Author: Neville

Salinization of Rivers: A Global Environmental Problem

Jan. 11, 2013 — The salinisation of rivers is a global problem that affects to countries all over the world and it causes a high environmental and economic cost, and poses a high risk to global health. Climate change and the increasing water consumption can worsen even more the future scene, according to an article published on the journal Environmental Pollution based on the research developed by an international team led by the experts of the Department of Ecology of the University of Barcelona Narcís Prat and Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles.
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Human activity increases the salinity of river ecosystems

River salinity can be natural, caused by the geology of the area or the climatology, or anthropogenic, in other words, caused by domestic and industrial waste discharges, mining activity, agricultural and farming residues, etc. In worldwide river ecosystems, excessive salt concentrations caused by human activity are a threat to the survival of organisms and communities, biodiversity, the ecosystem’s biological balance, and it produces severe economical and public health problems.

According to Miguel Cañello-Argüelles, the main author of the article, “this article aims at giving a integrating view and emphasize the seriousness of the ecological, economic and global health effects that secondary salinisation has.” The expert remarks that it is a global process: “It happens in many regions from all over the world, although there is a great ignorance about the problem.” The most extreme case of salinisation occurs in some Australian rivers. “However — Cañedo-Argüelles adds — , in this case local studies have been done in order to clearly diagnose the problem; therefore, all the agents who make use of the natural resources of some rivers (farmers, industrialists, etc.) have collaborated in the process of finding solutions.”

In Europe, the process of river salinisation by human action is getting worse as years goes by. “It is also a problem in Spain,” declares the professor Narcís Prat, director of the Research Group Freshwater Ecology and Management (FEM) of the UB. ” In the Ebro plain, due to soil’s characteristic and the kind of agricultural activity performed, rivers are saltier than in Australia — he explains — , but here river conservation is not among the priorities of water resources management,” so these problems are not solved. According to Prat, the question is even worse in the region of Murcia: “It is a semi-arid area where irrigation is a common activity and rivers are saline as a result of the excessive exploitation of water resources.”

What is the degree of salinity of Catalan rivers?

In the Catalan river system, there are also some parts where high levels of salinity can be found. To be exact, experts have studied the salinisation of the Llobregat River basin supported by Mesocosmos Sostaqua, an infrastructure located at the water-treatment plan of Balsareny. The pump, which reproduces the natural conditions of the river ecosystem, was built by the group FEM of the UB and the company Aigües de Barcelona. “We are aware of the salinity of Llobregat River — Narcís Prat affirms — , but apart from the salt, there are also other features that can damage the environmental quality of water. Therefore, sometimes we cannot determine what is more important: salt or the pollution produced by other factors. With Mesocosmos, we can study separately the effect of each factor (for example, the salt concentration) and differentiate its influence from the one made by the other factors.” Despite the qualitative improvement of Llobregat River water thanks to the collector of brines, which lea

ds mining leachates directly to the sea, the UB experts alert that salinity is a remaining question because the collector has not been able to solve all the problems. According to Narcís Prat, “the level of salinity at the lower course of the Llobregat River where the area of potash mining begins is so high that its use can only be agricultural, not human. It is not such an alarming situation as in Australia but it is worrying. The situation is the same at the lower course of the Besòs River: its water is more and more salty, and in this case the reason is not mining but all the processes developed in order to decalcificate the water (like in dishwashers when we add salt to avoid the stains that lime will cause).”

Experts explain that excessive salt is also a factor that has a negative effect on water potabilization. For example, it makes necessary to install new technologies, such as reverse osmosis, that have put up the price of water potabilization for human consumption in the plants of Abrera and Sant Joan Despí. In addition, the use of chlorine to potabilizate water produces many chemical compounds (borates, chlorates, trihalomethanes, etc.) which can be toxic for environment and health.

Looking for solutions

According to the article, current legislation is generally flexible when it comes to establish limits for salt concentrations in rivers. In Europe, salinisation is not considered an important problem and no legally prescribed environmental quality standards exist for salt. In many countries, business and industrial factor predominates over the necessity to set a limiting regulation. Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles considers that “legislation is still waiting. People are not aware of the severity of the problem and information about the effects of excessive salt on river ecosystems is missing.”

In the article, the authors also quote some successful management strategies, for example, the Hunter River salinity trading scheme upstream in Singleton (Australia), with controlled salt discharges adapted to the volume of the river: when the volume is high, more salt is discharged, whereas when it goes down the quantity of salt is reduced.

In a future

The study states that the effects of global change could increase even more the salinisation of rivers in many regions. Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles thinks that “it is difficult to predict the impact of climate change. In comparison with other regions of the planet, lower rainfall, worse drought, more water consumption, and therefore, more salinity in rivers are expected in the Mediterranean region.” Finally, Narcís Prat concludes that “the most important aspect is to stop fighting and began to work together. It is necessary to react against the problem of excessive salinity in Catalan and worldwide rivers before it will be a severer problem.”

The article is also authored by Ben J. Kefford from the University of Technology of Sydney (Australia); Christophe Piscart from the University of Lyon (France); Ralf B. Schäfer from the University Koblenz-Landau (Germany); and Claus-Jürgen Schulz from the Thuringian State Institute for Environment and Geology (TLUG, Germany).
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The salinisation of rivers is a growing problem that affects to countries all over the world. (Credit: Woady creek, Australia / Ben J. Kefford)
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Climate change set to make America hotter, drier and more disaster-prone

Draft report from NCA makes clear link between climate change and extreme weather as groups urge Obama to take action
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Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 January 2013 21.26 GMT

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The report says steps taken by Obama to reduce emissions are ‘not close to sufficient’ to prevent the most severe consequences of climate change. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP

Future generations of Americans can expect to spend 25 days a year sweltering in temperatures above 100F (38C), with climate change on course to turn the country into a hotter, drier, and more disaster-prone place.

The National Climate Assessment, released in draft form on Friday , provided the fullest picture to date of the real-time effects of climate change on US life, and the most likely consequences for the future.

The 1,000-page report, the work of the more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, was unequivocal on the human causes of climate change, and on the links between climate change and extreme weather.

“Climate change is already affecting the American people,” the draft report said. “Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense including heat waves, heavy downpours and in some regions floods and drought. Sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and Arctic sea ice are melting.”

The report, which is not due for adoption until 2014, was produced to guide federal, state and city governments in America in making long-term plans.

By the end of the 21st century, climate change is expected to result in increased risk of asthma and other public health emergencies, widespread power blackouts, and mass transit shutdowns, and possibly shortages of food.

“Proactively preparing for climate change can reduce impacts, while also facilitating a more rapid and efficient response to changes as they happen,” said Katharine Jacobs, the director of the National Climate Assessment.

The report will be open for public comment on Monday.

Environmental groups said they hoped the report would provide Barack Obama with the scientific evidence to push for measures that would slow or halt the rate of climate change – sparing the country some of the worst effects.

The report states clearly that the steps taken by Obama so far to reduce emissions are “not close to sufficient” to prevent the most severe consequences of climate change.

“As climate change and its impacts are becoming more prevalent, Americans face choices,” the report said. “Beyond the next few decades, the amount of climate change will still largely be determined by the choices society makes about emissions. Lower emissions mean less future warming and less severe impacts. Higher emissions would mean more warming and more severe impacts.”

As the report made clear: no place in America had gone untouched by climate change. Nowhere would be entirely immune from the effects of future climate change.
A heatwave swept across the US in 2011, with temperatures reaching over 110F (43C). Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP
Some of those changes are already evident: 2012 was by far the hottest year on record, fully a degree hotter than the last such record – an off-the-charts rate of increase.

Those high temperatures were on course to continue for the rest of the century, the draft report said. It noted that average US temperatures had increased by about 1.5F since 1895, with more than 80% of this increase since 1980.

The rise will be even steeper in future, with the next few decades projected for temperatures 2 to 4 degrees warmer in most areas. By 2100, if climate change continues on its present course, the country can expect to see 25 days a year with temperatures above 100F.

Night-time temperatures will also stay high, providing little respite from the heat.

Certain regions are projected to heat up even sooner. West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware can expect a doubling of days hotter than 95 degrees by the 2050s. In Texas and Oklahoma, the draft report doubled the probability of extreme heat events.

Those extreme temperatures would also exact a toll on public health, with worsening air pollution, and on infrastructure increasing the load for ageing power plants.
This 8 November 2011 image shows a storm bearing down on Alaska. Photograph: Ho/AFP/Getty Images
But nowhere will see changes as extreme as Alaska, the report said.

“The most dramatic evidence is in Alaska, where average temperatures have increased more than twice as fast as the rest of the country,” the draft report said. “Of all the climate-related changes in the US, the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice cover in the last decade may be the most striking of all.”

Other regions will face different extreme weather scenarios. The north-east, in particular, is at risk of coastal flooding because of sea-level rise and storm surges, as well as river flooding, because of an increase in heavy downpours.
A flooded farm along the Mississippi River is seen in Cairo, Illinois. Photograph: Stephen Lance Dennee/AP
“The north-east has experienced a greater increase in extreme precipitation over the past few decades than any other region in the US,” the report said. Between 1958 and 2010, the north-east saw a 74% increase in heavy downpours.

The midwest was projected to enjoy a longer growing season – but also an increased risk of extreme events like last year’s drought. By mid-century, the combination of temperature increases and heavy rainfall or drought were expected to pull down yields of major US food crops, the report warned, threatening both American and global food security.

The report is the most ambitious scientific exercise ever undertaken to catalogue the real-time effects of climate change, and predict possible outcomes in the future.

It involved more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, compared to around 30 during the last such effort when George W Bush was president. Its findings were also much broader in scope, Jacobs said.

There were still unknowns though, the report conceded, especially about how the loss of sea ice in Greenland and Antarctica will affect future sea-level rise.

Campaign groups said they hoped the report would spur Obama to act on climate change in his second term. “The draft assessment offers a perfect opportunity for President Obama at the outset of his second term,” said Lou Leonard, director of the climate change programme for the World Wildlife Fund. “When a similar report was released in 2009, the Administration largely swept it under the rug. This time, the President should use it to kick-start a national conversation on climate change. ”

However, the White House was exceedingly cautious on the draft release, noting in a blogpost: “The draft NCA is a scientific document—not a policy document—and does not make recommendations regarding actions that might be taken in response to climate change.”

Royal commission trauma ahead: Gillard

AAPUpdated January 12, 2013, 12:45 pm

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There are traumatic times ahead for child sexual abuse victims as the royal commission swings into action, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

But eventually, the inquiry’s recommendations will hopefully bring healing to the Australian nation, Ms Gillard told child sex abuse survivors on Saturday.

A day after she announced the appointments to the royal commission into child sexual abuse in institutions, Ms Gillard met with about 30 child sexual abuse survivors and advocates at Kirribilli House in Sydney on Saturday.

“Yesterday’s announcement is a tribute to you for having sustained that campaign after many, many long years,” Ms Gillard told them.

“I can’t promise you there are easy days ahead.

“I suspect there are some very traumatic days ahead as people come and tell what happened to them, many of them for the very first time.”

Child abuse victims had suffered many years of being “shunned and spurned and having doors slammed in their face”, Ms Gillard said.

“It’s your time now to tell your story.

“… The recommendations of the royal commission (will), I hope, bring some healing to individuals and to us as a nation.”

The royal commission was broadly welcomed by those present at the morning tea, with advocate Dr Wayne Chamley telling the prime minister, “We want to thank you for your courage”.

Dr Chamley, of Broken Rites, told AAP he was particularly pleased with the appointment of Justice Peter McClellan as head of the six-member commission.

“This is going to determine how we care for and protect and cherish our children in the future,” he said.

John Hennessy of Child Migrants Trust carried a photograph of his late British mother, May Mary Hennessy, who was told he was dead before he was shipped to a Western Australian Christian Brothers institution.

“I think it vindicates everything we’ve been fighting for for 25 years,” Mr Hennessy said of the royal commission.

The commissioners are expected to hold a telephone hook-up on Monday and their first face-to-face meeting scheduled for Wednesday.
The commission is expected to provide an interim report by the end of June 2014 and will wind up in December 2015.

Heatwave exacerbated by climate change: Climate Commission

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By Simon Lauder
Updated 2 hours 15 minutes ago

Video: Climate change increases fire risk (ABC News)

Related Story: Reinsurer estimates 2012’s disasters cost $160b

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Map: Australia
A new report from the Federal Government’s Climate Commission says the heatwave and bushfires that have affected Australia this week have been exacerbated by global warming.

The report – Off the Charts: Extreme Australian Summer Heat – warns of more extreme bushfires and hotter, longer, bigger and more frequent heatwaves, due to climate change.

It says the number of record heat days across Australia has doubled since 1960 and more temperature records are likely to be broken as hot conditions continue this summer.

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard linked the heatwave with climate change this week, the acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss said that was utterly simplistic.

But climate change experts have no doubt that climate change is a factor in the current conditions.

The scientific advisor to the Climate Commission, Professor David Karoly, has written the report for the Climate Commission to answer questions about the link between heatwaves and climate change.

Not every summer will be hotter than the one before. In fact this year is markedly hotter than the last couple of years when we had relatively milder and wetter conditions.

But what we are going to find on average is more of the hot extremes and faster increases in the future, over the next 10 and 30 years, that we have seen over the last 30 years – more hot extremes, more heatwaves and more extreme fire conditions.

Climate scientists have been talking about these increases for more than 20 years in Australia. We are now seeing exactly what was predicted more than 20 years ago.

Professor David Karoly

“What we have been able to see is clear evidence of an increasing trend in hot extremes, reductions in cold extremes and with the increases in hot extremes more frequent extreme fire danger day,” he said.

“What it means for the Australian summer is an increased frequency of hot extremes, more hot days, more heatwaves and more extreme bushfire days and that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing typically over the last decade and we will see even more frequently in the future.”

‘Increases in extremes’

Professor Karoly says climate change has worsened this heatwave by extending it and increasing its intensity.

“What climate change is doing is worsening the conditions associated with heat waves so it makes them longer, it makes the intensity of the heat wave worse and together they lead to more frequent extreme fire danger days,” he said.

Audio: Heatwaves exacerbated by climate change (AM)

Australia’s average temperature has increased by 0.9 of a degree since 1910, and the report says small changes in average temperature can have a significant impact on the frequency and nature of extreme weather events.

Professor Karoly says, based on current projections of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, the long-term outlook is even more dire.

“We are expecting in the next 50 years for two to three degrees more warming,” he said.

“In other words two or three times the warming we’ve seen already leading to much greater increases in heatwaves and extreme fire danger days.

“So we’re expecting future climate change to lead to much greater increases in extremes in the next 30 to 50 years.”

Topics:climate-change, weather, australia

First posted 3 hours 36 minutes ago

Whitehaven a siren call for a host of hoaxes

Date January 12, 2013 54 reading now
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Peter Ker

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With his untamed beard, radical politics and makeshift home in the scrub, Jonathan Moylan shapes as an unlikely participant in the pinstriped world of the sharemarket.

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WITH his untamed beard, radical politics and makeshift home in the scrub, Jonathan Moylan shapes as an unlikely participant in the pinstriped world of the sharemarket.

His home of the past six months – a bush campsite about 500 kilometres north-west of Sydney – barely has walls, let alone the sort of high-speed technology that dominates modern share trading.

Yet after the 24-year-old managed to wipe more than $300 million off the sharemarket this week using a hoax press release, many professional investors fear they will soon encounter plenty more of his type.

Jonathan Moylan: Triggering losses. Photo: Peter Lorimer

”Right now, somewhere, is a smart kid sitting in an office, working out how he can do the exact same thing to make a buck, and get away with it,” says Patrick Trindade, the head of private wealth at Octa Phillip Financial Group.

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Trindade’s warning neatly illustrates how Moylan did more than shift the share price of Whitehaven Coal with his outrageously effective hoax press release. The anti-coal campaigner spooked an investment community that is well aware of its vulnerability to the sort of market manipulation that has now struck three times in the past six months.

There was agreement that Moylan’s hoax – which tricked some investors and media into thinking that Whitehaven had lost a crucial $1.2 billion loan from ANZ Bank – was too damaging to market integrity to be laughed off as a prank.

The hoax sparked a sell-down at about midday on Monday that drove Whitehaven shares down from $3.52 to $3.21 within minutes.

Long after the damage was done, Whitehaven shares were put into a trading halt, and the company subsequently confirmed what the market had already worked out: the press release was a hoax.

Whitehaven shares resumed trading mid-afternoon and quickly recovered most of the lost ground, but the incident left some individual investors nursing losses.

Moylan insists he did not financially gain from his manipulation of the market, saying his motivations lay in highlighting the environmental damage that would occur if ANZ’s loan helps Whitehaven to build a new coalmine – as planned – near his camp at Maules Creek.

With similar market hoaxes affecting David Jones and Macmahon Holdings in recent months, one of the nation’s most powerful financial executives says there is a growing risk to Australia’s reputation abroad.

”As a nation we have to be seen as a place where there is an orderly market in operation or overseas investors will get nervous,” says Craig Drummond, the Australian head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

”We are already battling against a high dollar, which is a risk for overseas investors. That’s why the regulators, it would seem, are taking firm action [against Moylan’s hoax].

”If our regulators are seen to prevaricate, then overseas investors will have one more reason to be nervous about Australia.”

Amplifying concerns is a fear that similar hoaxes are bound to follow the Whitehaven stunt, and the bourse will be as vulnerable next time as it was to Moylan’s antics.

”I don’t think we will ever stop this sort of hoax statement. How can you stop someone issuing a press release?” asks Tony de Govrik, the legal affairs director of the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association.

While there was widespread condemnation of the incident, there is anything but consensus over how best to fight the trend for hoaxes to distort markets.

A QC, David Galbally, has called for deceptive and misleading statements to be made offences under the Crimes Act, on top of their existing coverage under the Corporations Act. He says Federal Police would have more success in pursuing cases than investigators from the Australian Investments and Securities Commission.

Neither de Govrik nor David Horsfield – the chief executive of the Stockbrokers Association of Australia – supports that call. Horsfield says ASIC already has the weapons to deter hoaxers. ”The prevention is in showing people that if market integrity is damaged then there is a severe penalty for it,” he says. ”It is important for ASIC to come down on the people involved quite hard … If they do that, then that will go a long way to stopping this sort of nonsense.”

ASIC struggled to make contact with Moylan in the 24 hours after the hoax. But by Wednesday an ASIC investigator made an unannounced visit to the Leard Forest camp, seizing the laptop and mobile phone used to make the fake release. Moylan has not been charged, but ASIC’s inquiries relate to section 1041E of the Corporations Act, which covers misleading and deceptive statements. It can lead to criminal prosecutions and penalties of up to 10 years’s jail or fines of $495,000.

De Govrik – who previously worked as ASX’s legal services manager – offers some tough love to the investment community, reminding them that hoaxes will flourish in markets where traders relax their standards of research, verification and vigilance.

Cancellation of a $1.2 billion loan would have been financially material to Whitehaven if it were true, and would unquestionably require declaration through the ASX’s official platform for market-sensitive announcements.

While the bogus news was reported by some media – including Business Spectator, The Australian Financial Review’s website and wire service Australian Associated Press – it was never published through the ASX’s official platform. ”It is always risky business to trade on information that is received through the internet, blogs or some other fashion that is not a formal release through the ASX,” de Govrik says.

The ASX’s chief compliance officer, Kevin Lewis, reiterates that point, saying people whose investments are guided by official ASX announcements would have escaped Monday’s losses.

”Markets often trade on the basis of rumour, speculation and other unofficial sources of information. Sometimes that information turns out to be correct and sometimes it doesn’t,” Lewis says. ”People who trade on the basis of information that they read online and don’t verify with official sources like the ASX market announcements platform should not expect to be able to turn around and say that the information was not correct and therefore ‘I should be able to walk away from my trade’.

”You have to differentiate here between investors and traders. Investors hold for the longer-term and aren’t generally going to be impacted at all by these types of short-term price spikes,” he says.

”The people who are affected are the day-traders and those trading in the short-term. If you are that type of trader, you need to understand the risks you are taking.”

Not surprisingly, brokers and institutions are reluctant to accept suggestions the Whitehaven saga was merely a lesson about the principle of ”buyer beware”.

”People are always going to try to get information first, and once they get it they want to act on it,” says Horsfield, who stresses that urge is unlikely to disappear.

Drummond – who sits on the board of the Australian Financial Markets Association and is a member of the Business Council of Australia – says the issue is more complex than the notion of investor vigilance, and the market must function in a way that allows ordinary Australians to participate with confidence and ease.

”We can’t have a market that is geared towards the strong, the big institutions, who were more likely to have known that this was a hoax,” he says. ”We also have to protect those who are, to use the analogy, a little weak or less educated in financial affairs. It’s a fact of life that Australians have their superannuation invested in the sharemarket and many are managing their own super.

”To say ‘bad luck’ when something like this happens doesn’t sit well with me.”

The media is where many people get their cues for buying and selling stocks, and Lewis says there is a serious need for the fourth estate to reflect upon its role in the Whitehaven saga.

The media is undergoing massive structural change, with print publishers seeking to report news faster than ever before through their online publications.

The demand for more immediate news is growing as the number of people working in newsrooms decreases with falling profits, and Lewis says he fears some publishers are valuing speed over accuracy.

”There is an issue here that the online media outlets need to address. They may be trying to get information out too quickly without subjecting it to the same editorial oversight and verification processes as their print cousins,” he says.

While much discussion has focused on the Whitehaven saga being the third hoax to move ASX prices within six months, Lewis points out that such hoaxes are not unique to Australia.

He stresses the bourse remains a secure, highly regulated place to invest. ”We have been looking at this issue since we first saw it break across the airwaves and saw the impact it had on Whitehaven’s market price,” he says. ”Where we become aware of incorrect information in the market, our role is to make sure that the company corrects that information in a timely fashion, which we think happened on the day.

”It is always concerning to the ASX if something happens that causes people to lose confidence in our market, and we obviously treat that very seriously. However, I don’t believe that people should interpret this incident as meaning that the Australian market is not a safe place to invest.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/whitehaven-a-siren-call-for-a-host-of-hoaxes-20130111-2clnh.html#ixzz2HhrfDK9w