildlife management.

Risky animal behaviours have been monitored using GPS trackers and then used to inform models predicting the risk of wildlife interactions with road vehicles, wind turbines and aircraft.

Recently, GPS tracking data was used in Europe, North Africa and North America to map and reduce wildlife risks around power lines.

Like ours, these studies can help guide where devices should be attached to lines and inform where new lines are built.

GPS tracking data offers a powerful tool to guide the sustainable design of power lines, target mitigation efforts, and make our expanding energy infrastructure safer for wildlife.

James Pay, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania

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

In a new study published today in Science Advances, my colleagues and I have uncovered the earliest evidence of rice in the Pacific Islands – at an ancient cave site on Guam in the Mariana Islands of western Micronesia.

The domesticated rice was transported by the first islanders, who sailed 2,300 kilometres of open ocean from the Philippines about 3,500 years ago.

The discovery settles long-standing academic debates and satisfies decades of curiosity about the origins and lifestyles of early Pacific peoples.

The case of the Marianas, located more than 2,000km east of the Philippines and northeast of Indonesia, is especially intriguing. These islands were the first places in Remote Oceania reached by anyone, in this case inhabited for the first time by Malayo-Polynesian-speaking populations from islands in Southeast Asia.

For nearly two decades, scholars debated the timing and the overseas source of these first islanders, the ancestors of today’s Chamorro people. How did they come to Guam and the Marianas?

Archaeological research has confirmed settlement in the Mariana Islands 3,500 years ago at several sites in Guam, Tinian and Saipan.

In 2020, the first ancient DNA analysis from Guam confirmed what archaeology and linguistics had suggested: the early settlers came from central or northern Philippines. Further ancestral links trace them back to Taiwan, the homeland of both their language and their genetics.

A well-planned journey with rice onboard

Was this epic voyage intentional or accidental? What food source allowed these early seafarers to survive?

Today, Pacific islanders rely mostly on breadfruit, banana, coconut, taro and yams. Rice, though a staple food in ancient and modern Asian societies, is challenging to grow in the Pacific due to environmental constraints, including soil type, rainfall and terrain.

Rice was originally domesticated in central China about 9,000 years ago and was spread by Neolithic farming communities as they migrated to new regions. One of the most remarkable of these expansions began in coastal southern China, moved to Taiwan, and spread through the islands of Southeast Asia into the Pacific.

The migration laid the foundations of the Austronesian world, which today comprises nearly 400 million individuals dispersed across an expansive area stretching from Taiwan to New Zealand, and from Madagascar to Easter Island.

For more than a decade, we searched for evidence of early rice in open archaeological sites across the Mariana Islands, but found nothing conclusive.

This study marks the first clear evidence of ancient rice in the Pacific Islands. It also confirms renowned American linguist Robert Blust’s hypothesis that the earliest Chamorros brought cultivated plants with them, including rice.

How we identified the rice

Our research took us to Ritidian Beach Cave in Guam. To confirm what we found in the cave were rice remains, we used phytolith analysis. Phytoliths are microscopic silica structures formed in plant cells that persist long after the plant has decayed.

Once our initial results confirmed the presence of rice, a more detailed analysis revealed we had found the traces of rice husks preserved on the surfaces of ancient earthenware pottery.

Next, we used detailed microscopic analysis to figure out whether these husks had been mixed into the clay to keep it from cracking when it dried (a tempering technique commonly used by ancient potters) or had arrived by other means. We also analysed the sediment to rule out that the husks were deposited at the site later than the pottery.

Our findings showed the rice husks were not used for manufacturing the pottery. Rather, they came from a separate, deliberate activity using the finished pottery bowls.

Ritual use in sacred caves?

The setting of the discovery – a beach cave – gives us another interpretive perspective.

In Chamorro traditions, caves are sacred places for important spiritual practices.

According to records of 1521 through 1602, the Chamorro people in the Marianas grew rice in limited amounts and consumed it only sparingly, reserved for special occasions and critical life events, such as the impending death of a loved one. Rice became more common after the intensive Spanish colonial period, after 1668.

In this context, the ancient islanders more likely used rice during ceremonial practices in or around caves, rather than as a staple food for daily cooking or agriculture.

One of the greatest journeys in human history

This study provides strong evidence that the first long-distance ocean crossings into the Pacific were not accidental. People carefully planned the voyages. Early seafarers brought with them not only the tools of survival but also their symbolic and culturally meaningful plants, such as rice.

They were equipped, prepared and resolute, completing one of the most extraordinary voyages in the history of humanity.

Hsiao-chun Hung, Senior Research Fellow, School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University

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

Pet-keeping is often promoted for the benefits it brings humans. A close association with another animal can provide us with a sense of purpose and a daily dose of joy. It can aid our health, make us more conscientious and even help us form relationships with other humans.

But the situation is perhaps not as rosy for the animal itself. Domesticated animals often live longer than their free-living counterparts, but the quality of those lives can be compromised. Pets can be fed processed foods that can lead to obesity. Many are denied a sexual life and experience of parenthood. Exercise can be limited, isolation is common and boredom must be endured.

In the worst cases, pets suffer due to selective breeding practices, physical abuse and unethical commercial breeding.

Is this the best life for the species we feel closest to? This question was raised for me when I heard the story of Valerie, the dachshund recaptured in April this year after almost 18 months living on her own on South Australia’s Karta Pintingga/Kangaroo Island.

Valerie: the story that captivated a nation

Valerie, a miniature dachshund, escaped into the bush during a camping trip on Kangaroo Island in November 2023. After several days of searching, her bereft humans returned to their home in New South Wales. They assumed the tiny dog, who had lived her life as a “little princess”, was gone forever.

Fast-forward a year, and sightings were reported on the island of a small dog wearing a pink collar. Word spread and volunteers renewed the search. A wildlife rescue group designed a purpose-built trap, fitting it out with items from Valerie’s former home.

After several weeks, a remotely controlled gate clattered shut behind Valerie and she was caught.

Cue great celebrations. The searchers were triumphant and the family was delighted. Social media lit up. It was a canine reenactment of one of settler Australia’s enduring narratives: the lost child rescued from the hostile bush.

A dog’s-eye view

But imagine if Valerie’s story was told from a more dog-centred perspective. Valerie found herself alone in a strange place and took the opportunity to run away. She embarked on a new life in which she was responsible for herself and could exercise the intelligence inherited from her boar-hunting ancestors.

No longer required to be a good girl, Valerie applied her own judgement – that notorious dachshund “stubbornness” – to evade predators, fill her stomach and pass her days.

Some commentators assumed Valerie must have been fed by anonymous benefactors – reflecting a widely held view that pets have limited abilities.

Veterinary experts, however, said her diet likely consisted of small birds, mammals and reptiles she killed herself – as well as roadkill, other carrion and faeces.

Valerie was clearly good at life on the lam. Unlike the human competitors in the series Alone Australia, she did not waste away when left in an island wilderness. Instead, she gained 1.8 kg of muscle – and was so stocky she no longer fit the old harness her humans brought to collect her. She had literally outgrown her former bonds.

Valerie could have sought shelter with the island’s humans at any time, but chose not to. She had to be actively trapped. Once returned to her humans, she needed time to reacclimatise to life as a pet.

Not all missing pets thrive in the wild. But all this raises the question of whether Valerie’s rescue would be better understood as a forced return from a full life of freedom, to a diminished existence in captivity?

A long history of pets thriving in the wild

Other examples exist which suggest an animal’s best life can take place outside the constraints of being a pet.

Exotic parrots have fled lives in cages to form urban flocks. In the United States, 25 species initially imported as pets have set up self-sustaining, free-living populations across 23 states.

Or take the red-eared slider turtle, which is native to parts of the US and Mexico. It’s illegal to keep the turtles as pets in Australia, but some of those smuggled in have later been released into urban wetlands where they have established large and widespread populations.

Cats are perhaps the most notorious example of escaped pets thriving on their own in Australia. They numbers in the millions, in habitats from cities to the Simpson Desert to the Snowy Mountains, showing how little they need human assistance.

One mark of their success is their prodigious size. At up to 7kg, free-living cats can be more than twice the weight of the average domestic cat.

Around the world, exotic former companion mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and insects have all established populations large enough to pose problems for other species.

Rethinking animals as pets

Of course, I am not advocating that pets be released to the wild, creating new problems. But I do believe current pet-keeping practices are due for reconsideration.

A dramatic solution would be to take the animal out of the pet relationship. Social robots that look like seals and teddy bears are already available to welcome you home, mirror your emotions and offer up cuddles without the cost to other animals.

A less radical option is to rethink the idea of animals as “pets” and instead see them as equals.

Some people already enjoy these unforced bonds. Magpies, for example, are known to have strong allegiances with each other and are sometimes willing to extend those connections to humans in multi-species friendships.

As for Valerie, she did make “her little happy sounds” when reunited with her humans. But she might look back with nostalgia to her 529 days of freedom on Kangaroo Island.

Nancy Cushing, Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle

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

Moving people and things around the world by sea has a big climate impact. The shipping industry produces almost 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions – roughly the same as Germany – largely due to the movement of container ships, bulk carriers and tankers.

Under international rules, these emissions are not included in any nation’s greenhouse gas reporting. That means they often escape scrutiny.

Unlike cars, international shipping can’t shift to using low-emissions electricity – the batteries required are too big and heavy. So clean fuels must play a role.

A proposed shake-up of the global shipping industry would encourage the use of clean fuels and penalise shipping companies that stick to cheaper, more polluting fuels. Should it proceed, emissions from global shipping would be regulated for the first time.

Using our peer-reviewed modelling, we investigated how the changes might affect Australia’s largest export: iron ore.

What is the proposed carbon levy all about?

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is the United Nations body responsible for regulating international shipping. It recently approved a draft plan to tackle the shipping sector’s contribution to climate change through a type of “cap and trade” scheme.

The plan would involve setting a limit, or cap, on how much each shipping company can emit. Companies must then either buy credits or be penalised if they go over their limit. Companies that stay under their limit – for example, by using cleaner fuels – would earn credits, which they could then sell.

In this way, high-emitting shipping companies are penalised and low-emitting companies are rewarded.

Under the plan, the total limit for emissions from global shipping would fall each year. This increases the incentive for companies to switch to lower emission fuels and makes higher-emission fuels progressively more expensive to use.

The plan is scheduled to be adopted by the shipping industry in October this year and would begin in 2027.

Not all fuels are the same

The proposed change is particularly significant for Australia. As a remote island nation, our imports and exports are heavily reliant on massive ships. This is most important for our commodity exports – iron ore in particular.

Our recently published modelling estimated the emissions and financial impacts of various low-emission shipping options for Australia’s exports.

We estimated Australia’s commodity exports create about 34 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. This is about 8% of Australia’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s not included in Australia’s national reporting.

Using the same modelling, we then examined how the proposed new regulation would affect the cost of shipping Australia’s largest export, iron ore. We chose a common route from Port Hedland in Western Australia to Shanghai in China.

First, we looked at current fuel costs, as well as overall shipping costs measured per tonne of delivered ore. Shipping costs include both the fuel costs and the cost of the ships designed to use it. Then we estimated how much fuels and shipping might cost from 2030, assuming the proposed regulation has come into force.

We also examined three types of fuel.

The first was heavy fuel oil (HFO), one of the main fuels used in international shipping. It’s traditionally the cheapest shipping fuel and also has the highest greenhouse gas emissions.

The second was “blue” ammonia. This fuel is typically made from natural gas using a manufacturing process where the carbon in the natural gas is captured and stored. It has lower greenhouse gas emissions than heavy fuel oil, but it is not a “green” fuel.

Thirdly, we looked at “green” ammonia, which is produced using renewable energy. We examined two types of green ammonia - that produced using current technology, and “advanced” green ammonia, made using new technologies in development.

Is green ammonia an answer?

From about 2030, the overall cost of shipping powered by heavy fuel oil will start to rise significantly under the proposed regulation. That’s because shipping companies using this fuel must purchase credits from those using cleaner options.

Blue ammonia may then make it cheaper to ship iron ore from Australia to Asia. Users of this fuel could generate and sell credits that higher-emitting fuel users buy, offsetting some of the shipping costs associated with using blue ammonia.

But if international shipping is to reach the IMO’s goal of net-zero emissions by about 2050, this is very likely to require a green fuel.

However, green ammonia is more expensive than heavy fuel oil and blue ammonia with current technology. And our analysis found the proposed regulation – and associated subsidy – doesn’t make it the lowest cost shipping option from 2030 onwards either.

This is why technological innovation is important. CSIRO projections of the future costs of renewable energy and green-fuel manufacture suggest that, should technologies improve, green ammonia may compete on cost with heavy-fuel oil in the 2030s, even without subsidies.

If so, this zero-emission fuel could become the cheapest way to export Australian iron ore.

Looking ahead to net-zero

As our calculations show, a combination of regulation and innovation could help international shipping achieve its goal of net-zero emissions.

These fuels could be made in Australia, and potentially used by other industries such as rail, mining, road freight and even aviation.

Such an industry would therefore contribute significantly to the world’s emission-reduction goals, and could help Australia realise its ambition to become a major global exporter of green fuels and other green products.

Michael Brear, Director, Melbourne Energy Institute, The University of Melbourne; Gerhard (Gerry) F. Swiegers, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, University of Wollongong; Michael Leslie Johns, Professor of Chemical and Process Engineering, The University of Western Australia; Nguyen Cao, PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, and Rose Amal, Professor of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney

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

Bats are often cast as the unseen night-time stewards of nature, flitting through the dark to control pest insects, pollinate plants and disperse seeds. But behind their silent contributions lies a remarkable and underappreciated survival strategy: seasonal fattening.

Much like bears and squirrels, bats around the world bulk up to get through hard times – even in places where you might not expect it.

In a paper published today in Ecology Letters, we analysed data from bat studies around the world to understand how bats use body fat to survive seasonal challenges, whether it’s a freezing winter or a dry spell.

The surprising conclusion? Seasonal fattening is a global phenomenon in bats, not just limited to those in cold climates.

Even bats in the tropics, where it’s warm all year, store fat in anticipation of dry seasons when food becomes scarce. That’s a survival strategy that’s been largely overlooked. But it may be faltering as the climate changes, putting entire food webs at risk.

Climate shapes fattening strategies

We found bats in colder regions predictably gain more weight before winter.

But in warmer regions with highly seasonal rainfall, such as tropical savannas or monsoonal forests, bats also fatten up. In tropical areas, it’s not cold that’s the enemy, but the dry season, when flowers wither, insects vanish and energy is hard to come by.

The extent of fattening is impressive. Some species increased their body weight by more than 50%, which is a huge burden for flying animals that already use a lot of energy to move around. This highlights the delicate balancing act bats perform between storing energy and staying nimble in the air.

Sex matters, especially in the cold

The results also support the “thrifty females, frisky males” hypothesis.

In colder climates, female bats used their fat reserves more sparingly than males – a likely adaptation to ensure they have enough energy left to raise young when spring returns. Since females typically emerge from hibernation to raise their young, conserving fat through winter can directly benefit their reproductive success.

Interestingly, this sex-based difference vanished in warmer climates, where fat use by males and females was more similar, likely because more food is available in warmer climates. It’s another clue that climate patterns intricately shape behaviour and physiology.

Climate change is shifting the rules

Beyond the biology, our study points to a more sobering trend. Bats in warm regions appear to be increasing their fat stores over time. This could be an early warning sign of how climate change is affecting their survival.

Climate change isn’t just about rising temperatures. It’s also making seasons more unpredictable.

Bats may be storing more energy in advance of dry seasons that are becoming longer or harder to predict. That’s risky, because it means more foraging, more exposure to predators and potentially greater mortality.

The implications can ripple outward. Bats help regulate insect populations, fertilise crops and maintain healthy ecosystems. If their survival strategies falter, entire food webs could feel the effects.

Fat bats, fragile futures

Our study changes how we think about bats. They are not just passive victims of environmental change but active strategists, finely tuned to seasonal rhythms. Yet their ability to adapt has limits, and those limits are being tested by a rapidly changing world.

By understanding how bats respond to climate, we gain insights into broader ecosystem resilience. We also gain a deeper appreciation for one of nature’s quiet heroes – fattening up, flying through the night and holding ecosystems together, one wingbeat at a time.

Nicholas Wu, Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology, Murdoch University

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

The controversial extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project off Western Australia faces two legal challenges. Both raise significant concerns about the validity of government approvals. One could even seek an injunction, preventing federal environment minister Murray Watt from making a final decision.

The first battle is being fought along climate lines. Enormous amounts of greenhouse gases will be released when gas from the project is exported and burned overseas. The Friends of Australian Rock Art group now argues the then WA environment minister Reece Whitby should have taken this pollution into account when approving the extension in December.

The second concerns ancient Aboriginal rock art in the Murujuga National Park on the Burrup Peninsula. There’s evidence greenhouse gas emissions released during extraction of fossil fuels is damaging the artwork, and Traditional Owners are seeking a protection order.

The decision to grant the extension appears at odds with national heritage and state environment laws. Both cases will be a closely watched test of these legal protections.

What’s the North West Shelf approval about?

Approval for the North West Shelf gas processing plant in Karratha, WA, was to expire in 2030. Woodside Energy sought to extend the project to 2070.

The state government gave approval to the extension in December, and the federal government gave conditional approval last month.

Watt gave Woodside ten business days to respond to “strict conditions particularly relating to the impact of air emissions” on nearby rock art, but that deadline was not met. Woodside has been given more time to review the conditions.

Meanwhile, two legal challenges have been mounted.

The Friends of Rock Art case

Earlier this month, the group Friends of Australian Rock Art requested judicial review of the approval by Whitby.

Judicial review is where courts review government decisions to ensure they are lawful and fair. The case is yet to be heard in the WA Supreme Court.

The group argues the state failed to give proper regard to the climate impact of the proposal, as required under the WA Environment Protection Act.

Specifically, the group argues the approval did not fully examine the climate impacts of so-called “scope three” emissions. These occur when the exported gas is burned overseas.

Under WA state law, the minister must consider whether a proposal will have a significant effect on the environment. This is a broad requirement and the climate effects of a decision are relevant.

The WA Office of Environmental Protection makes this clear in a statement of objectives, which include minimising “the risk of environmental harm associated with climate change by reducing greenhouse gases as far as practicable”.

Guidelines published in November to help implement this objective set out that where scope three emissions are likely to exceed 100,000 tonnes a year, extra information must be provided to government. This includes “a summary of where the scope three emissions will be emitted (domestic or international), and whether they are or are reasonably likely to be subject to emission reduction requirements as scope 1 or 2 emissions”.

The guidelines further state that the EPA’s usual minimum expectation for proposals is for “deep, substantial and sustained emission reductions” this decade – with net zero no later than 2050, and reductions occurring along a linear trajectory (at minimum) from 2030.

Woodside has indicated the project extension would emit about 80 million tonnes of scope three emissions annually – about equal to the emissions from a small to medium-sized country.

Co-convener of the Friends group, Judith Hugo, said the minister did not give adequate regard to the guidelines and failed to consider the project’s full impact on the climate, as well as the nearby rock art.

While litigation on scope three emissions is relatively new, it is gaining traction globally. It has become an increasingly significant factor underlying corporate climate action and policy development.

2. The Traditional Owner case

Raelene Cooper is a Mardathoonera woman and founder of the group Save our Songlines. She filed legal action in the Federal Court in 2022, seeking temporary protection from industrial emissions for the art.

Murujuga has some of the planet’s oldest known rock art, dating back 40,000 years. Research has shown rocks closer to the industrial operations have been degraded by past emissions.

On May 23 this year, Cooper called for an “urgent assessment of the ongoing impacts of all industry on the Burrup” before the federal government decided on Woodside’s proposed extension.

She had filed a motion in the Federal Court seeking to compel Watt to make a determination of her Murujuga Section 10 cultural heritage assessment. But Watt announced conditional approval for the Woodside extension on May 28.

Watt reportedly promised to give Cooper three days’ notice of the approval. That would have given Cooper an opportunity to file an injunction preventing the minister from making a final decision to approve the North West Shelf prior to resolving her section 10 protection order.

Resolution of the protection order is particularly important given the art has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage listing. The World Heritage Committee referred the nomination back to the federal government so as to “prevent any further industrial development adjacent to, and within, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape”.

This referral occurred before the project extension was approved. If the approval is finalised, the nomination may fail, because the government cannot ensure the area will be protected.

Cooper’s case is set to be heard in July.

High stakes and delicate decision-making

These legal actions reflect deep public concern over the North West Shelf gas project extension.

In the context of a worsening climate emergency and damage to ancient rock art, properly adhering to the legal requirements for the assessment of such projects couldn’t be more crucial.

Samantha Hepburn, Professor, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

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

After a devastating bushfire, efforts to help nature recover typically focus on vertebrates and plants. Yet extreme fires can threaten insects, too.

After the Black Summer fires of 2019–20, I embarked on world-first research into whether “bee hotels” – a type of artificial nesting structure – could help native bees recolonise an area.

I installed 1,000 bee hotels in the Jarrah forests of Western Australia, parts of which burned during the Black Summer fires.

After months of monitoring, I concluded – with great excitement and relief – that the project was a success. Native bees were using the structures to lay eggs and raise young. The work shows pollinators such as bees can be aided after fires, to help bring damaged landscapes back to life.

Vital wild pollinators

Australia has more than 2,000 species of native bees. They help keep our ecosystems healthy, and play a crucial role in pollinating wildflowers.

Native bees typically nest in holes in trees that occur naturally when beetles bore through wood. When fire destroys trees, bees can be left without a place to nest and reproduce. This prevents them from recolonising habitats after fire.

Under climate change, bushfires in Australia are becoming more frequent and severe. Wood-nesting bees are especially vulnerable to bushfires. For example, fires are recognised as a major threat to the glittering green carpenter bee (Xylocopa aerata), which creates its own holes in wood to nest in.

The worsening fires take place at a time when global populations of wild pollinators, such as bees, are in steady decline. This problem has been well-publicised, although the plight of Australia’s native bees has received less attention.

My research tested whether bee hotels could help our native bees bounce back after fire.

What the research found

The Jarrah Forest of southwest Western Australia is a biodiversity hotspot. The 1,000 bee hotels were installed across five sites in the northern part of the forest, where bushfires burned during the summer of 2019–20.

Bee hotels replicate the holes in wood that native bees nest in. In August 2021, I installed bee hotels of two types: wooden blocks with 15 holes drilled in them, and bunches of about 50 bamboo stems bundled together. I monitored them from September 2021 to March 2022.

At the end of the period I concluded – with great excitement and relief – that the project was a success. Across all bee hotels at the five sites, 832 cavities were occupied by native bees.

Assuming four cells per cavity for each offspring, this meant more than 3,300 native bees would likely emerge in the next generation.

Uptake by bees was initially slow. This was to be expected, because the main group of species that used bee hotels – from the Megachile genus – tend to not be active in the region until late spring.

I found the nests were also used by bees of the genus Hylaeus, as well as tiny Exoneura bees. Other inhabitants included wasps, spiders, ants and crickets.

I also surveyed three burnt sites where bee hotels were not installed. There, I recorded the numbers of native bees foraging on flowers, and compared it to the sites with bee hotels. More native bees were present at the latter sites, which reinforced my findings.

Importantly, the research allowed natural recolonisation. It did not involve installing bee hotels at unburnt sites, then moving them to burnt areas once they were occupied. This could have been disastrous.

Aside from depleting one population, it may have meant native bees were moved to an area where there were not enough flowers, or were forced to compete with existing bee populations.

The research also showed European honey bees could pose a problem for native bees in fire-damaged landscapes. At sites with a higher density of honey bees, fewer native bees were foraging and fewer nests were occupied in the bee hotels.

This supports previous findings by myself and others that honey bees can negatively affect native bees. It adds further evidence that honey bees should not be permitted in sensitive habitats, such as bushland following fire or in national parks.

Empowering bee-saving efforts

My research provides proof that bee hotels can aid in the recovery of cavity-nesting native bees after fires.

This work fills a major gap. While there has been much attention on the recovery of furry animals and plants after fires, there has been far less investment into the recovery of plant pollinators.

Leaving insects to languish after fires isn’t just bad for those species. It also hampers the ability of ecosystems to recover from fire and other damage. This is especially true for pollinators such as native bees, which are vital for plant reproduction.

This work empowers us to help native bees after fires, by providing nesting resources to promote populations.

Kit Prendergast, Postdoctoral Researcher, Pollination Ecology, University of Southern Queensland

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

The more we learn about orcas, the more remarkable they are. These giant dolphins are the ocean’s true apex predator, preying on great white sharks and other lesser predators.

They’re very intelligent and highly social. Their clans are matrilineal, centred around a older matriarch who teaches her clan her own vocalisations. Not only this, but the species is one of only six known to experience menopause, pointing to the social importance of older females after their reproductive years. Different orca groups have fashion trends, such as one pod who returned to wearing salmon as a hat, decades after it went out of vogue.

But for all their intelligence, one thing has been less clear. Can orcas actually make tools, as humans, chimps and other primates do? In research out today by United States and British researchers, we have an answer: yes.

Using drones, researchers watched as resident pods in the Salish Sea broke off the ends of bull kelp stalks and rolled them between their bodies. This, the researchers say, is likely to be a grooming practice – the first tool-assisted grooming seen in marine animals.

Self kelp: why would orcas make tools?

Tool use and tool making have been well documented in land-based species. But it’s less common among marine species. This could be partly due to the challenge of observing them.

This field of research expands what we know these animals are capable of. Not only are orcas spending time making kelp into a grooming tool, but they’re doing it socially – two orcas have to work together to rub the kelp against their bodies.

To make the tool, the orcas use their teeth to grab a stalk of kelp by its “stipe” – the long, narrow part near the seaweed’s holdfast, where it tethers to the rock. They use their teeth, motion of their body and the drag of the kelp to break off a piece of this narrow stipe.

Next, they approach a social partner, flip the length of the kelp onto their rostrum (their snout-like projection) and press their head and the kelp against their partner’s flank. The two orcas use their fins and flukes to trap the kelp while rolling it between their bodies. During this contact, the orcas would roll and twist their bodies – often in an exaggerated S-shaped posture. A similar posture has been seen among orcas in other groups, who adopt it when rubbing themselves on sand or pebbles.

Why do it? The researchers suggest this practise may be social skin-maintenance. Bottlenose dolphin mothers are known to remove dead skin from their calves using flippers, while tool-assisted grooming of a partner has been seen in primates, but infrequently and usually in captivity.

Orcas across different social groups, ages and genders were seen doing this. But they were more likely to groom close relatives or those of similar age. There was some evidence suggesting whales with skin conditions were more likely to do the kelp-based grooming.

Humpback whales are known to wear kelp in a practice known as “kelping”. But this study covers a different behaviour, which the authors dub “allokelping” (kelping others).

A surprise from well-studied pods

Interestingly, this new discovery comes from some of the most well-studied and famous orcas in the world – a group known as the southern resident killer whales. If you were a child of the 90s, you would have seen them in the opening scene of Free Willy, the movie which set me on my path to study cetaceans.

These orcas consist of three pods known as J, K and L pods. Each live in the Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest on the border of Canada and the US.

Researchers fly drones over these resident pods most days and have access to almost 50 years of observations. But this is the first time the tool-making behaviour has been seen.

Unfortunately, these pods are critically endangered. They’re threatened by sound pollution from shipping, polluted water, vessel strike and loss of their main food source – Chinook salmon.

Orcas are smart

In one sense, the findings are not a surprise, given the intelligence of these animals.

In the Antarctic, orcas catch seals by making waves to wash them off ice floes. Before European colonisation, orcas and First Nations groups near Eden hunted whales together.

They can mimic human speech, while different groups have their own dialects. These animals are awe-inspiring – and sometimes baffling, as when a pod began biting or attacking boats off the Iberian peninsula.

While orcas are often called “killer whales”, they’re not whales. They’re the biggest species of dolphin, growing up to nine metres long. They’re found across all the world’s oceans.

Within the species, there’s a surprising amount of diversity. Scientists group orcas into different ecotypes – populations adapted to local conditions. Different orca groups can differ substantially, from size to prey to habits. For instance, transient orcas cover huge distances seeking larger prey, while resident orcas stick close to areas with lots of fish.

Not just a fluke

Because orcas differ so much, we don’t know whether other pods have discovered or taught these behaviours.

But what this research does point to is that tool making may be more common among marine mammals than we expected. No hands – no problem.

Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University

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

Unexpected severe turbulence injured crew and passengers on a Qantas Boeing 737 during descent at Brisbane on May 4 2024. The subsequent Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation suggested the severity of the turbulence caught the captain by surprise.

This is not an isolated event. Thunderstorms featuring severe wind gusts such as violent updrafts and downbursts are hazardous to aircraft. Downbursts in particular have been known to cause many serious accidents.

Our new research suggests global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of wind gusts from thunderstorm “downbursts”, with serious consequences for air travel.

We used machine learning techniques to identify the climate drivers causing more thunderstorm downbursts. Increased heat and moisture over eastern Australia turned out to be the key ingredients.

The findings suggest air safety authorities and airlines in eastern Australia must be more vigilant during takeoff and landing in a warming world.

Warm, moist air spells trouble for planes

Global warming increases the amount of water vapour in the lower atmosphere. That’s because 1°C of warming allows the atmosphere to hold 7% more water vapour.

The extra moisture typically comes from adjacent warmer seas. It evaporates from the surface of the ocean and feeds clouds.

Increased heat and water vapour fuels stronger thunderstorms. So climate change is expected to increase thunderstorm activity over eastern Australia

For aircraft, the main problem with thunderstorms is the risk of hazardous, rapid changes in wind strength and direction at low levels.

Small yet powerful

Small downbursts, several kilometres wide, are especially dangerous. These “microbursts” can cause abrupt changes in wind gust speed and direction, creating turbulence that suddenly moves the plane in all directions, both horizontally and vertically.

Microburst wind gusts can be extremely strong. Brisbane airport recorded a microburst wind gust at 157km per hour in November 2016. Three planes on the tarmac were extensively damaged.

On descent or ascent, aircraft encountering microbursts can experience sudden, unexpected losses or gains in altitude. This has caused numerous aircraft accidents in the past. Microbursts will become increasingly problematic in a warming climate.

Microburst analysis and prediction

Microbursts are very difficult to predict, because they are so small. So we used machine learning to identify the environmental factors most conducive to the formation of microbursts and associated severe wind gusts.

We accessed observational data from the Bureau of Meteorology’s extensive archives. Then we applied eight different machine learning techniques to find the one that worked best.

Machine learning is a field of study in artificial intelligence using algorithms and statistical models to enable computers to learn from data without explicit programming. It enables systems to identify patterns, make predictions and improve performance over time as they take in more information.

We found atmospheric conditions in eastern Australia are increasingly favouring the development of stronger, more frequent thunderstorm microbursts.

We investigated a microburst outbreak from a storm front in 2018. It produced severe surface wind gusts at six regional airports in New South Wales: Bourke, Walgett, Coonamble, Moree, Narrabri and Gunnedah.

Regional airports in Australia and around the world often use small aircraft. Small planes with 4–50 passenger seats are more vulnerable to the strong, even extreme, wind gusts spawned by thunderstorm microbursts.

Widespread consequences

Our extensive regional case study identified the weather patterns that create severe thunderstorms in eastern Australia during the warmer months.

High cloud water content creates a [downward force] [https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/11215] in the cloud. This force induces a descending air current. When the heavier air reaches the ground, wind gusts spray out in multiple directions.

These wind gusts endanger aircraft during takeoff and landing, because rapid wind shifts from tail winds to head winds can cause the aircraft to dangerously gain or lose altitude.

Our analysis highlights the elevated aviation risks of increased atmospheric turbulence from thunderstorm microbursts across eastern Australia.

Smaller aircraft at inland regional airports in southeastern Australia are especially vulnerable. But these sudden microburst-generated wind gusts will require monitoring by major east coast airports, such as Sydney and Brisbane.

Beware of heightened microburst activity

Flying has long been recognised as a very safe mode of travel, with an accident rate of just 1.13 per million flights.

However, passenger numbers worldwide have increased dramatically, implying even a small risk increase could affect a large number of travellers.

Previous research into climate-related risks to air travel has tended to focus on high-altitude cruising dangers, such as clear air turbulence and jet stream instability. In contrast, there has been less emphasis on dangers during low-level ascent and descent.

Our research is among the first to detail the heightened climate risk to airlines from thunderstorm microbursts, especially during takeoff and landing. Airlines and air safety authorities should anticipate more strong microbursts. More frequent wind gust turbulence from microbursts is to be expected over eastern Australia, in our ongoing warming climate.

Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney and Lance M Leslie, Professor, School of Mathematical And Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

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At any given time, about two-thirds of Earth’s surface is covered by clouds. Overall, they make the planet much cooler than it would be without them.

But as Earth gets warmer, mostly due to the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels, clouds are changing too. And that might already be causing more warming – adding to the greenhouse heat boost, and changing clouds even more.

Over the past few years, the world’s average temperature has increased more than climate scientists were expecting. In our latest research, led by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, we show that changes in clouds have made a significant contribution to turning up the thermostat.

Clouds and climate

Clouds help to keep Earth cool by reflecting sunlight back out to space before it can reach the ground. But not all clouds are equal.

Shiny, white clouds reflect away more sunlight – especially when they are closer to the equator, in the parts of Earth that receive the most sun. Grey, broken clouds reflect less sunlight, as do clouds closer to the poles where less light falls.

Research published last year showed that Earth has been absorbing more sunlight than the greenhouse effect alone can explain. Clouds were involved, but it wasn’t clear exactly how.

Bright cloud zones are shrinking

Our new study shows what is happening. The areas covered by highly reflective clouds are shrinking. At the same time, the areas containing broken, less reflective clouds are growing.

The net effect is that additional energy from sunlight is reaching Earth’s surface. Here it is absorbed, leading to extra heating.

We also looked at the effect of changes in the properties of the highly reflective clouds, caused by things such as changes in the amount of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere. However, we found these effects are much smaller than the effect of the change in area.

The global picture

In the big picture, Earth’s wind patterns are driven by hot air rising near the equator and the rotation of the planet. This creates huge, looping currents of atmospheric circulation around the globe.

Local weather systems – the kind that determine the location and type of clouds – depend on these major, large-scale wind systems. The major circulation patterns in the atmosphere are changing as a result of global warming.

We found much of the cloud action is taking place at the edges of these major wind systems.

Highly reflective clouds are on the decline in a region near the equator called the intertropical convergence zone, and also two other bands called the storm tracks, which lie between 30 and 40 degrees of latitude.

At the same time the subtropical trade-wind regions, home to ever-present but less reflective broken clouds, are expanding.

A feedback loop

In short, the global warming induced by increased greenhouse gases changes the major wind systems on Earth. This in turn reduces the area of highly reflective clouds, leading to additional warming.

Warming changes wind patterns, which changes cloud patterns, which results in more warming. This is what we call a “positive feedback” in the climate system: warming leads to more warming.

We still have a lot to learn about the details of this feedback loop. Our research will use ongoing satellite-based observations of clouds and how much energy Earth receives and radiates back out to space.

Christian Jakob, Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century, Monash University

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