2 million hectares of Queensland forest destroyed

 From The Guardian

More than 2m hectares (4.94m acres) of bushland in Queensland that included large swathes of possible koala habitat has been cleared over a five-year period, new analysis shows.

The research, commissioned by Greenpeace and conducted by the University of Queensland academic Martin Taylor, found almost all land clearing that occurred in the state between 2016 and 2021 was in areas where threatened species habitat was “likely to occur”.

Almost two-thirds of the cleared area, or 1.3m hectares, was marked by the Queensland government as “category x”, meaning it was exempt from state vegetation laws that regulate land clearing. Some 500,000 hectares of that land was koala habitat, the report said.

Taylor, an adjunct professor at the University of Queensland and former WWF-Australia conservation scientist, conducted the analysis by comparing state government land clearing data to federally mapped areas of environmental significance.

The majority of recorded land clearing occurred in regrowth forest that was more than 15 years old, which Taylor said made it capable of providing rich habitat for native animals.

“Industry voices like to say this is just controlling knee-high regrowth, so it’s just vegetation management,” he said. “[But] a 15-year-old eucalypt forest can be at least 10 to 15 metres high – they are forests.”

Taylor said that while laws in Queensland allow for regrowth forests to be reclassified as remnant once they mature, the requirements to do so are unclear.

“A lot of regrowth 15 years and older could have already become what they define as remnant, making it more difficult to clear,” he said.

Gemma Plesman, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the report documented deforestation on a “frightening” scale. She said the state’s annual statewide land cover and tree study (Slats) shows land clearing was driven by beef production.

According to the beef industry, more than 10m cattle graze on Queensland pastures, making it the biggest beef producing state in the country.

“Fast food chains and retailers should be aware that the beef they are selling could come from properties that have bulldozed koala habitat with no government oversight,” Plesman said.

Plesman said environmental law reforms being developed by the federal government needed to address concerns around deforestation in Queensland to be effective.

“This shocking data should be a wake-up call,” she said. “They must address what has made Australia a global hotspot for deforestation.”

The Wilderness Society Queensland campaign manager, Hannah Schuch, said deforestation in Queensland was driving biodiversity loss.

“It’s having an impact on iconic native species like the koala, the greater glider, the red goshawk, it’s tearing down their homes and pushing them towards extinction,” she said.

“We know that erosion and sediment runoff from deforestation is another threat to the already at-risk Great Barrier Reef,” she said.

A spokesperson for the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the government was in the consultation process to develop new national environment laws. However, three organisations familiar with the draft laws say they would continue to allow widespread deforestation.

Michael Guerin, the chief executive of Queensland farming body AgForce, questioned the accuracy of the Slats data which was used in Taylor’s analysis. He said deforestation rates were overstated. [Of course he did]

He suggested there should be an on-the-ground survey to confirm deforestation rates. [which is much more expensive and not necessarily more accurate. In fact aerial surveys often miss small areas of clearing, meaning the real total could be higher.]

“Let’s come out and ground truth it,” Guerin said. “Let’s get out on the landscape and spend the money and time so we’re confident about what’s happening. The industry and community is up for that.” [yeah, right]

Australia's "decline" in emissions is solely due to LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry)    There have already been questions and accusations that the data are dodgy.  One claim is that partially cleared land is not picked up by the satellites; only fully cleared land is.  This latest analysis simply adds to the evidence.  

Oh, and I beg you: stop eating beef.  

The Amazon could trigger a cascade of global tipping points

Burnt land and smoke from fires in the Amazon rainforest in Rondonia state, Brazil. (Leonardo Carrato/Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images)

From Science Alert



Deforestation in the Amazon is nearing the point of no return, and if this ecosystem falls, it could flip from a vast carbon sink to a gushing carbon tap. Already, some climate scientists suspect the rainforest is spewing more carbon than it's absorbing.

If the Amazon crosses a critical threshold of self-resilience, a new study suggests the disaster could set off a domino effect, knocking over tipping points elsewhere in the world, too, abruptly accelerating environmental crises and causing irreparable damage to the planet.

Tipping points in the global climate system, such as collapsing ice sheets, glacier melt, forest dieback, sea level rise, and shifting monsoons, have received a lot more attention in recent years.

Each one of these switches could seriously turn up the heat on our planet, creating a 'hothouse Earth' with irreversible and catastrophic effects.

They are all connected by the global greenhouse effect, but in a climate crisis, it's uncertain in what order they will ultimately fall.

The most recent study focuses on the Amazon rainforest tipping point and some of its connections to other regional climate systems.

Using historical data from 1979 to 2019, an international team of climate researchers have drawn a link between tree loss in the Amazon and warmer temperatures in Tibet and the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Plugging this data into a model of the global climate system suggested the connection was closely synchronized with modern climate changes.

Periods of higher rainfall in the Amazon correlated with less precipitation in Tibet and West Antarctica.

Since 2008, snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau has been melting at a rapid rate similar to the Arctic.

The Plateau is sometimes known as Earth's third pole, and it plays important roles in global water storage and climate.

If the current study is correct, Tibet's loss of snow cover could be due, in part, to deforestation half a world away. The authors say the region is now operating close to a tipping point that tends to be overlooked.

"Our framework highlights that tipping elements can be linked and also the potential predictability of cascading tipping dynamics," the authors write.

The connection between Antarctica, Tibet, and the Amazon extends nearly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), and it appears to be based on strong ocean currents and westerly winds.

In a review of the paper for Nature, climate scientist Valerie Livina from the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory agrees that the models show "strong correlations across long distances".

"This is the first time that the theory of complex networks has been applied in the context of tipping points, and the synergy of the two research areas provides an important insight into the global climate dynamics," Livina writes.

"This work opens a new area of tipping point analysis at a global scale."

Nevertheless, there is still a lot of complexity that needs to be incorporated into future models.

Deforestation in the Amazon impacts more than just Tibet and Antarctica. Previous studies suggest the climate of the Amazon, which is closely tuned by its trees, can have impacts on coral reefs in the Caribbean and reduce snowfall in the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Mountains of North America, potentially triggering extreme drought on the west coast.

The planet's climate systems are intimately connected. It's a small world, after all.

The study was published in Nature Climate Change

The Amazon rainforest is now an emitter of CO2

 From a  tweet by The Economist

The Amazon rainforest’s flora absorb 1.5bn tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to 4% of emissions from fossil fuels. The Brazilian Amazon has been a net carbon emitter since 2016. Rapid deforestation outweighs carbon capture by remaining trees

0.1% of GDP will prevent ecosystem collapse

 From The Guardian

The world needs to quadruple its annual investment in nature if the climate, biodiversity and land degradation crises are to be tackled by the middle of the century, according to a new UN report.

Investing just 0.1% of global GDP every year in restorative agriculture, forests, pollution management and protected areas to close a $4.1tn (£2.9tn) financial gap by 2050 could avoid the breakdown of natural ecosystem “services” such as clean water, food and flood protection, the report said.

The State of Finance for Nature report, produced by the UN Environment Programme (Unep), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative (ELD), said a total investment of $8.1tn was required to maintain the biodiversity and natural habitats vital to human civilisation, reaching $536bn a year by 2050, projected to be about 0.13% of global GDP.

More than half of global GDP relies on high-functioning biodiversity but about a fifth of countries are at risk of their ecosystems collapsing due to the destruction of the natural world, according to an analysis by the insurance firm Swiss Re last year. Australia, Israel and South Africa were among the most threatened.

The Unep report, which looked at terrestrial nature-based solutions, urges governments to repurpose billions of dollars of damaging agricultural and fossil fuel subsidies to benefit nature and integrate the financial value of nature in decision-making. By 2050, governments and the private sector will need to spend $203bn on the management, conservation and restoration of forests around the world.

“The dependency of global GDP on nature is abstract but what we really mean are livelihoods, jobs, people’s ability to feed themselves, and water security,” said Teresa Hartmann, the WEF lead on climate and nature. “If we don’t do this, there are irreversible damages. The four-trillion gap we describe cannot be filled later on. There will be irreversible damages to biodiversity that we can no longer fix.”

The report follows a warning by leading scientists in January that the planet is facing a “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” because of ignorance and inaction.

“The way that we use natural resources for food, textiles, wood, fibre and so on, that needs to change,” Hartmann said. “Everybody’s talking about an energy transition at the heart of everybody’s understanding of climate change. Nobody’s talking about a land-use change transition. We cannot afford to continue exploiting and producing as we do now.”

About $133bn is invested in nature every year, often by national governments. Nearly two-thirds of that is spent on forest and peatland restoration, regenerative agriculture and natural pollution-control systems.

The report’s authors said nature and climate should be high on government lending conditions as part of the expansion of investment, also citing the example of Costa Rica’s tax on petrol, which is used to finance its reforestation programme. Private investment in nature-based solutions accounts for only about 14% of the current total, according to the report, which said it needed to be scaled up through carbon markets, sustainable agricultural and forestry supply chains, and private finance.

Ivo Mulder, head of Unep’s climate finance unit, said: “At the moment, emission levels are equal or par to pre-Covid levels. So despite what everybody’s saying, both businesses and governments have been building back as usual.

“The question is: how serious are we about investing in nature-based solutions, both from a government and business perspective? Failing to do so will probably stop us from meeting the Paris climate agreement and deplete biodiversity further.”

Just 0.1% of GDP.  

Cattle rest under the last tree left in burnt land near Porto Velho, Brazil. Photograph: Víctor R Caivano/AP

Zero carbon by 2050

If we want to stop catastrophic climate change and global heating, we need to cut emissions of CO2 and methane to zero by 2050.  Let's split those 30 years up into decades, aiming to cut emissions by 1/3rd of the 2019 level each decade.

2020-2030

This will be the decade where we have to close down as many coal power stations as we can.  The good news is that in most countries, wind or solar or both are now cheaper than (new) coal.  In developed countries, most coal power stations are old, and will soon have to be retired.  When they are, they will be replaced by wind and solar.  Even with 10 hours of storage, wind and solar are the cheapest power source in the USA, except for existing coal power stations which have been fully depreciated and have had their debt paid off.  But of course, they are precisely the power stations which will need to be retired over the next decade.

Even in China, where coal is cheap, large-scale solar will this year reach grid parity, meaning it can compete with the wholesale price of electricity, which is determined by China's massive coal fleet.  China produces 35% or world CO2 emissions, and is the largest consumer of coal.   A change here will be very important for world emissions and the global climate.

So the target is that by 2030, the number of coal power stations still operating will be small.  They'll simply be too costly to keep going.  This is much faster then even the relatively optimistic BNEF forecasts (they forecast just 25% from renewables by 2030).  Nevertheless, the cost curves as well as the increasing global panic about catastrophic climate change suggest this will be likely.

During this decade, we should also try to switch heating from gas/oil to electric, and we will start the switch to electric transport.  Of which more below.   Electricity and heat production contributes 25% of global CO2 emissions, so we'll need to find more areas to cut emissions by 1/3rd by 2030.

2030-2040

This will be the decade where we electrify transport.  Battery costs are falling by 20% compound per annum.  This means that we should cross the $100/kWh battery pack cost line by 2023, which will mean that the "sticker price" of EVs will be comparable to ICEVs.  Already, in China and India (where it is very important that the growth in demand for personal transport isn't satisfied by petrol cars) small, cheap EVs are available.   Once again, the twin pincers of public anxiety about climate change and the plunging cost of EVs will rapidly squeeze fossil fuels out of the market. Assuming EVs reach 100% of new car sales by 2030, then by 2040, almost all the emissions from road transport will have stopped, assuming a 10 year vehicle life, which is lower than what it is now, but government will likely want to accelerate the transition by banning polluting cars and lorries from town centres as well as buying back aging fossil fuel clunkers.

In developed countries, these emissions are about 1/3rd of total emissions.  In developing countries, they make up a smaller proportion on average, though the percentages vary widely.  But demand for cars is growing fast in developing countries, so a transition to EVs will prevent big rises in emissions from this sector.

It will also be the decade when we make cement production and iron & steel carbon-neutral.  We have the technologies to do this now, but these processes are still more expensive than making them the old way.  Expect carbon taxes or regulations, to force a shift.

Battery technology may well have advanced far enough that we will be able to fly long distance without using jetfuel.  Or we will have shifted to carbon-friendly jetfuel.  Or we'll be flying long distance by SpaceX's suborbital shuttle, fuelled by green methane, and short distance by electric planes.  Once again, carbon taxes will help shift air travel towards zero-carbon alternatives. 

Emissions from transport and industry (iron & steel, cement, chemicals, mostly) make up another third of global emissions.  By 2040, these will have stopped.  They'll have to.  Together with what will have been done in the 2020s, total emissions will have fallen by roughly 2/3rds, a compound rate of decline of 5.5% per annum.

2015.  Source: EPA

2040-2050

By 2040, emissions from electricity generation, transport, and industry will have fallen dramatically.  But there will remain some emissions, by far the most important being agriculture, land-use, land-clearing, etc.  There's no particular reason to wait until 2040 to deal with these.  We could start transitioning now.  After all, we have alternatives to meat.  And perhaps by 2030 or so, most ppl will be terrified enough of climate change to change their personal lifestyles.  But change here will be hard.  With electricity generation, the future is already happening now.  Renewables are simply cheaper.   With EVs that will soon be the case.  But with meat, we're asking people to change life-long habits.  It'll have to be done, it's just that politicians will postpone action as long as they can get away with it.  Once again, a carbon tax would help the shift.   If you think that the outrage generated by trying to get our economy to switch to green electricity was over the top, wait till you tell people they must eat less meat.  Yet, I have hope.  Synthetic meats are taking off.  Vegetarianism and veganism are rising trends.   And if meat substitutes taste just like the real thing but don't inflict dreadful cruelty on animals and have a huge negative effect on the environment, then why not?

2020-2050

In each decade, the necessary year-on-year percentage decline will increase, even though as a percent of the starting point, the decadal declines will be roughly the same.   If we cut emissions 1/3rd by 2030, then we have to cut emissions by 1/2 from 2030 to 2040.  And from 2040 to 2050 by 100%.  These seem to be large percentages, but they will only look like that because of previous successes.

Many of the shifts will begin before the decade I've selected for each of them, though I expect my selected decade will be when they reach their culmination.  If the transitions are sped up, maybe we can reach near-zero emissions by 2040, if we move in all sectors.  And if we start massive re-afforestation we might achieve negative emissions, and will for the first time in the last 200 years see falling atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.  We must surely hope so.

Brazil's forest destruction off the scale

From ZME Science:

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE)'s report explains that between January and November of this year — which were the first 11 months in office for Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right leader who has eased restrictions on exploiting the Amazon — a total of 8,973.3 square kilometers (3464.6 sq mi) of the forest have been cut down.

That is almost double the total recorded over the first 11 months of 2018 (4,878.7 sq km).

The data was recorded by the DETER (Detecção de Desmatamento em Tempo Real), a satellite-based real-time deforestation detection system employed by INPE. The system uses data from the MODIS sensor aboard the Terra and Aqua NASA satellites. The system is mostly used as an indicator of the rate of deforestation but does not represent the whole area cut down, which is measured by the PRODES project.

According to PRODES readings — the system is more reliable but slower to compile data than DETER — between August 2018 and August 2019, the total deforested area in the Brazilian Amazon exceeded the 10,000 square kilometer threshold for the first time since 2008. It would represent a 43% increase over the preceding 12 month period (when the total was 7,033 sq km).

Areas of the Amazon that see indigenous habitation have experienced some of the fastest-rising rates of deforestation (74.5%) over the preceding period, INPE adds.

Ricardo Galvao, INPE’s former president, was sacked by the Bolsonaro government in early August under accusations of exaggerating the report on deforestation. On Friday, Galvao was named one of the 10 most important scientists of the year by the journal Nature.

How long before they stop even producing the statistics?

Trees bring rain

Land clearing in a paddock outside Moree NSW
Source: The Guardian

My mother used to say that, and I didn't believe her.  Arrogant pup!  Here's an excerpt from a deeply depressing Guardian article about land clearing in Australia which explains how the process works:

Prof Clive McAlpine from University of Queensland explains that not only does land clearing release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it also has an effect on climate, well beyond the emissions.

“It causes warming locally, regionally and even globally, and it changes rainfall by altering the circulation of heat and moisture,” he says.

“Trees evaporate more water than any other vegetation type – up to 10 times more than crops and pastures. This is because trees have root systems that can access moisture deep within the soil.”

The increased evaporation and rough surface of trees create moist, turbulent layers in the lower atmosphere, he says. “This reduces temperatures and contributes to cloud formation and increased rainfall. The increased rainfall then provides more moisture to soils and vegetation.

“The clearing of deep-rooted native vegetation for shallow-rooted crops and pastures diminishes this process, resulting in a warmer and drier climate.”

McAlpine argues that we should be replanting in the north-west of NSW and south-west Queensland to achieve a tree density of 40% to stabilise the local climate. Grazing would still be possible underneath the tree cover.

This is why the centre of continents at the equator have high precipitation.  At the coasts, the rain comes from moist air from the sea.  But it falls on rain forests, and the trees transpire water vapour into the air.  In the tropics, an acre of rain forest puts more water vapour into the air than an acre of sea.  This water vapour then falls on forests further inland and the process is repeated.  So even in the heart of the continent, there is rain and rain forest, and the two go together.  Which is why land clearing can create a desert. 

As a species, we seem bent on destroying our world.