Ships and aircraft were ordered to stay away because of the risk of explosion. The leak developed as workers tried to cap a well 150 miles east of Scotland.
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The La Nina event that has been impacting eastern Australia has ended, allowing a return to near-average conditions in coming months, Weatherzone says.
La Nina events generally bring above average rainfall to eastern parts of Australia, including Sydney.
The most recent La Nina event occurred predominantly across the spring and summer months and was a contributor to the above average rainfall and floods through many parts of the eastern states.
The key indicators of ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) are now at neutral levels, Weatherzone meteorologist Rob Sharpe said.
This includes the SOI (Southern Oscillation Index), which is a measure of the pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin, and the Nino 3.4 Index, which is a measure of sea surface temperatures over the central Pacific.
The neutral phase of ENSO will allow rainfall values to tend closer to normal as we move further into autumn and winter.
However, the country is still surrounded by above average sea surface temperatures and the tropical wet season will continue through the end of April, so there is still the risk for above average rainfall and cyclone activity during the next month.
Also, autumn is the wettest season for Sydney, due to an increased frequency of east coast lows over coming months, so the decay of La Nina does not necessarily mean drier times for Sydney.
Weatherzone.com.au is owned by Fairfax Media, publisher of this website.
Residents livid over plans to dig up asbestos site
Kelly Burke
March 28, 2012
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Advocate … asbestos victim campaigner Bernie Banton. Photo: Adam Hollingworth
A PROPOSAL to build a huge waste treatment plant on a seven-hectare site in western Sydney once used to manufacture asbestos has outraged residents who say it threatens their safety.
When the extent of the deadly legacy of asbestos was realised in the late 1990s, the owner of the site, James Hardie, demolished its buildings and laid a concrete slab on the Grand Avenue site in Camellia, five kilometres east of Parramatta’s business district.
Now, five years after the death of Bernie Banton, the former James Hardie employee who worked at the plant and died from the asbestos-related disease mesothelioma, residents are angry about a development proposal before the state government which they say will require parts of the contaminated site to be dug up.
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The German waste management and recycling company Remondis plans to build a commercial and industrial waste treatment facility, which is across the road from a childcare centre and Rosehill Racecourse, over the river from the University of Western Sydney’s Parramatta campus and near residential areas.
Community concerns centre on the danger of disturbing the soil under the concrete cap, soil Remondis concedes is still heavily laced with asbestos particles.
Residents’ letters protesting against the development have accused the government of putting business before public safety and parents who use the childcare centre have threatened to remove their children if the project goes ahead.
Remondis’s national technical manager, Mohan Selvaraj, said the land had been cleaned up by Sydney Water but conceded asbestos was still in the ground.
He said the proposal did not involve disturbing the concrete cap but building on top of it, although sections would have to be dug up for sewerage.
”This will be monitored by Work Cover,” he said. ”This is a standard procedure. It is not a difficult thing to do.”
Mr Selvaraj said objections were ”par for the course” and the company was prepared to address concerns.
But the president of the Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia, Barry Robson, said the proposal was outrageous, particularly as heavy vehicles associated with the waste operation could fracture the concrete over time.
”There is a reason why the concrete cap is there and that’s because the bloody land is contaminated, that’s why it’s so cheap. Nobody else wants a bar of it,” he said. ”To go around disturbing it is crazy. Do they want to create a fifth wave of victims?”
Plans for the development are on exhibition for public comment until April 10 and the fate of the project, classified as a state-significant, is expected to be decided by the NSW Planning Assessment Commission.
Residents have been lobbying Parramatta City Council and their MP, Geoff Lee, to oppose the development.
But Dr Lee told the Herald he had wanted the council to rezone the site from heavy industrial to residential to cater for an additional 10,000 people living and working there.
”A waste disposal centre in the middle of the capital of western Sydney is a sad outcome,” he said. ”The asbestos problem can be remediated … but this is prime waterfront. It makes me cry talking about it.”
A council spokesman said yesterday a position had not yet been reached. ”Council officers are reviewing the application for Camellia,” he said.
”Key issues to be addressed will include traffic, dust, noise and odours.”
Not so clean … fugitive emissions could make coal seam gas as dirty a fuel as black coal, report says. Photo: Glenn Hunt
COAL seam gas, widely touted as a greener fuel than coal, could have just as deep a carbon footprint unless world-class standards are used when extracting the gas from the ground, an expert report has found.
A study into the life-cycle greenhouse emissions of Australia’s energy sources by consultancy WorleyParsons found conventional gas from large offshore wells typically produced 38 per cent less greenhouse emissions than black coal, largely because it burnt more cleanly.
But the equation could shift dramatically for the fledgling coal seam gas industry – the subject of a fierce political battle in NSW and Queensland – if meticulous standards were not followed when the gas was extracted from the ground.
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So-called ”fugitive emissions”, particularly of methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, can tip the balance and make coal seam gas as dirty a fuel source as black coal burnt in ageing power plants, the report says.
”If methane leakage approaches the elevated levels recently reported in some US gas fields … the [greenhouse gas] intensity of CSG … generation is on a par with sub-critical coal-fired generation,” the report states.
The lead author, Paul Hardisty, said in a statement: ”The implications for regulators and the emerging Australian CSG industry are that best practice applied to design, construction and operation of projects can significantly reduce emissions, lower financial liabilities under the carbon tax, and help make CSG a less GHG-intensive fuel option.”
The report comes ahead of the introduction of the carbon tax on July 1, amid a battle between green groups and the energy sector over how to shift Australia to a cleaner energy mix. Many environmentalists argue that gas is little cleaner than coal and urge governments to encourage a quicker switch to renewables such as solar and wind energy.
But many in the energy sector argue a swift transition to renewables is unrealistic and gas – including coal seam gas – is needed as a stepping stone.
Alan Randall, professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Sydney, said the report showed Australia needed to tread carefully in the expansion of the gas industry.
”It seems like the more complete the research is, the more we tend to move away from the idea that the gas from CSG has big advantages over coal and may have a negative rather than a positive impact when all these things are considered,” Professor Randall said. ”That’s the big picture.”
The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the chief lobby group for CSG, said the looming price on carbon would ultimately prove whether CSG was green-friendly.
”In the end, whatever their relative greenhouse intensities, all energy sources will be required to pay for their emissions under the carbon pricing legislation,” a spokesman said.
”Over time, the pricing mechanism will naturally favour lower emissions technologies. That is its purpose.”
The new paper, which was published yesterday in the journal Energies, stated that high losses of CSG through leaks and venting were ”considered unlikely”.
But it said there were no Australian guidelines in place for estimating the natural gas fugitives.
It urged the industry to ”improve monitoring of methane releases and to adopt best practice technology and systems to reduce leaks and venting emissions”.
The Australian Coal Association chief executive, Nikki Williams, said the research highlighted the importance of carbon capture and storage to cut emissions.
Is it snowing microbes on Enceladus? The idea might not be so far-fetched, say researchers, as evidence mounts for a “uniquely accessible” habitable zone on Saturn’s icy moon.
An unprecedented study claims to show how the effects of climate change could cost the global marine economy two trillion dollars per year, but this begs the question: how can you cost the oceans?
The cost of climate change to fisheries could reach $343bn per year by 2100
Scientists in Sweden claim climate change could cause almost $2tn of damage per year through marine impacts alone by 2100 if emissions continue to rise at current rates.
Valuing the Ocean, a study by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is due to be published in June this year and has assigned monetary values to five categories of ocean services in a bid to establish an objective calculation for the costs of climate change to the marine economy.
The study uses one high- and one low-emissions scenario as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to show how quick and concerted efforts to minimise global warming could lead to savings of $1.37tn per year – or 0.25% or projected global GDP – by 2100.
Low- and high-emissions scenarios as modeled by the SEI
“These figures are just part of the story, but they provide an indication of the price of the avoidable portion of future environmental damage on the ocean – in effect the distance between our hopes and our fears,” says Frank Ackerman, director of SEI’s Climate Economics Group. “The cost of inaction increases greatly with time, a factor which must be fully recognised in climate change accounting.”
The researchers state that the five areas they have focused on – fisheries, sea-level rise, storms, tourism and the ocean carbon-sink – can all be accurately priced, allowing them to measure the real, monetary costs of climate change.
According to a preview of the study’s results, the final figures have been calculated using data only on variables that humans can realistically alter and only concerning factors to which an objective price can be assigned.
An executive summary of the ‘Economic perspectives’ chapter states that the study uses “The most significant and up-to-date climate economics and science literature from a variety of sources.” Further details on the researchers’ source materials are still sketchy at this pre-publication stage.
