CLIMATE CHANGECLIMATE CHANGE

WESTERN AUSTRALIA WESTERN AUSTRALIA IN 2020IN 2020

There are three stories about climate change and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first is that it is real and it is happening. We will talk a bit about that today. The second is that if we let it get much worse it could go worse than we can predict. As important as this is, it is not the focus of the talk today. The third story is about the change that we have already triggered over the next 100 years, and how we will have to live with it. Likely this is the stuff that will affect most

of us, and the stuff that mostly gets ignored in discussion. We will look at some Western Australian examples today. And I wont be comprehensive in the time available today. For example, I will only have a passing look at water supply and nature conservation as they are well covered elsewhere. I will today go back to basics of cause and effect of climate change so that you can understand the conclusions I present. I will conclude that the climate is changing because of the numbers and the impacts of we people of the world. That wont surprise you. I will conclude that we have already started the trend such that the climate will continue to change for at least 100 years, and we cant stop it. That might surprise you. That conclusion should be the focus of our now attention. It raises a whole lot of grown-up questions we haven’t started to face. I aim most of my delivery at these changes that will happen, and they will happen by 2020. I will conclude that the world has about 20 years to radically reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide or we will trigger changes beyond our imagination. Changes that our children’s children will wear. I think that the world does not have the technology to make this radical reduction without intolerable societal impacts. I struggle to see how Australia will make any actual reductions. So as well as needing the national and international politics to drive reductions in emissions, the world still is short on technology to deliver the change. I am an eternal optimist, and I have no intention of asking the world to stop so I can get off. The world of knowledge and technology is changing and growing quicker than ever; already we have conquered the hard part in that we know what the question is. Today I have the intention of putting some realism and pragmatics into the trip to 2020 while hopefully we work on the politics and the technology.

The first certainty is that the world and the climate are changing.

The world is pumping out lots more carbon dioxide than it used to. About 40 thousand million tonnes each year by 1990, and increased to about 50 thousand million tonnes by 2005. Australia pumped out about 600 million tonnes in 2005, or one and a quarter percent of the world. Western Australia about 70 million tonnes ; about 0.14 % of the worlds total. Already you could have concluded that our emissions are such a tiny part of the worlds emissions that we cant make much physical difference. This is fact, and we shouldn’t avoid saying it just because it sounds like a let off for our governments and our industry. It is fact that between United States, China, Europe, Russia and India they account for 2/3rds of the worlds emissions. If Australia is to make a difference to emissions it will be in the international politics of encouraging those countries to develop new technology and to have the will to change. And whatever small political influence Australia might have with these countries, we can only have credibility if we pull our weight.

Mostly it has been getting hotter everywhere in land and sea for about 60 years. This is not a regular change each year, and indeed it has levelled off in Australia and New Zealand over the past 3 years

The climate has changed, is changing, and will continue to change a lot. Our immediate focus should be on this certainty.

There will be significant climate change that we caused that will continue at least through our lifetime, our children’s lifetime and our grandchildren’s lifetime. The second certainty is if we cant find a way to cut the worlds emissions by at least half over the next 20 years, the magnitude of climate change is beyond our capacity of

confident prediction. I don’t think we know how to make that cut. As important as it is, it is not the focus of my talk today. Let’s look at Western Australia:

Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased by about 2 parts per million each year for the past 50 years. In my lifetime we have increased from 270 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 370 ppm.

It is about 0.6 degrees hotter since carbon dioxide started to increase. The experts tell us that the world has to reduce carbon dioxide outputs by half over the next 50 years in order to stabilise the atmosphere at 540 parts per million. Even if we could do that, the world would be another 2 degrees hotter. That is about the level where scientists say that the climatic changes would go beyond reasonable prediction.

The temperature trends in WA.

The temperature trend by season The changes in temperature across the globe have and are changing the patterns and behaviours of the winds and the ocean currents.

It is not a surprise to anyone that the changing winds and currents have changed global rainfall patterns, including in our south-west. Most of the wind patterns that bring our winter rainfall have slipped south.

It may be a surprise to some that it has not been drier everywhere, even in our northern regions.

So it is hotter, mainly drier, the winds and the currents have changed. On top of this, and as with everywhere else, there is a greater frequency of high energy events.

The next sets of slides illustrate the sources of Western Australia’s emissions.

Million Tonnes of CO2 each year: Western Australia

World total 50,000 million in 2005Australia total 600 million in 2005

6847Total (without trees)

6757Total (with trees)

22Waste-210Trees1212Agriculture42Industrial4931Energy20051990

Energy can be split between stationary energy and transport energy. Let us use Australia-wide figures to consider what is likely in terms of emissions.

Stationary energy is half of Australia’s emissions. Stationary energy includes electricity generation, industry like petrol refining, manufacturing, small combustions including in homes. Since 1990 Australia has increased from 196 million tonnes of emissions to 283 tonnes in 2005. Under business as usual scenarios we would be up to 486 million tonnes by 2020. Under the ambitious ‘measures’ to reduce emissions that have been announced, we will still increase to 403 million tonnes by 2020. The measures would include increasing our use of renewable energy nationwide from 9% to 20%, and reducing reliance on coal from 77% to 64%. This illustrates Australia’s enigma. We have experts claiming that Australia must reduce its emissions by 50% or 90% by whatever date. People are talking carbon trading or carbon taxes or even greater mandatory renewable energies. Reductions of 50% or 90% are impossible with any technology known today, or even thought about. With the best plans being seriously considered no-one is actually contemplating any actual reductions, merely a slower rate of growth in emissions. Second let me share the background that about 30% of WA’s electricity goes to households, and about 70% goes to commercial users. Then I want to share some experience from New Zealand, a country that has been much more serious about sustainable energy. My view formed from detailed study of the major stationary energy users in New Zealand was that major existing industry does not have that much scope for improvement. Energy costs are the major costs for the big users, and simple economics has meant that they have already tried to be energy efficient. I formed the view that existing industry in New Zealand who are the major users had about only 4% room for improvement through incentives such as carbon taxes or carbon trading. I have the view that carbon taxes or carbon trading could be an incentive for efficient design of new industry, but cant have much impact on existing industry unless it drives it out of business. Further, the advice of industry leaders is that use of a real or surrogate carbon emissions charge is likely to tip the economics of smaller decisions towards greenhouse efficiency, but not tip the big ones.

Gas is 48% of fuel for direct combustion in Australia. Liquid fuels are 31% Gas is 50% more carbon efficient than coal for electricity generation, and even more efficient for direct combustion. The enigma for Western Australia is that we are a major and expanding producer of gas, but we are running out of availability of gas for our own use. And even if it was available it is much more expensive in competition with coal. Western Australia produces 19 million tonnes of gas each year. Of this, 7 million tonnes goes to Western Australian consumption, mainly through the Dampier to Bunbury pipeline. Forty percent of this ‘domgas’ goes to manufacturing, 30 % power generation and 25% mining. Four percent of domgas goes to residents. New WA industry has trouble getting gas. Understandably the gas suppliers don’t want to supply existing WA multinationals like Alcoa with gas cheaper than they can sell it on the international market. And because of the escalating price and the poor availability of gas for use in WA, we have reached the likelihood that the next power generators of consequence in WA will be coal fired. It doesn’t matter how we go in Western Australia in all of the other greenhouse measures, if we build another coal-fired power station instead of gas we will have failed. The Premier of Western Australia tried two years ago to put the issue of preference for WA of WA gas as one that required further attention. He made some progress. Some of the response was predictably party political or ideological dogma. Hopefully in the future we will have more grown-up discussion on this. In Australia we will have an issue with availability and carbon emissions from liquid transport fuels. We are growing more dependant on imports from producers that may have more attractive clients. One hopeful avenue would be for us to manufacture

clean and super-efficient diesel from natural gas. That is unlikely to occur unless there is resolution of issues of gas availability and gas price to WA.

If we take an optimistic view about transport in Australia, we will have grown only from 62 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 1990 to 104 million tonnes by 2020. Again the most optimistic that is predicted is about straight line growth. No-one is suggesting any reduction.

All sectors of transport fuels are involved in the growth, or at least the non-reduction. As the pattern of fuel consumption is largely determined once the vehicle is purchased, it seems that taxation mechanisms on fuel are not likely to cause significant, short-term change to emissions. Quoting from the most recent Commonwealth report:

Oil prices•Recent high oil prices have had a dampening impact on fuel salesand emissions in recent years.

•The most recent data suggest that overall fuel sales fell slightly in 2006 and as a result, passenger car emissions declined.

•However, higher prices do not appear to have made a large impact on aggregate transport emissions, as total domestic transport emissions increased in 2006, the year with the strongest price rises.

•Higher oil prices do however seem to have influenced recent vehicle purchase patterns by Australian motorists, with new sales of large passenger cars down by nearly 20 per cent in 2006.

•At the same time, sales of small passenger cars and petrol-electric hybrid motor vehicles have been growing strongly.

We can conclude that the critical time for individuals to save fuel and reduce emissions is when they decide which vehicle to purchase. This against a background of Australia likely having the second biggest vehicles in the world. And we don’t turn our vehicles over very quickly, and our fleet has an average age of about 10 years. We can also be confident that transport fuels will get more and more scarce, and likely more and more expensive. Our society is structured on the basis of transporting goods to where people live, and there will be some inevitable change to this paradigm.

In Australia we have done quite well in reducing our negative carbon impact in associated with land clearing, and we have planted quite a few trees. Like all other significant sources of emissions, it is hard to envisage an actual future reduction. Forestry across Australia will sequester about 20 million tonnes per annum that is Kyoto compliant. Emissions from waste across Australia are about 15 million tonnes each year, and predicted to remain about steady. There are two big messages beyond emissions from agriculture. The first is what climate change will do to us? The second is what will it do to the rest of the world? When I was a kid, WA was proudly releasing a million acres a year for agriculture. (About 400, 000 hectares) The then Land Board did a very thorough and professional job of releasing land that had the rainfall and soils to support agriculture.

Land Board line1910 - 1982

Land Board linetoday?

If today we were doing the job of the land board, we would release much less land. Climate change has seen to that. The part of the agricultural region most impacted by climate change is the northern sand-plain.

Geraldton dust

North Binnu 1 June 2007North Binnu 1 June 2007 Source: Tim Wiley

North Binnu soil erosion

Climate change impact on grain yields

Projected wheat crop in WA under the 2050 climate change scenario

Climate change is likely to have a reduction on grain yields as shown in the map. Again the northern sand plain is most affected. Agricultural land-use options in the now marginal or sub-economic land include: Opportunistic cropping; only plant in those years like this year when there is a great start to the season

Perennial pastures for intermittent grazing

Strips of shrubs such as oil mallee. Not all is negative about reducing rainfall. The reduced rainfall means that less water in the salt prone zones of agricultural areas is available to lift water tables and cause salinity. We have about 1.1mi ha of salt affected land in WA. Once we thought this would spread to be 3 to 4 mi ha. Now we think it will be about 2 to 3.

The major issue relating to food and agriculture is in the wider world. A changing climate will impact differently on different parts of the world, and there will be no element of fairness between which countries caused the major emissions of carbon dioxide and which countries are the major victims. Likely the biggest loss of capacity for food production is and will occur in Africa; Africa where there is probably less capacity to adjust. Dealing with the victims of climate change will be even more complex than dealing with the reduction of emissions. Basic human decency, and if not that, the desire for peace in our world, will hopefully see Australia being active in facing the need to deal with the people who will be international victims of loss of food production through climate change.

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Trend in Fremantle mean sea level (FMSL) and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI)

Our coastal sea level is rising and will continue to rise. Most of the rise is attributable to the waters expanding as they get warmer. There is a thermal lag phase with sea level rise such that it may continue hundreds of years after a stabilisation of atmospheric carbon dioxide. At present we are seeing maybe 2 to 3 mm rise per year. The change so far is tiny by comparison to changes in previous ice-age cycles. On the basis of my discussions with experts I am going to suggest that sea level rise in WA is not going to be great issue before 2020. So if you are concerned with Mandurah Canals or losing Cottesloe Beach, it is not likely to happen in the next 12 years. Part of this is because the maybe 50 to 70 mm change in sea level over 20 years or so is quite a bit less than the 300mm interannual fluctuation driven by ENSO. Any necessary adaptations to coastal structures will likely be accommodated along with normal 10-year maintenance.

Scientists within WA are already studying the coast by classifying it into sediment cells and describing the sediment features within each as a precursor to understanding and predicting. But, and it is a big but, that is not where the immediate action is. The first ‘but’ is that already the frequency of extreme sea level events has trebled over the life at records at Fremantle. We can expect a greater number of high-energy events along our coast, maybe with flooding at Port Hedland or Busselton, or erosion between Bunbury and Mandurah. The oceans are critical to absorb heat, and carbon dioxide. Their acidity increases with the global change in carbon dioxide.

In popular literature there seems to be focus on the Gulf Stream off North America, or the oceans of the Arctic. Let us instead take a look at an Indian Ocean example close to us. The climate change message is that we cant use history to forecast the future, or even to explain what is happening now. We will look at Crayfish, or Western Rock Lobster. The crayfish life cycle includes great migrations of adults to deeper waters to lay eggs. The larva that hatch from the eggs are swept long distances offshore and back. Eventually currents will carry juveniles from offshore to inshore reefs. Here they feed and grow for 3 years or more before they are at catching size. Indeed it is established practice each year for our fisheries scientists to measure how many tiny crayfish, or puerulus, come to live on inshore reefs in order to predict the catch potential for the crayfish season in two or three years time. Scientists have developed quite sophisticated models for that prediction.

The puerulus counts for this year are lower than could be predicted from the models. Sadly, the crayfish season will be very poor in 3 years time. Why? Maybe climate change. Puerulus settlement is affected by the south flowing Leeuwin Current, which is in turn powered by the ENSO ( El Nino - southern oscillation) cycle, the intercontinental gradient that gives us the well known El Nino and La Nina. Climate change has given us more frequent El Nino, which means a weaker Leeuwin current. Climate change has made the water temperature to go up. Climate change has caused the westerly winds in winter to weaken and slip south. And this year puerulus numbers are way down. Obviously there will need to be a significant management change to accommodate that. Likely the scientists will need to adjust their predictive models to cope with climate change.

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Trend in standardized mean size of migrating white lobsters by year for all monitoring locations.

On top of that the crays themselves are changing, maybe through the temperature effects of climate change.They are smaller size when they reach sexual maturity, and they are smaller size when they start their big offshore migration. I wrote this next bit before the Myanmar tragedy. The big issue for us with oceans is in other countries. The most vulnerable parts of the world are in Asia and the small islands. Within Asia the heavily populated megadelta regions of south, east and south-east Asia will experience increased flooding from oceans and rivers. Likely Bangladesh, China, India, the Philippines and Mauritania will be in big trouble. Developed countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, UK, Germany and Belgium will cope. Small Island developing states like the Maldives, Seychelles, Barbados, Bahamas and the Pacific Islands around and including Fiji. For some of these the die has been cast, and I think they wont make it. Coastal erosion, storm surges and overtopping, salting of groundwaters, the full bit. If Australia is mature about this it will be a leader in issues of relocation and helping peoples who didn’t cause this; like anyone else they wont want to be forced to shift; and they wont accept that it cant be stopped. Again there is no fairness about who caused this and who will feel most of the pain.

Water supply in Western Australia is another area where we need to have grown-up discussions with the inevitability of further climate change. We know that decreased rainfall means radically reduced run-off into the catchments and dams in the Darling Ranges. The native forests in those catchments have structures and leaf areas belonging to wetter times. Sensibly we could help nature to adjust to the climate changes people have wrought by thinning that vegetation. That would likely also give some small boost to run-off. Anyway we need to have a rethink about forest management for nature conservation and for avoidance of mega-fires. Climate change has hit the world at about the time we have opted for bigger and better fire fighting equipment, and less reliance on fuel reduction. This works OK till the big fire hits. Take Spain, Portugal California, Sydney, Canberra. In the past decade we have weathered the water shortages of the climate change drought in the metropolitan area by including a strategy of over-using the waters of the Gnangara Mound. This was the smart thing to do whilst other strategies were put in place, but this rate of overuse is not sustainable. In our drying climate we are having much greater impact than can be sustained. The mound has in recent years supplied up to 60% of Perth’s drinking water and supplied roughly equivalent waters for irrigated horticulture and agriculture. Some of the water supply abstraction from under residential areas has been innovative. Some of the ongoing land uses that take so much water such as low value pine plantations seem hard to justify. Groundwater levels have gone down a lot, pressures in the deeper aquifers have dropped a lot. There are even reports of the ground surface sinking because so much water has been abstracted. Whatever the past, we are now at the stage where something has to give. The pine forests and the market garden abstractions are obvious targets, but such changes are tough politics.

My final brief example for Western Australia is about nature. I propose that we should be talking about our nature conservation priorities in light of climate change. New research published in the past year has suggested that climate change is having impacts that are faster and more intrusive than scientists had expected. As with other examples, and regardless of what we do now, the climate will continue to change for a long time. Key features of nature include:

Animal migrations, maybe including crayfish Breeding/flowering times - ask any gardener? Animal behaviour Plant and animal fecundity Genetics Biological fit within our mosaic of nature conservation areas.

These are all changing, and will continue to change. Let alone if carbon dioxide takes temperature up by 2 more degrees. The message for the environment managers is the same as for others. We cant use the past to forecast the future, and we will have some big decisions to make after some grown-up discussions. Likely there are bigger issues on our agenda than plastic bags and underground spiders.

CLIMATE CLIMATE CHANGECHANGE

WESTERN WESTERN AUSTRALIA IN 2020AUSTRALIA IN 2020

Conclusion This is where we came in. Our past and our present have locked in climate change for our present and for our future. It is desirable that we have grown-up discussions that allow us to adapt to that reality. This is important business for all Western Australians. The worlds emissions behaviour in the future will decide if climate change in the longer term is beyond our capacity to predict, and maybe beyond our capacity to respond appropriately. The technology and the politics for this are for the big players, but maybe we can be helpful supporters.

Summary Our climate is changing and it is caused by the world emissions of carbon dioxide. We know that. The world must cut its emissions by at least half over the next 20 to 50 years or the climate changes will be bigger than we can properly predict. We hear that but the world doesn’t yet have the technology to make those cuts. What doesn’t get discussed much is that already the world has made enough excess emissions such that our climate will continue to change for 20, 50 or 100 years. We cant stop that. The changes have already been triggered, and we will have to adapt to cope with them. Our agriculture will be further changed. Likely the northern sandplain will not be suitable for normal agriculture. The whole of the eastern wheat belt will have long-term reductions in yield. But maybe a million hectares of land we thought we would lose from salt will not be lost. Our oceans will continue to change. They will get warmer and will continue to expand giving about 2 to 3 mm sea level rise each year. More importantly there will be maybe three fold increase in the frequency of extreme events. This will be an inconvenience to us, but disastrous for the low-lying areas of Asia and the Pacific. We need to think about how Australia plays in the food tragedies that will be focussed in Africa and the sea-storm events focussed in Asia and the Pacific. Climate change will shift winter winds southward and decrease rainfall for agriculture and water supply. Likewise it seems that the changes to ocean temperature and ocean currents are giving us fewer and smaller crayfish. The crayfish season in three years time is expected to be poor, maybe caused by climate change. The rainfall deficits will mean that we will have to reduce our current abstraction of the groundwater of the Gnangara mound for market gardens and urban supply. They also mean that we need a rethink of forest management and bushfire prevention lest we become victim of the emerging increase of megafires around the world.

Another adaptation we must make is to cope with the reductions of carbon emissions that everyone in the world will be striving for. We can only minimise emissions from motor vehicles by buying smaller and more efficient cars. We have structured our modern society around access to affordable liquid fuels, and that is under threat. We can only minimise emissions from electricity by not building coal burning electricity stations. Regardless of what we minimise there seems no pragmatic prediction of any actual reduction for total emissions from Australia. There is a big space between the wished-for performance of 50 percent or more in emissions reduction and the predicted performance of no reductions and still limited growth in emissions even if we try hard. It is worth discussing.