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  • Huge gas reserves found off NSW

    Huge gas reserves found off NSW

    Updated 1 hour 46 minutes ago

    A shipment of Liquified Natural Gas

    Shipments of gas like this one could one day leave the NSW coast. (Kerry Edwards/Pool/The West Australian.)

    Tests have found natural gas resources off the New South Wales coast north of Sydney could be double the size first thought, rivalling the massive gas reserve in the Bass Strait.

    Advent Energy has a permit to explore for natural gas 50 kilometres out to sea in the Offshore Sydney basin and is focusing on an area 25 kilometres off Newcastle.

    Seismic testing has been positive and the company says new technical data shows the estimated prospective recoverable resources are much larger than predicted.

    Executive director David Breeze says the area was originally thought to have 6 trillion cubic feet of gas but that has been revised to 13 trillion.

    “If we are successful in what we are looking at, then we could have as much gas as the Bass Strait,” he said.

    “The Sydney Basin is a gassy basin. That could be extremely significant in terms of the capacity for the reduction of CO2 emissions.”

    The company has secured a rig from the Bass Strait to drill an exploratory well later this year.

    Tags: business-economics-and-finance, oil-and-gas, nsw, newcastle-2300

  • Pains, trains and automobiles

     

    Instead, the new seats had to be “embedded” into the platform concrete at a cost of $78,000.

    Senior Government sources have, meanwhile, confirmed a major infrastructure measure was under consideration.

    “There are people pushing in Government and the ALP for us to do a major transport project,” a senior Government source said. “There’s a recognition we have to fix and address congestion in western and southwestern Sydney. [Treasurer] Eric [Roozendaal] wants to do these things but he has to do it financially and be responsible.”

    Sources said senior ministers, Labor’s general secretary Sam Dastyari and powerbrokers including Eddie Obeid were pushing for the solution.

    But Treasury secretary Michael Schur is understood to be trying to kill off the project.

    “They [Treasury] say no to everything. Everything in this state runs along Treasury lines,” a Labor source said. “This Government needs to demonstrate now more than ever it’s serious about building infrastructure.”

    The Government has faced much criticism for doing little on transport since Ms Keneally came to power except announce a light rail to the CBD in the Metropolitan Transport Plan in February. “Sam [Dastyari] has been pushing transport since day one,” one senior MP said.

    One option that had been discussed and ruled out in a bid to ease urban congestion was the introduction of free public transport, but that would cost $2 billion a year. Government sources have also ruled out the construction of a second Sydney Harbour rail crossing or the Epping-to-Parramatta rail link.

    Mr O’Farrell announced last month that the Coalition would set up a $5 billion infrastructure fund and spend the money on one of the two major road projects.

    An M5 duplication has been costed at $4.5 billion.

    The funding for “planning” for the M4 East is contained in a “NSW Treasury Project Reference Detail Report” dated June 24, which also contains $190 million for the forward estimates period for the F3 to M2 Motorway Link.

    A spokesman for Ms Keneally claimed the document was based on the possibility “federal funds may in the future be available”.

    At Manly Hospital, one family has taken it on themselves to prop up the ailing health system by buying $70 office chairs to furnish a nurses’ station.

    A Northern Beaches father, who asked not to be named, was so distressed at seeing nurses at Manly Hospital sit on “second-hand” chairs he replaced them with brand new ones from Kmart.

     

     

    37 comments on this story

  • Cabinet moves towards Greens interim carbon tax:onsensus & agreement with polluters carbon tax: Consensus & agreement with polluters

    Cabinet moves towards Greens’ interim carbon tax; Consensus ≠ agreement with polluters

    Thursday 15 July 2010

    The Greens today welcomed reports that Cabinet is actively considering the Greens’ proposal of an interim carbon tax but warned Prime Minister Gillard that seeking consensus on climate action only with the big polluters is a recipe for failure.

    “Getting a carbon price in the market as soon as possible after the coming election is one of the best ways to build consensus towards real, ambitious climate action,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.

    “Once polluters begin to pay for their pollution and Australians see that the sky is not falling in, the scare campaigns will lose their bite and we can move swiftly towards the deep emissions cuts that we need.

    “The great benefit of the Garnaut-style carbon levy the Greens have proposed is that it is designed to be strengthened as time goes on, while the Rudd government’s failed CPRS was effectively impossible to strengthen beyond its too-weak 5-25% target range after it was passed.

    “Bob Brown and I will be delighted to sit down with Prime Minister Gillard to work through how the carbon levy can get through the Senate as swiftly as possible.

    “Before she goes much further, Prime Minister Gillard must recognise that working towards a consensus on climate action does not mean getting the big polluters on side.

    “Building a consensus on climate action means working with scientists who understand the gravity and urgency of the problem, with technologists who are developing the solutions, with planners and designers who will work out how to implement the solutions, and with the community who need to embrace change.

    “Building a consensus on climate action also means working in good faith with all those in the Senate who want to achieve action, not using climate change as a political wedge as the Rudd government repeatedly did.

    “If Prime Minister Gillard seeks consensus with the polluters outside parliament and the deniers inside parliament, she will fail as surely as her predecessor did.

    “The Greens are ready to act, we have solutions on the table and we have open lines of communication with those can make those solutions a reality.”

    Tim Hollo
    Media Adviser
    Senator Christine Milne | Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change Spokesperson
    Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT | P: 02 6277 3588 | M: 0437 587 562
    http://www.christinemilne.org.au/| www.GreensMPs.org.au <http://www.greensmps.org.au/>

  • ‘Uneven’ sea level rises threaten Indian Ocean coastal regions

    ‘Uneven’ sea level rises threaten Indian Ocean coastal regions

    Ecologist

    14th July, 2010

    Global warming is adversely affecting certain countries around the Indian Ocean with higher than average sea level rises, according to analysis published in Nature Geoscience

     

    ‘Uneven’ sea level rises are posing a threat to densely populated coastal areas around the Indian Ocean, according to researchers.

    Sea levels have risen across the world as a result of thermal expansion of the ocean (water expands as it heats up) and as melting ice adds more water volume.

    However, researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado have shown that the rises are not uniform across the world and are affected by other changes in atmospheric or oceanic currents.

    In the Indian Ocean this has resulted, since the 1960s, in substantial decreases in sea levels in the south tropical region, including the Seychelles Islands and the island of Zanzibar off Tanzania.

    In contrast, sea level rises have been much higher along the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka and the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java.

    In a study published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, which could have implications for how scientists predict sea level changes, the authors blame complex atmospheric wind patterns for the uneven rises.

    ‘Complex circulation patterns in the Indian Ocean may also affect precipitation by forcing even more atmospheric air than normal down to the surface in Indian Ocean subtropical regions,’ says co-author Weiqing Han.

    ‘This may favor a weakening of atmospheric convection in subtropics, which may increase rainfall in the eastern tropical regions of the Indian Ocean and drought in the western equatorial Indian Ocean region, including east Africa.’

    The study concludes that if human-caused global warming continues then the pattern they detected was, ‘likely to persist and to increase the environmental stress on some coasts and islands in the Indian Ocean’.

    Useful links
    Patterns of Indian Ocean sea-level change in a warming climate

  • Google climate map offers a glimpse of a 4C world

    Google climate map offers a glimpse of a 4C world

    Interactive tool layering climate data over Google Earth maps shows the impact of an average global temperature rise of 4C

     

    A new interactive Google Earth map showing the impacts of a 4°C world A new interactive Google Earth map was developed using peer-reviewed science from the Met Office Hadley Centre and other leading impact scientists. Photograph: earth.google.co.uk

    Think it’s hot this summer? Wait until you see Google’s simulation of a world with an average global temperature rise of 4C.

    Using a map that was first launched by the former Labour administration in October 2009, the coalition government has taken temperature data from the Met Office Hadley Centre and other climate research centres and imposed it on to a Google Earth layer.

    It’s a timely arrival, with warnings this month that current international carbon pledges will lead to a rise of nearly 4C and the Muir Russell report censuring some climate scientists for not being more open with their data (but exonerating them of manipulating the scientific evidence).

    Unlike a similar tool using IPCC data that was launched by Google in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate conference last year, this map will be updated regularly with new data. It also has a series of YouTube videos of experts across the globe, with Met Office staff talking about forest fires in sub-Saharan Africa and researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research explaining sea level rises. To go more in-depth you can follow links to government sites, such as this one on water availability in a warming world.

    Playing with the layer is surprisingly addictive, mainly thanks to Google Earth’s draggable interface. Unlike the static map of last year, it also has the bonus of showing more obviously how temperature rises will differ drastically around the world. The poles glow a red (a potential rise of around 10C) while most of northern Europe escapes with light orange 2-3C rises. Other hotspots, such as Alaska, the Amazon and central Asia, also stand out.

    Neatly, you can turn different climate “impacts” on and off. If you just want to see which regions will be worst affected by sea level rises – such as the UK and Netherlands as well as low-lying island states – you can. One limitation is that you have to zoom out to continental level to see the layer: if you’re zoomed on your street, you can’t see it.

    Climate change minister Greg Barker launched the map today alongside the government’s chief scientist, Prof John Beddington. Barker said: “This map reinforces our determination to act against dangerous man-made climate change. We know the stakes are high and that’s why we want to help secure an ambitious global climate change deal.”

    The layer, of course, isn’t the only one with an environmental theme to land on Google Earth. The UN’s environment programme has one showing deforestation, WWF has a layer highlighting its projects across the globe and Google even has its own climate change “tours” for Google Earth. What other good green Earth layers have you stumbled across? And how do you rate the newest addition from the UK government?

    • The KML layer of The impact of a global temperature rise of 4C is available now (you’ll need a browser plug-in or the Google Earth app installed to view it)

  • Show us your ticker, Gillard, before you force us to vote

     

    The trouble with all this is it’s terribly reminiscent of Kevin Rudd. Lacking in courage, not thought through and thrown together at the last moment. None of these stop-gap solutions will have been legislated before the election. So is that to be Gillard’s agenda for Labor’s second term: finishing off all the stuff not finished in the first term? Is that to be as inspiring as it gets? First re-elect my government and then I’ll have time to think up my own agenda?

    I’m sure the government has plenty of announcements up its sleeve to make between now and election day, but I’m not sure they’ll add up to anything more than a grocery list. Bit of this, bit of that, tinker with this, fine-tune that. Nothing controversial, of course, and (given the budget deficit) nothing too expensive.

    Before we vote on whether to retain Gillard we need to know a lot more about her and, more particularly, where she proposes to take us.

    She tells us she believes in hard work, egalitarianism and the value of education, and she’s proud of her mum and dad. I doubt if there are many who’d disagree, but if that’s as big as her vision gets she’s not ready to be our leader.

    One of Rudd’s biggest problems was he couldn’t set priorities for himself. He took on too much, wanted the biggest and best in everything, and ended up not getting much achieved. He took on a couple of big economic reforms – the emissions trading scheme and the resource rent tax – but took them far too cheaply, underestimated the amount of explaining that needed to be done, then when the going got tough, turned turtle.

    So what are Gillard’s priorities? What does she plan to devote most of her attention to at the expense of all the other things she could focus on? Does she know but doesn’t want to tell us, or hasn’t she had time to think about it? Will she work it out as she goes along?

    We know, despite her protestations, climate change won’t be one of her second-term priorities. She says (correctly) we need to put a price on carbon, but then says she won’t get ahead of public opinion and won’t act on a carbon price until after 2012. Her next term will be spent doing the explaining that should have been done this term.

    I fear most of what passes for economic debate in the election campaign will be of little consequence. Labor dumped its emissions trading scheme and emasculated its resource super profits tax for fear of being accused of introducing ”a great big new tax”, but that won’t stop both sides accusing each other of planning to do just that.

    Both sides will express their determination to get the budget into surplus as soon as possible and eliminate our (tiny) public debt post haste, while accusing the other of profligacy.

    If there’s one thing we don’t need to worry about it’s deficits and debt. Why not? Because we worry about it so much. The Libs make such a fuss about it it’s a crime Labor wouldn’t dare to commit.

    The big economic issues facing us include how we’ll make room for a greatly expanded mining sector in an economy already close to full employment, whether there’s more tax reform in the Henry report we should be getting on with, and how we’ll fix the ever-growing shortage of housing, including improving public transport to make homes in the outer suburbs more accessible.

    Far from spending the next three years chatting about whether to get serious about combating climate change, we need to debate our unquestioned commitment to unlimited economic growth.

    Does ever-rising affluence – much of it used to fuel an unending status competition – make us happier as both sides of politics assume? Are we paying a hidden price for it in damage to our family and social relationships? Is it really possible for the rich world to keep increasing its consumption of natural resources while the developing world – led by China and India – rapidly raises its standard of living towards Western levels without this irreparably damaging the ecosystem?

    A bit too much for a prime minister from the left desperate to prove she’s not left-wing? Far too threatening a subject for either of the political parties? I fear so. Much safer to have a furious argument about great big new taxes and the budget deficit.

    Ross Gittins is economics editor.