Foreign Correspondence

[fuagf]

Australian drought









Land clearances turned up the heat on Australian climate
16 May 2009

DEFORESTATION by European settlers may be to blame for making Australia's
drought longer, hotter and dryer than it would be otherwise.

The "big dry", Australia's 11-year drought, has been blamed on greenhouse gases and natural variability. To see if deforestation played a part, Clive McAlpine of the University of Queensland in Brisbane and colleagues used a climate model to simulate Australian conditions from the 1950s to 2003. They then compared the impact of today's fragmented vegetation, obtained from satellite images, with that of 1788, prior to European settlement.

Over much of south-east Australia, where the drought has hit hardest, less that 10 per cent of the original vegetation remains. The team's model showed that this land clearance has increased the length of droughts in the area by one to two weeks per year. In years of extreme drought, the loss of vegetation caused the number of days above 35 °C to increase by six to 18 days, and the number of dry days to increase by five to 15 days (Geophysical Research Letters, in press).

"Land clearing may be having a similar impact on the drought as greenhouse
gases," says McAlpine. Reforestation could minimise future droughts, he adds.

"It's a nice piece of work," says Andy Pitman of the University of New South
Wales in Sydney, but he adds that the modelling needs to be confirmed.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227084.700-land-clearances-turned-up-the-heat-on-australian-climate.html

Government yields on climate bill split

Posted Sun Aug 16, 2009 9:10am AEST
Updated Sun Aug 16, 2009 10:24am AEST


Bill split: the Government says it doesn't want
renewable energy targets held up in the Senate.
(Library of Congress)

The Federal Government will amend its renewable energy plan to break the Senate deadlock.

The Opposition parties want to support the 20 per cent renewable energy target, but say they can
not because the Government linked the legislation to the contentious emissions trading scheme.

The Greens and the Opposition have both put forward amendments that would split the bills.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard told Channel Nine they had been brought forward
together in the first place because of their "integrated compensation package".

"This isn't the best way to do it ... [but] faced with the obstruction of the Liberal
Party in the Senate we will take some interim steps, make some amendments
to the renewable energy target legislation so it can come into effect," she said.

She said the best way for tackling climate change is for the Liberal
Party to "stop getting in the way" and allow both policies through.

"But we are in a world of Liberal obstruction because of their divisions, so we are
safeguarding our renewable energy target legislation so it can come into effect even
if the Liberal Party continues to block the carbon pollution reduction scheme," she said.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull had not been able to exercise any leadership on behalf of the Liberal Party,
which thought the easy political position was to obstruct the government's legislation, Ms Gillard said.

"Of course, that is the worst position for the nation," he said.

"Mr Turnbull is presiding over a rabble under the banner of the Liberal Party.

"His political party straddles those from people who deny the science of climate change, who simply don't think
it's happening, through to people who do believe that the Liberal Party should support the Government's legislation."

The assisting Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, has told Channel 10
the Government does not want the renewable energy target held up in the Senate.

"What we're concerned to do is to ensure that the renewable energy legislation
can get through Parliament, because that's going to unlock a lot of investment in
renewable energy sources like solar power, or wind power or geothermal energy," he said.

'Purely politics'

But the Federal Opposition says the Government's decision shows its original position was more about playing politics.

Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne has told ABC1's Insiders program the Government
only linked the schemes to try and force the emissions trading scheme through the Senate.

"What the Government wanted last Thursday was the beginning of a trigger for an election - it was purely politics," he said.

"That's why the Renewable Energy Target bill never needed to be part of that emissions
trading scheme bill, and it's of no surprise to me at all that they will decouple that bill."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/16/2657157.htm