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Author: Neville

  • Fears sea-level policy may slash $1bn off property values

    Fears sea-level policy may slash $1bn off property values

    By DAMON CRONSHAW

    May 31, 2013, 10:45 p.m.

    • HIGH AND DRY: Marks Point resident Peter Johnston’s house and contents insurance has risen 280 per cent in one year. Picture: Marina NeilHIGH AND DRY: Marks Point resident Peter Johnston’s house and contents insurance has risen 280 per cent in one year. Picture: Marina Neil

    RESIDENTS fear Lake Macquarie City Council’s controversial actions on the risks of sea level rise will wipe more than $1 billion off the value of properties.

    But some believe the loss could be worse, with homes  worthless because they cannot be sold.

    Some say their properties already won’t sell and insurance premiums are skyrocketing – problems they blame on the council’s sea level rise measures.

    But the council says  changes in property values are a result of the global financial crisis, housing supply and interest rates, not council predictions of sea or lake level rise.

    In a statement the council also said  sea and lake level predictions in 2050 or 2100 played no role in the calculation of insurance premiums.

    However, Marks Point resident Barbara Davis, who is leading an action group on the matter, said the council was ‘‘destroying people’s lives’’.

    The council had placed notations relating to flood and sea level rise on section149 property certificates of about 10,000 properties, and residents say the move has devalued many properties.

    Mrs Davis said the action group called for the council to revoke the notations, but council officials said they were legally obliged to keep them.

    The council said the state government required councils to ‘‘consider information on historical and projected future sea level rise, which is widely accepted by competent scientific opinion’’.

    Marks Point resident Karen Mahoney said the sale of her home had fallen through because banks were only willing to lend up to 50per cent of the value of the property.

    Ms Mahoney said banks had attributed this to the property’s section149 notation.

    She had been willing to ‘‘wear the loss’’ of $200,000 to $300,000 from a high of $895,000, before the buyer pulled out.

    Charlestown-based Russell Property Partners’ owner John Russell said the notations were ‘‘causing people difficulty in selling and making sales fall over’’.

    ‘‘Insurance and finance companies are avoiding loans on properties with these notations,’’ Mr Russell said.

    ‘‘You can shop for banks all you like, but mortgage insurance companies are making those decisions.’’

    Mr Russell said the council ‘‘needs to put on the table what it’s going to do to protect these homes’’.

    The council said it was developing a plan, which included options to ‘‘defend against or modify the flood risk’’, such as levees and private retaining walls.

    Marks Point resident Peter Johnston, among others, estimated sea level rise notations would cause Lake Macquarie property values to drop by at least $1billion.

    They based the estimate on projected devaluations of the 10,000 properties with notations.

    Belmont real estate agent Sue Price said $1billion might be an overestimation, but properties at Marks Point had been devalued.

    ‘‘It’s hard to say where this will end,’’ Mrs Price said.

    Pensioner Elaine Wolfe, of Pelican, feared she would not be able to sell her house to move to an aged care home when needed.

    ‘‘Will the council come and look after me?’’ Mrs Wolfe said.

    Marks Point resident Phil Jones provided documents to show that NRMA Insurance had increased his home and contents’ insurance policy from $3375 last year to $7562 this year – a 124per cent increase.

    A letter NRMA sent to Mr Jones said: ‘‘We take into account data … which may include local council flood mapping’’.

    Lake Macquarie council altered its flood plan last year to include sea-level rise risk.

    A council report said insurance premium increases had ‘‘mistakenly been attributed to local government flood risk management policies, flood mapping, and policies on sea level rise’’.

    The Insurance Council of Australia said sea-level rise was ‘‘not covered and not considered’’ in premiums, blaming increases on factors including building big homes in highly hazard-prone areas.

    Marks Point resident Rob Antill said the council’s approach to sea level rise had  cost him $1million because a development he had planned had become unviable.

    Lake Macquarie councillor Ken Paxinos said he was ‘‘ashamed’’ of the council’s sea level rise actions.

    Sustainability manager Alice Howe told councillors on Wednesday  the council had ‘‘a duty of care to consider sea level rise in planning and development decisions’’.

    Fighting to stay afloat

    MARKS Point resident Peter Johnston said he believes  Lake Macquarie City Council’s sea level rise policy would leave many people with properties worth nothing.

    ‘‘A house isn’t worth anything if you can’t sell it,’’ Mr Johnston, 62, said.

    Some houses could not be sold in Marks Point because of council actions on sea level rise, he said.

    He recently received a letter from NRMA Insurance saying his house and contents insurance had risen from $1017 to $3872 – a 280per cent increase in one year.

    He had worked hard for his three-bedroom weatherboard house, he said.

    ‘‘We might live on the water, but I’m a carpenter by trade and I worked in the coalmines,’’ he said.

    ‘‘This is our nest egg.’’

    He said the council was not listening to residents’ concerns. It  was spending money on sea level rise actions when ‘‘it should be fixing potholes’’, Mr Johnston said.

    ‘‘Sea level rise might or might not occur,’’ he said.

  • Another budget in massive deficit

    28 May 2013, 6.19am EST

    Another budget in massive deficit

    Now that the federal budget is out of the way, it’s time to look at another budget soon to be massively in deficit – Australia’s greenhouse emissions budget. Last week, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rose above 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in approximately 3 million years…

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    What percentage of the world’s fossil fuel do we have the right to burn? OzinOH/Flickr

    Now that the federal budget is out of the way, it’s time to look at another budget soon to be massively in deficit – Australia’s greenhouse emissions budget.

    Last week, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rose above 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in approximately 3 million years. Without deep and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades, we face a world of catastrophic climate change with rising average temperatures, rising seas, and extreme weather events.

    So what is Australia’s fair share of the effort necessary to avoid such outcomes? This question lies at the heart of the Climate Change Authority’s (CCA) new issues paper and its task of recommending on Australia’s future targets.

    How much carbon does the world have up its sleeve?

    In 2009, the international community – including Australia – agreed to hold global warming to below 2°C. Developed nations and major industrialising countries then pledged voluntary national mitigation targets for 2020. (Australia adopted an unconditional short-term emissions target to cut national greenhouse emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020.) However, collectively, these pledges fall well short of what is required to keep warming below 2°C, or the much safer target of 1.5°C.

    Research shows that the collective effort of all those pledges would still lead to global average warming of around 4°C and catastrophic climate change. This deficit in international effort is now commonly called the “ambition gap”.

    Climate scientists have put numbers to this gap by estimating a global carbon budget. This budget defines the amount of emissions that can still accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere if we are to stay below 2°C. Using 2000 as the baseline, we now know that that we can add a further 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere to keep warming under 2°C.

    Human activities have already added some 420 billion tonnes (give or take 50 billion tonnes) of CO2 to the atmosphere since 2000. In other words, we have used almost half our quota in 13 years. Climate scientists estimate that, conservatively, only another 500 billion tonnes of CO2 can be added to give us a 75% chance of staying below the 2° limit.

    The world needs to cut its annual emissions of CO2-equivalents by 8 to 13 billion tonnes by 2020 to have a reasonable hope of bridging the “ambition gap”. Cutting by the larger of these amounts offers a better chance of achieving the 2°Celsius goal.

    How do we divide it up?

    It’s all very well to know our limits, but sharing the burden of cutting emissions is proving difficult. How do we divide up the budget so everyone gets a fair slice?

    One way is to divide the remaining 500 billion tonnes of possible greenhouse emissions by the world’s population of 7 billion. This approach gives each human alive today some 71.5 tonnes as their equal part of humanity’s remaining greenhouse budget allocation. Each person can use their quota entirely, or pass the remainder onto their successors. Multiplying the per capita quota by the population of a country gives you its national carbon budget.

    Another option – for determining 2020 targets – is for all national emitters to accept a share in reducing their annual emissions to bridge the “ambition gap” of 13 billion tonnes.

    These approaches aren’t fair. They are merely mathematically proportionate. They demand an equal response of states and their citizens whether nations are wealthy and industrialised or poor and least developed.

    In other words, these approaches “excuse” the massive material benefits that some nations have gained from burning fossil fuels. They also ignore future population growth, the needs of some 2 billion additional humans who will be alive in 2050. A more equitable approach would take into account each nation’s development needs (reflected in its national wealth), its capacity to mitigate, its population projections, and its historical contribution to emissions and to mitigation.

    Nevertheless, these strictly proportionate approaches to burden sharing offer an indicative initial guide to Australia’s share of effort.

    What is Australia’s share?

    In 2012, Australia emitted around 578 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2-equivalents. It ranks 12th among the planet’s 190-plus nations for its domestic greenhouse gas emissions. Its per capita emissions are among the world’s highest. Further, when emissions from Australian coal exports are added to its domestic greenhouse emissions, Australia is the source of nearly 4% of total global emissions. In all, Australia is a major emitter, a very significant contributor to global warming, and should shoulder part of this additional reduction burden.

    If we take the first approach, using a per capita allocation of the remaining global carbon budget and Australia’s present population, Australia’s total remaining emissions budget is some 1.65 billion tonnes. At current emissions rates, Australia will exhaust its total remaining carbon budget within the next three years – unless our economy ceases to exist in that time, or unless we buy substantial amounts of international emissions units to compensate for our emissions. It seems Australia is destined to consume much more of the global emissions budget than is its fair share.

    The second approach – which involves accepting a share of the extra 13 billion tonnes cut necessary to bridge the ambition gap – means reducing Australia’s emissions by a further 195 million tonnes per annum by 2020 (1.5% of the 13 billion tonnes). This would be the same as raising Australia’s present 2020 mitigation target of -5% to around -40%.

    Of course, Australia’s fair share in 2020 would need to be even greater because Australia ranks very high on international indices of national and per capita development, wealth and GDP. Ethically, halving our emissions by 2020 begins to look like the minimum appropriate option.

    From even this brief analysis it’s clear that Australia has the responsibility and the need – given its ecological vulnerability – to adopt a much tougher 2020 emissions abatement target.

    We are overspending carbon like there’s no tomorrow. Our current -5% target for 2020 is one of the weakest of any developed nation. It is expediently constructed to avoid domestic economic and political angst, and shows us to be – in terms of international mitigation effort – a nation of emissions bludgers.

    In the run-up to the September election, we need to hear how competing political parties intend to address Australia’s carbon budget deficit. How will they bring it under control? Where’s the plan for a low-carbon economy? Labor’s cuts in funding for renewable energy, and Abbott’s promised axing of a carbon price that is already too low and his proposed demolition of the Clean Energy Fund, will move us even faster and further into the red.

    A target that halves Australia’s emissions by 2020 can be firmly justified ethically and scientifically. This tougher target is also technologically and economically feasible – but that’s another story.

    Nevertheless many will argue that halving Australia’s greenhouse emissions by 2020 is wildly unrealistic. For a start, it would require multi-party political support, including for significant sectoral reforms. ‘Yeah, right!’, I hear you say. But the longer governments ignore an unavoidable and growing problem of national proportions, the greater the pain when they confront it. And as we’ve just learned from Canberra, the worse the budget deficit and its projections, the tougher the medicine in the long run.

  • the largest independent political survey ever conducted in Australia – the survey of GetUp members everywhere –

    Dear Inga ,

    You know what’s at stake this election. Now I’m inviting you to take part in the largest independent political survey ever conducted in Australia – the survey of GetUp members everywhere – to further guide our movement’s priority issues and election strategy.

    I’ve recorded a short message explaining why. Check it out, and spend a few minutes telling us what’s important to you this election.

    http://www.getup.org.au/yourvision2013

    At the last election, GetUp members championed climate action, took a case to the High Court that allowed 100,000 young Australians to get on the electoral roll, and won a massive increase in funding for mental health – among many other achievements.

    So this is your chance to shape our direction this time around.

    Thanks for all that you do,
    Sam, and the GetUp team

    GetUp is an independent, not-for-profit community campaigning group. We use new technology to empower Australians to have their say on important national issues. We receive no political party or government funding, and every campaign we run is entirely supported by voluntary donations. If you’d like to contribute to help fund GetUp’s work, please donate now! If you have trouble with any links in this email, please go directly to www.getup.org.au. To unsubscribe from GetUp, please click here. Authorised by Sam Mclean, Level 2, 104 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010.

  • China buying up the world?

    China buying up the world?

    Woman buys Shuanghui supplied pork

    This week, the largest acquisition of a US firm by a Chinese company was announced. Chinese pork producer Shuanghui International had an offer of $4.7bn accepted by US meat giant Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork producer.

    Just a fortnight earlier, China’s State Grid, the world’s largest utility firm, said it was investing in a couple of companies in Australia. And China is also branching out into movies. The new owner of US cinema chain AMC theatres, Wanda, is Chinese.

    Overseas investments by Chinese firms require permission from the government, because the country controls capital movements across its borders.

    But that is rarely a problem if you are in an area favoured by the Chinese government, such as food, technology, resources, etc. In other words, when a Chinese firm wanted to buy Hummer, which makes the giant off-road vehicles, that wasn’t approved.

    In fact, the government is pushing for more overseas investment as part of its Going Global policy, which was launched in 2000.

    The aim is to create multinational companies, with a particular emphasis in the areas that are important to support China’s economic development.

    There are macroeconomic benefits in helping China diversify its investments (see my earlier post on China’s global ambitions). That is why, for firms that meet those aims, the Chinese state can offer to help by financing the deals using its foreign exchange reserves.

    One way to create multinationals is to buy existing companies, especially trusted brands, as the Chinese companies hope the goodwill associated with these names will rub off on them.

    Shop selling Lenovo products in China China’s biggest PC maker, Lenovo, bought IBM in 2005

    Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s PC business, as well as the use of the IBM brand name for five years, is the most prominent example of this. The aspiration was to make Lenovo synonymous with a global brand known for its quality.

    The deal also showcases some of the difficulties, however. A key one is that businesses that are for sale aren’t usually the most successful ones.

    So what firms such as Lenovo try to do is to make the products more cheaply. A typical Chinese merger and acquisitions strategy involves cutting costs. Plus, the product can be sold to a larger market. A Chinese owner can offer entry into one of the biggest consumer markets in the world. This can work, but can’t be taken for granted.

    Value of trust

    Nowhere is the importance of brand and quality more apparent than in the area of food products.

    Shuanghui’s reputation suffered when a banned chemical, clenbuterol, which makes meat leaner, was found in its products.

    This may explain why the Chinese firm bid $34 a share for Smithfield, more than a third higher than the value of the shares before the bid was announced.

    Of course, as pork is a staple of the Chinese diet and the country will consume more meat as it grows richer, the growth potential is sizeable.

    With outward investment in quality and brands an important part of China’s growth strategy, this may not be the biggest deal for long.

    So is China buying up the world? Well, not quite.

    China still receives more investment than it invests overseas. But big Chinese takeovers such as these are certain to keep making headlines.

    Linda Yueh Article written by Linda Yueh Linda Yueh Chief business correspondent

    Why the yuan’s value remains in dispute

    09:03 UK time, Wednesday, 29 May 2013

    China doesn’t yet have one main interest rate. Until there is one, the value of the exchange rate is unlikely to be settled.

    Read full article

    More on This Story

    More from Linda

  • Glacier impact on sea-level rise depends on its shape

    Glacier impact on sea-level rise depends on its shape

    31 May 2013, by Harriet Jarlett

    Four of Greenland’s most important glaciers could contribute up to 5cm to sea-level rise if global temperatures increase by 4.5oC by the end of the 22nd century, say scientists.

    Ice

    As glaciers shrink because of melting and the formation of icebergs, the ice they lose contributes to sea-level rise. Over the past decade the glaciers across Greenland have, been retreating at an accelerating rate and scientists were increasingly concerned about runaway losses causing marked sea-level rise in the future.

    But without a better understanding of the processes that form icebergs and whether the recent rise in calving – chunks of ice breaking off where the glacier meets the ocean – is due to climate change, scientists couldn’t accurately predict how much melting glaciers would add to sea-level rise in the future, until now.

    An international team of scientists created computer models of the four most important glaciers in Greenland, chosen as together they drain around 22 per cent of Greenland’s ice sheet into the ocean. The team then used these models to predict how Greenland’s glaciers could contribute to sea-level rise by 2200.

    The research, published in Nature, shows that how fast a glacier retreats depends on the shape and the landscape it flows over. While all four glaciers are retreating, because of their different shapes they accelerate at different rates and in different ways. By understanding the processes which affect different glaciers, scientists are able to better predict how they will react to warming oceans and atmosphere and can then use models to show how much each individual glacier will contribute more or less to sea level under different warming scenarios.

    Iceberg

    For these four glaciers, the study showed that their shape’s suggest their retreat is unlikely to continue accelerating at the same pace. Instead, under a mid-range climate scenario, where carbon emissions increase through the 21st century so global temperatures rise by 2.8oC, the four glaciers could contribute up to three centimetres to sea-level rise by 2200– less than previous estimates based on current rates of retreat.

    ‘We were mainly interested in understanding the behaviour of these glaciers; is it the warmer ocean currents controlling their rapid retreat, or a warmer atmosphere resulting in more surface melt runoff, or is it a combination of these forcings resulting in icebergs being calved off faster? We wanted to see which of these caused the recent acceleration,’ says Dr Faezah Nick, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the lead author of the paper. ‘We tried to model the glaciers so we could see how things would change over the next century and how glaciers would react to different forcing.’

    Ice falls

    The computer model showed that the shape of the glacier and its fjord – the seawater-filled valley it leaves behind – can alter how it responds to a changing climate.

    Two of the four glaciers studied, Helheim and Kangerdlugssauaq, were found to be most sensitive to changes happening where they meet the ocean, which results in large amounts of calving. The area in front of these glaciers is filled with floating chunks of broken ice, and sea ice called ice mélange. Ice mélange may protect the glacier front from calving, but as ocean temperatures rise it melts and more calving occurs.

    This means the glacier can move faster down into the ocean, which in turn results in surface crevasses opening and even more calving.

    Glacier

    Because of its shape, the Petermann glacier’s retreat was unaffected by ice calving. Instead its retreat was mostly affected by the amount of ice melting underneath it. The Petermann glacier has a very long and thin ice shelf so changes happening at its front, where it meets the ocean, affect it much less. Instead, because the glacier has so much ice in contact with seawater along its base, rising ocean temperatures can cause that ice to melt and accelerate its retreat.

    ‘In Summer 2012 and 2010 two large icebergs broke off of the Petermann glacier, but neither had a big influence on the ice flow. There was no speed up because that kind of glacier has a very long and thin shelf and the glacier flow is insensitive to changes at the front,’ says Nick.

    The team are now confident that, despite the rapid changes observed for these glaciers over the last decade, the accelerated retreat is unlikely to continue. But they warn that other glaciers, which have not shown rapid changes yet, may start retreating.

    ‘It’s now clear that each glacier behaves different depending on the geometry of land they sit on and whether they have an ice shelf or not. So if we really want to understand how much sea level rise will be in the next century we need to study each of the major outlet glaciers individually, therefore it is necessary to measure the topography beneath them,’ Nick concludes.

    Nick, F.M., Vieli, A., Andersen, M.L., Joughin, I., Payne, A.J., Edwards, T.L., Pattyn, F. and Roderik van de Wal. (2013) Future sea-level rise from Greenland’s major outlet glaciers in a warming climate. Nature 497, 235-238

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  • weaken Atlantic ocean currents

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    May 30, 2013

    Carbon-dioxide ‘overshoots’ could weaken Atlantic ocean currents

    What is the best way to reduce our carbon-dioxide emissions? Should we wean ourselves off fossil fuels slowly but steadily over the next 100 years, or aim for a sharp exit over the next 50 years? Ultimately both options would release similar amounts of carbon dioxide overall, but the sharp exit would produce a large pulse of carbon dioxide now, whereas the weaning option would be more of a slow exhale of the gas. Which leads to greater climate change: a steady trickle or a big bubble of carbon dioxide? A new model indicates that, in most cases, this timing is irrelevant; what matters is the overall cumulative emissions. However, one scenario was found to affect regional climate change, particularly over Europe.

    Daisuke Nohara from the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry in Japan and colleagues used a fully coupled climate-carbon cycle model to evaluate the dependency of climate and carbon-cycle change on carbon-dioxide “emission pathways” – the timing of carbon-dioxide release. They studied five different pathways, all of which levelled off to final cumulative emissions of 2000 gigatonnes of carbon. One of these scenarios included an “overshoot” where emissions temporarily peaked at 4000 GtC, but subsequently reduced to 2000 GtC as a result of continuous negative emissions, from carbon-capture technology, for example.

    In most cases the model supported the idea that climate change is independent of carbon-dioxide emission pathway. However, Nohara and his colleagues found that temporary “overshoots” of carbon dioxide had a significant impact on regional climate. Despite the eventual cessation in emissions they found that any temporary pulses of carbon dioxide led to a weakened Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). “This change in AMOC has a major impact on the northward heat transport in the North Atlantic, leading to regional climate change, in particular, over Europe,” explained Nohara. These findings are published in Environmental Research Letters (ERL).

    It seems that the overshoot of carbon dioxide triggers rapid warming in the Arctic region, which enhances a weakened AMOC. And a weakened AMOC induces falling air temperatures and falling rainfall over the northern Atlantic and Europe. The model indicated that this regional variation would persist for at least 150 years after the cessation of carbon-dioxide emissions.

    So it seems that in most cases the way in which we emit our carbon dioxide is irrelevant; it is the cumulative amount that matters. But crucially there are exceptions, which could have serious long-term regional implications. Exactly what these implications are, and how we should adapt our future mitigation strategies, is not yet clear. “We need to carry out more comprehensive analysis of multi-climate model ensembles, rather than basing our results on one single climate model,” said Nohara.

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    About the author

    Kate Ravilious is a contributing editor for environmentalresearchweb.