Author: Neville

Coonabarabran fire declared a catastrophe

ABCUpdated January 17, 2013, 8:27 am

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A fire which has been burning in the Warrumbungle National Park in north west New South Wales since Sunday has been declared a catastrophe by the Insurance Council of Australia.

Chief executive Campbell Fuller says the council is sending a taskforce to the nearby town of Coonabarabran today to help people with their insurance claims.

“Their primary goal is to improve coordination between the insurers, state and local governments, emergency services and also local agencies,” he said.

Mr Fuller says famers will not be affected if they bury or put down livestock before an assessor can get there.

“Where stock have been injured I’d certainly like to remind residents that they can put down that stock,” he said.

“So long as the stock is insured, they notify their insurer beforehand and that they take photographs, collect information about livestock that the insurer may request and record the number and disposal details.”

Evacuees were allowed to return home temporarily yesterday.

Local police officer, Mal Unicomb, was among them and says it has been tough to see so many houses destroyed.

“In one word; horrible, many of people are going back to just twisted metal,” he said.

“Some have been lucky enough and their houses have escaped the inferno but for many of them, particularly residents out along Timor Road, it’s very sad and disheartening.”

The Warrumbungle Shire Council says residents will have to wait several weeks before they can begin cleaning up.

Shire Mayor Peter Shinton says police need time to examine the area and prepare a report for the coroner.

“There’s going to be issues with asbestos, there’s going to be all sorts of things,” he said.

“Some houses, the only reason they’re there apparently was they got the last dump of retardant put straight on top of the house.

“So that means tanks are going to have to be cleaned out, roofs are going to have to be cleaned, because it’s not the sort of thing that you drink, so all that sort of work has got to be done.”

He’s also warning residents that Coonabarabran’s water supply is likely to be contaminated by ash.

“We’ve got problems with water pumps at our dams, it came over our dam as well,” he said.

“We’re going to have problems with our water quality as well because the dam now has a skin of ash on it, and soon as we get rainfall, which is predicted for the next couple of days, then we’re going to get black water running into the dam as well.”

New Danger

The Rural Fire Service says a forecast wind change today could endanger properties south east of the bushfire.

More than 200 firefighters spent another night battling the 42,000 hectare blaze, which has destroyed at least 40 properties.

Paul Best from the RFS says crews will focus on back burning along the fire’s edge to protect Coonabarabran’s outskirts as well as a telecommunications tower.

“If that does take a run under the coming winds, those isolated properties could come under threat,” he said.

“So people in that area should be making preparations, completing their bushfire survival plan and having an idea of what they’re going to do over the next few days if that fire does threaten them.”

The Bureau of Meteorology says tomorrow’s weather conditions are not expected to be as severe as first forecast.

Temperatures are predicted to hit the high 30s and there will be winds of about 25 to 30 kilometres an hour.
Another bushfire burning in the Pilliga Forest, to the north of Coonabarabran, is under control and the Newell Highway has been reopened.

Coal fracking likely in Sydney area: report

ABCJanuary 17, 2013, 9:01 am

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A report to the New South Wales Government from the state’s Chief Scientist has found fracking is likely to be used to access coal seam gas, in areas including Sydney.

The Greens have obtained the report which was provided to Resources Minister Chris Hartcher by Chief Scientist Mary O’Kane.

Professor O’Kane’s office sought advice from three experts and found that fracking is likely to be used in the latter stages of gas developments, particularly in the areas of Sydney, Gunnedah and Gloucester.

Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham says the risks of fracking are too great.

“New South Wales is set to be fracked from top to bottom,” he said.

“Once you frack it’s a humpty dumpty situation, you can’t put your geology, your aquifers, your suburbs back together again.

“It’s dangerous and it’s risky.

Mr Buckingham says the secret report adds weight to calls for a moratorium on coal seam gas mining across New South Wales.

“These documents reveal that this will be a massive industry with massive impacts on our aquifers, our farms, our water,” he said.
“The Government should press pause.”

Royal commission will override confidentiality agreements

By chief political correspondent Simon Cullen, ABCUpdated January 16, 2013, 7:07 pm

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The head of the royal commission into child sexual abuse has vowed to use its powers to override confidentiality agreements between victims and institutions if the information is necessary to its investigation.

The six commissioners appointed by the Federal Government to investigate allegations of systemic abuse within religious and state-run institutions have held their first face-to-face meeting in Sydney today.

Justice Peter McClellan says it is too early to say when public hearings will begin, adding the task before the commission is “complex and will take significant time”.

He has also sought to address public concerns about how the commission will deal with the issue of confidentiality agreements and whether it has the power to override them.

“We wish to emphasise that under the Royal Commission Act, the commission has powers to compel the production of evidence, including documents, and we will not hesitate in an appropriate case to exercise those powers,” Justice McClellan told reporters in Sydney.

“We will of course be mindful of the potential sensitivity of some of those matters which may require the commission to place constraints upon the further publication of any details which it obtains by this means.

“However, the commission expects that all institutions that may have entered into confidential agreements with individuals will cooperate with the commission in relation to the disclosure of those matters.”

Justice McClellan says the commission will examine individual allegations of abuse so it can understand the circumstances that allowed the behaviour to occur and what action was taken by the relevant institution.

But he says the commission does not have the power to prosecute individuals named in the inquiry, and will not be determining victims’ eligibility for compensation.

“Because the commission is not a prosecuting body, it will establish links with appropriate authorities in each state and territory to whom a matter may be referred with the expectation that, where appropriate, prosecutorial proceedings may commence.

“It is also important to understand that the commission is not charged with determining whether any person may be entitled to compensation for any injury which they may have suffered.”

Public hearings

Justice McClellan says wherever possible, the commission will hear evidence in public but acknowledges that many people will feel apprehensive about discussing sensitive matters in public.

He says steps will be taken to protect the interests of those people while also ensuring fairness to other people and institutions.

“This may mean that proceedings will take place in private, real names may not be used, and it may be necessary to place other constraints on the reporting of individual matters,” he said.

Justice McClellan says the commission will be based in Sydney but will travel around the country to hear evidence.

He says the commission will examine institutional abuse in all areas of Australia, including those which may have provided services in Indigenous communities.

He also says arrangements will be made to hear evidence from witnesses who now live overseas.

“The issues which the commission must enquire into have been the subject of public discussion both in this country and in other countries for a number of years,” he said.

“The commission is mindful of the work which has been done in various parts of Australia and will seek to draw upon the material which has already been gathered by those inquiries.”

Gail Furness SC has been appointed as counsel assisting the commission, although it is likely a second counsel will need to be appointed.
Justice McClellan says a team of lawyers from the Australian Government Solicitor will assist the commission.

Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

Leslie McCarthy
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York
212-678-5507
leslie.m.mccarthy@nasa.gov
Jan. 15, 2013 RELEASE : 13-021 NASA Finds 2012 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend WASHINGTON — NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis Tuesday that compares temperatures around the globe in 2012 to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago.

The average temperature in 2012 was about 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 Celsius), which is 1.0 F (0.6 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F (0.8 C) since 1880, according to the new analysis.

Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperature from year to year, but the continued increase in greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere assures a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade.

“One more year of numbers isn’t in itself significant,” GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt said. “What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason it’s warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat and largely controls Earth’s climate. It occurs naturally and also is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. Driven by increasing man-made emissions, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has been rising consistently for decades.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, the first year in the GISS temperature record. By 1960, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory, was about 315 parts per million. Today, that measurement exceeds 390 parts per million.

While the globe experienced relatively warm temperatures in 2012, the continental U.S. endured its warmest year on record by far, according to NOAA, the official keeper of U.S. weather records.

“The U.S. temperatures in the summer of 2012 are an example of a new trend of outlying seasonal extremes that are warmer than the hottest seasonal temperatures of the mid-20th century,” GISS director James E. Hansen said. “The climate dice are now loaded. Some seasons still will be cooler than the long-term average, but the perceptive person should notice that the frequency of unusually warm extremes is increasing. It is the extremes that have the most impact on people and other life on the planet.”

The temperature analysis produced at GISS is compiled from weather data from more than 1,000 meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea-surface temperature, and Antarctic research station measurements. A publicly available computer program is used to calculate the difference between surface temperature in a given month and the average temperature for the same place during 1951 to 1980. This three-decade period functions as a baseline for the analysis. The last year that experienced cooler temperatures than the 1951 to 1980 average was 1976.

The GISS temperature record is one of several global temperature analyses, along with those produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. These three primary records use slightly different methods, but overall, their trends show close agreement.

For images related to the data, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/10wqITW

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US east-coast cities are ‘sitting ducks’ for storms, says top Obama scientist

Marcia McNutt, who resigned as director of the US Geological Survey, says hurricane Sandy has left communities exposed
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Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 January 2013 20.01 GMT

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Hurricane Sandy churns off the US east coast in the Atlantic Ocean. Photograph: NASA/Getty Images

Cities on the United States east coast are “sitting ducks” for the next big storm because of the destruction wrought by hurricane Sandy, one of Barack Obama’s top scientists warned on Tuesday.

Marcia McNutt, who last week announced her resignation as director of the US Geological Survey, told a conference that Sandy had left coastal communities dangerously exposed to future storms of any size.

“Superstorm Sandy was a threshold for the north-east and we have already crossed it,” McNutt told the National Council for Science and the Environment conference in Washington. “For the next storm, not even a super storm, even a run-of-the-mill nor’easter, the amount of breaches and the amount of coastal flooding will be widespread.”

McNutt, a professor of marine geophysics, was careful to preface her public remarks by saying she spoke as a scientist and not an Obama Administration official. But the unusually stark warning from a departing Obama official indicates the challenges ahead in protecting American population centres from the extreme storms of a changing climate.

“Before Sandy, someone asked me what my climate change nightmare was. Before Sandy, I said it was that with the extra energy in the atmosphere-ocean system it feeds super storms that intersect mega-cities left rendered defenceless by rising seas,” McNutt said in a brief interview following her public remarks. “That is where we now are.”

Half of America’s population lives within 50 miles of a coast, and those numbers are growing. However, scientists and urban planners have warned repeatedly that those coastal communities – as well as important infrastructure – are increasingly vulnerable. In the coming decades, a combination of extreme weather and storm surges, on top of rising seas, will put a growing share of the population at risk. Natural defences, such as sand dunes and barrier islands along the Atlantic, have been destroyed or weakened through decades of development, McNutt said.

“We have left our coasts sitting ducks, and Sandy destroyed these natural protections,” she said.

In the space of a few hours, Sandy blew through the sand dunes that had served as natural protections for communities up and down the Atlantic coast.

“Basically these dunes build up over geologic time, and yet the superstorm wore them down over a couple of days, and it is going to take geologic time again to build them back up,” McNutt said. “It is possible with bulldozers and engineering and millions of dollars to do with engineering what Mother Nature used to do for free.”

However, McNutt conceded that this was a daunting prospect given existing fiscal constraints. Republicans in the house have already balked at the $50bn in immediate relief for Sandy that went to the house on Tuesday.

“There are some cities and towns that actually spent multi-millions of dollars to rebuild eroded dunes, and some of them actually fared better than cities and towns that hadn’t rebuilt their dunes. So it is possible by spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to rebuild them, but where are those resources going to be?” McNutt said.

In the case of New Jersey, post-Sandy flight surveys by the USGS showed substantial damage to the dunes, barrier islands and other geographic features that had shielded coastal communities from the full fury of the storm. In some areas, the coastline lost up to six metres in elevation, the USGS said on its website.

USGS scientists monitoring coastal systems had been tracking the loss of wetlands and sand dunes, and were able to accurately predict in advance of Sandy where the storm would do the worst damage.

Those areas were even more vulnerable now, McNutt said.

Storms hit Great Southern town of Karlgarin

ABCUpdated January 16, 2013, 3:30 pm

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A storm has swept through the Great Southern town of Karlgarin, ripping roofs off homes and buildings.

Authorities say the front hit the town about 5:00pm, bringing heavy rain and strong winds of up to 90km an hour.

Nigel Elliott from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services says nearby crews have been called in to help with the clean-up.

“We have sent local crews from the nearest brigade of Hyden to go and assist at that community,” he said.

“They have reported that around about eight buildings have lost roofs, which include the post office, school and also a series of dongas in a local caravan park.

“The storm front was reported to be approximately about 10 km wide and was fairly localised in regards to its destructive winds and rain.
“The Great Southern district will probably send crews this morning to assess the damage in daylight.”

Storms hit Great Southern town of Karlgarin

ABCUpdated January 16, 2013, 3:30 pm

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ABC © Enlarge photo

A storm has swept through the Great Southern town of Karlgarin, ripping roofs off homes and buildings.

Authorities say the front hit the town about 5:00pm, bringing heavy rain and strong winds of up to 90km an hour.

Nigel Elliott from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services says nearby crews have been called in to help with the clean-up.

“We have sent local crews from the nearest brigade of Hyden to go and assist at that community,” he said.

“They have reported that around about eight buildings have lost roofs, which include the post office, school and also a series of dongas in a local caravan park.

“The storm front was reported to be approximately about 10 km wide and was fairly localised in regards to its destructive winds and rain.
“The Great Southern district will probably send crews this morning to assess the damage in daylight.”

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