Science – Keeping our cool

There are growing majorities across most countries that consider global warming is occurring and is due to human activity. I hope to assure readers that the data, trends and recommendations invoked by the climate scientists have credibility. Given the probability of major social and economic disruption from climate change, we need to have sufficient confidence that we can make the necessary adjustments needed to avoid and survive the worst impacts.

The monitoring of sea level change has been followed by a series of specialised, extremely sensitive satellites known as the Copernicus Sentinel satellites operated by the European Space Agency. Sea level rises are already apparent in this satellite data (about 85mm between 1992-2019) and are expected to accelerate in the longer term. These sea level changes are likely to become a major problem for New Zealand and Australian cities because almost all our major cities and population growth zones are coastal. This is also true for about 100 coastal cities worldwide.

Meanwhile, the global surface temperature is being measured with increasing precision by the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science (GISS), which reveals a consistent trend in incremental temperature increases since 1880. Given that global warming is clearly a measurable physical phenomenon, it is unhelpful to the public when critical future questions become unnecessarily politicised.

One important case illustrates that the switch from fossil fuels to renewables not only has environmental benefits, it can also make more economic sense. This relates to the proposed Adani coal mine in central Queensland. This massive mine is intended to provide coal for long-term industrial development in India. However, the Adani project represents a threat to the Great Barrier Reef and the associated tourism industry through the creation of coal-loading ports on the central Queensland coast.

The business case for Adani was based on the creation of new jobs in central Queensland but the number of promised jobs has recently been reduced from 10,000 to 600.

Moreover, after being rejected by 30 financial institutions world-wide, the level of Adani investment has dropped from A$16 billion to A$2 billion. Several public authorities, including the Australian Reserve Bank, the Investment and Securities Commission and the National Bank of Australia have all indicated that the financial risk associated with the contribution of coal to climate change will make lenders wary of such investments in thermal coal. It has been separately pointed out that if the investment in the Adani mine was replaced by a renewables project, it would create 4.7 times as many jobs, these would be better paid.

In the USA, the renewables sector employs about 50 per cent more people than the coal sector, and this differential is increasing due to rapid growth in renewables and the reduction of jobs due to automation technologies (including driverless mining trucks) in coal mining.