As the rest of the world moves to divest from coal, pledging to deliver policies at the Paris Summit to limit temperature rises to less than 2°C, the Coalition has shocked the world by approving Australia's biggest coal mine. The Conversation has asked its experts to respond.

ADANI'S CARMICHAEL coal mine yesterday received the green light from federal environment minister Greg Hunt for the second time.

The mine, originally approved in July 2014, had its approval set aside following a failure to consider two endangered reptiles — the ornamental snake and the yakka skink.

In a media release, Hunt said that the approval comes with 36 of the strictest environmental conditions imposed in Australia. Final approval is pending Adani’s submission of a groundwater strategy to the federal environment department.

The approval also includes a rail link from the mine to the Queensland coast as a “precautionary measure to provide investment certainty”.

Below, our experts respond.

Carmichael Mine To Be Carved In Shape Of Greg Hunt’s Missing Ballshttp://t.co/cKTjU0GUQz #auspol pic.twitter.com/mliGDImv9x

Federal Minister Greg Hunt has reapproved the Carmichael Coal Mine in the Galilee Basin, following the decision of the Federal Court in August to set it aside.

The statement of reasons sets out that potential impact such a mine might have on the integrity of the coral reef systems in the Great Barrier Reef cannot be proven given the distance between the mine and the reef. Some heed is given to water impacts and endangered species.

All advice from the independent scientific committee is to be implemented; conservation of threatened species is to be improved through the creation of a A$1 million research program and groundwater management and monitoring plans for water within the Doongmabulla Springs area are required.

In the statement, the minister accounts for greenhouse gas emissions from building and running the mine, however concludes that accounting for emissions from burning the coal is “speculative”. It concludes that these emissions will be controlled under international regulations. Greenhouse gases were a significant aspect of the original Federal Court application by the Mackay Conservation Group.

In ignoring the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from burning the coal (presumably on the formalistic basis that consideration is an indirect rather than an explicit requirement under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act), the Federal Minister indicates his preparedness to completely disengage with global climate change imperatives.

If we are to stay under 2℃ of warming, coal is an obsolete resource. The strategic issue for Australia (and the globe) is how to manage the termination of existing coal plants and accelerate the shift to lower carbon intensive energy sources.

Knowing what we do about the imperatives of climate change, approving a vast new coal plant on the eve of the Paris Climate Change talks, in complete disregard of its significant greenhouse gas implications, is unethical and, at a global level, indefensible.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/adani-approval-the-experts-respond-not-that-greg-hunt-is-listening,8265

The Philippines is preparing for a typhoon that is forecast to dump heavy rain and cause severe flooding when it arrives at the weekend.

On Friday President Benigno Aquino warned people living in the path of Typhoon Koppu to be ready to evacuate.

In a TV address, he said the storm could bring up to 12 hours' torrential rain and cause severe flooding.

It was Mr Aquino's first such appeal since Typhoon Haiyan struck in 2013, leaving more than 6,000 people dead.

Koppu is due to hit the northern island of Luzon early on Sunday.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34558887

Typhoons are a dime a dozen or used to be... Now they bring so much devastation with them, with the additional power of global warming that unless we have a heart made of crap, we should take notice. Of course the new government of "Turdball" is still trying to find its feet in regard to global warming and is doing a crap job at it. This Typhoon, Koppu, has the potential to even be bigger than Haiyan, the biggest typhoon making landfall in recorded history. The path of this typhoon should worry the Chinese. It could hit Hong Kong and Macau like no typhoon ever before, by Tuesday (20/10/15)... We shall see...

In language reminiscent of deposed prime minister Tony Abbott, Frydenberg said environmentalists opposed to Adani’s huge Carmichael mine in Queensland, which was approved by the government last week, didn’t grasp the moral virtue of coal exports.

“There is a strong moral case here,” he told ABC’s Insiders program. “Over a billion people don’t have access to electricity. That means that more 2 billion people today are using wood and dung for their cooking.

“The World Health Organisation said this leads to 4.3 million premature deaths. That’s more people dying through this sort of inefficient energy than malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/Aids combined, so there’s a strong moral case that the green activists sometimes don’t comprehend.”

As Frydenberg stated, an estimated 4.3 million people died in 2012 due to the burning of toxic substances, according to the World Health Organisation. However, WHO said these deaths were caused by “coal, wood and biomass stoves.” Frydenberg failed to mention coal as one of the fuels causing these deaths.

In addition, WHO said an estimated 3.7 million people died worldwide in 2012 from outdoor air pollution caused by emissions from “transport, energy, waste management and industry.” In China alone, about 4,000 people die each day due to air pollution. Coal is used in about 40% of the world’s energy production.

The Carmichael mine will extract and export up to 60m tonnes of coal a year via a new rail facility to Abbot Point port, where it will be shipped overseas, primarily to India, via the Great Barrier Reef. The emissions from this coal, when burned, will create an estimated 128m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/oct/18/josh-frydenberg-puts-strong-moral-case-for-coal-exports-to-prevent-deaths

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The cost of burning more coal and creating more CO2 emissions out-weight the poverty argument as GLOBAL WARMING WILL CREATE MORE POOR and displaced people that it can provide heat for cooking for others. Frydenberg is presenting a bad case of moralisationing all in the purpose of making a buck... as well as costing Australia an enormous amount of cash to provide transport to the coast... Then having the possibility of one of the big ships running aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

But the most insensitive cost is the extra CO2 which is going to create more warming. This EXTRA 128  million tonnes of CO2 has to be added to the Australian emission total, not India's...

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which the minister quoted as an authority on energy poverty, centralised power sources such as coal rely on expensive grid infrastructure to deliver power. This means they are most useful in urban areas. But 84% of those living in energy poverty worldwide live outside cities. Of these, the IEA said less than a third were within cost-effective reach of an expanded grid.

The IEA, the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All program and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) all emphasise the overwhelming importance of decentralised renewable energy, particularly solar, in delivering the electricity component of remote community energy. None of their reports mention expanded coal imports from Australia as a prerequisite.

The IIASA’s influential 2012 report on energy access notes that grid expansion to many remote communities would take decades – whereas with the correct financial support solar panels can be delivered any day.

Anthony Hobley, the CEO of the UK think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative, said itsanalysis showed renewable energy was the fastest, most cost-effective way to lift most people out of energy poverty.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/19/frydenbergs-moral-case-for-coal-at-odds-with-world-bank-un-and-agencies

Sorry, I don't have time for these duplicitous hypocritical snake oil merchants such as Frydenberg, who try to sell us really bad concepts by mentioning morality and duty, when they would have to know that it's a crummy idea on the ground, unless these duplicitous dudes are idiots and should not be in government.

A coal industry report due to be published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on the benefits of new coal-burning technology has been heavily criticised by experts.

The report, seen by the Guardian, is “deeply confused and deeply misleading” and a “litany of errors and false assumptions, clearly written ultimately as a disinformation tool”, according to two financial experts. They said the legitimacy conferred by the respected IEA on the report raised serious questions.

The report, the Socioeconomic Impacts of Advanced Technology Coal-Fuelled Power Stations, was produced by the IEA’s Coal Industry Advisory Board (CIAB), a group of coal industry executives that “provides advice to the IEA”.

Peabody Energy, which says global warming is “an environmental crisis predicted by flawed computer models”, RWE and Shenhua were directly involved in the report while Anglo American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, E.ON, Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources and Eskom all provided input.

The report states it is “a complete and current set of facts, as well as a full and unbiased accounting of effects”, but fails to mention climate change at all. “Coal itself is not the cause of China’s air quality problem,” the report states. “What matters is not what goes in, but what comes out.”

The report then analyses the social and environmental benefits that may be offered by new, cleaner coal-fired powered stations.

But the report is “deeply confused and deeply misleading”, according to Richard Denniss, chief economist at the Australia Institute: “The paper pays scant attention to the health and social costs associated with coal mining and coal burning. The quality and quantity of analysis of the negative [effects] associated with coal mining and burning is fundamentally inadequate.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/23/iea-report-on-benefits-of-coal-is-deeply-misleading

The demise of the black-throated finch in New South Wales has added urgency to the need to protect the bird’s largest remaining habitat on the site of Adani’s proposed Queensland mine, conservationists have said.

The finch – whose fate forms a key plank of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)’s federal court challenge to commonwealth environmental approval of the Carmichael mine – was declared extinct by the NSW government last Friday.

Dr April Reside, a member of the black-throated finch’s threatened species recovery team which provided advice to environment minister Greg Hunt, said its extinction in NSW showed why its habitat in north Queensland’s Galilee basin was pivotal to its survival.

“Basically the evidence is pretty strong that they’ve lost over 80% of their entire range,” she told Guardian Australia.

“That’s why the Galilee basin area is of such interest, because it’s basically the best habitat left for the black-throated finch, and it is the largest chunk of habitat left.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/25/black-throated-finchs-nsw-demise-raises-stakes-for-adani-mine-site-habitat