more »
HubPages
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Agforce beefs up farmers' fight against coal mines
July 23, 2009
by Amanda Gearing
Peak agricultural lobby group Agforce has backed Queensland farmers who are battling coal miners planning to dig up their prime agricultural farmland.
Two mining companies are preparing to mine coal worth billions of dollars which lies just under the surface of the fertile Felton Valley, 40 km south of Toowoomba on the Darling Downs and at the headwaters of the Murray-Darling Basin.
Agforce vice-president Ian Burnett toured the site on Wednesday where a hill will be removed to make way for an open-cut coal mine, which will extract 900 million tons of coal to supply an on-site petro-chemical plant.
Agforce's backing is significant because the broadacre farming group is defending smaller horticultural farmers against large mining interests.
Mr Burnett said mining would risk destroying the underground water aquifers, the closely-settled farming community and the food production of the valley.
"It's certainly good quality prime agricultural land," Mr Burnett told AAP.
"Closely-settled areas haven't been mined before.
"We will try to stop mining here. I believe it could be the opportunity to set a precedent and say 'no' to coal mining," he said.
Mining exploration permits now cover 80 per cent of the state following a 45 per cent increase in mining exploration permits.
Felton Valley spokesman Rob McCreath said Felton was a test case which would determine whether the Queensland Government could find a balance between farming and mining.
"Knowing the Queensland Government has never prevented a mine in order to protect farmland makes us more determined to win this fight," he said.
"The Premier herself has said there has got to be a balance between mining and agriculture.
"How can there be a balance if no mine has ever been stopped?"
Mr McReath said approval for the mine would set a precedent that mining will be allowed anywhere.
He said Australia had little fertile farming land and it was now urgent that it be protected for food production.
Premier Anna Bligh has been invited to tour the district but has not taken up the invitation yet.
"There's an open invitation. I really hope she comes. We'd love to show her around," Mr McCreath said.
AAP
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/agforce-beefs-up-farmers-fight-against-coal-mines-20090723-duub.html
by Amanda Gearing
Peak agricultural lobby group Agforce has backed Queensland farmers who are battling coal miners planning to dig up their prime agricultural farmland.
Two mining companies are preparing to mine coal worth billions of dollars which lies just under the surface of the fertile Felton Valley, 40 km south of Toowoomba on the Darling Downs and at the headwaters of the Murray-Darling Basin.
Agforce vice-president Ian Burnett toured the site on Wednesday where a hill will be removed to make way for an open-cut coal mine, which will extract 900 million tons of coal to supply an on-site petro-chemical plant.
Agforce's backing is significant because the broadacre farming group is defending smaller horticultural farmers against large mining interests.
Mr Burnett said mining would risk destroying the underground water aquifers, the closely-settled farming community and the food production of the valley.
"It's certainly good quality prime agricultural land," Mr Burnett told AAP.
"Closely-settled areas haven't been mined before.
"We will try to stop mining here. I believe it could be the opportunity to set a precedent and say 'no' to coal mining," he said.
Mining exploration permits now cover 80 per cent of the state following a 45 per cent increase in mining exploration permits.
Felton Valley spokesman Rob McCreath said Felton was a test case which would determine whether the Queensland Government could find a balance between farming and mining.
"Knowing the Queensland Government has never prevented a mine in order to protect farmland makes us more determined to win this fight," he said.
"The Premier herself has said there has got to be a balance between mining and agriculture.
"How can there be a balance if no mine has ever been stopped?"
Mr McReath said approval for the mine would set a precedent that mining will be allowed anywhere.
He said Australia had little fertile farming land and it was now urgent that it be protected for food production.
Premier Anna Bligh has been invited to tour the district but has not taken up the invitation yet.
"There's an open invitation. I really hope she comes. We'd love to show her around," Mr McCreath said.
AAP
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/agforce-beefs-up-farmers-fight-against-coal-mines-20090723-duub.html
CD of World Meteorological Organisation interviews now available.
Email for price and delivery details.
Stormy weather: is this climate change?
Crikey
26 May 2009
by Amanda Gearing
Climate change is wreaking havoc in many countries as severe weather events cause mass death and wipe out staple food crops, meteorologists have told a world climate conference in Queensland this week.
The World Meteorological Organisation conference of meteorologists and climatologists representing 187 countries showcased the latest communication tools being used to help countries protect people and food supplies threatened by climate change.
Staple food crop failures in developing countries are causing mass starvation, extreme rainfall is causing deadly floods, Pacific Islands are being completely submerged with people clinging to palm trees until storm surges subside, and France’s wine growing regions may have to move north.
The WMO gathering is held once every four years to assess global agricultural meteorology and recommend areas for future research in order to maintain sustainable global food supplies.
WMO agro meteorology division chief Dr Mannava Sivakumar said the world population was projected to exceed 9 billion by 2025.
“Even without climate change, to produce the extra food for the growing population is a major challenge so what climate change does is put an additional stress on what is already a major problem.”
“Because of the reduced rainfall, soils are going to be prone to erosion and degradation, crops may not be able to withstand higher temperatures or get enough water. It’s a double whammy that you have two big problems on your hands at the same time. The world has to look at it really seriously.”
Sivakumar said the international conference was vital to assist countries to provide farmers with timely, accurate forecasts to reduce the adverse risks posed by severe climate events.
I interviewed representatives from the USA, Russia, India, France, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Fiji, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and the Cook Islands and asked them if they were already seeing impacts of climate change in their country and what threats these impacts posed to the people and agriculture. I also asked them how the country was helping the people to mitigate the risk of climate change threats:
INDIA: Rising temperatures over the last ten years had caused more frequent heat waves over 46 degrees C leading to hundreds of human deaths among tribal people as well as animal deaths. Extreme weather events such as floods are causing human catastrophes, with villagers being drowned in floodwaters.
Indian Meteorological Department head of agro-meteorology Dr Laxman Singh Rathore said food supplies were secure now because monsoon season crops were not affected by higher temperatures but winter wheat crop yields in some years are reduced by warmer winter temperatures in northern India.
The Indian Government is setting up internet services in India’s 600,000 villages which will provide weather and climate forecasts and information to the country’s 600 million farmers.
Information centres with internet, television and radio communications and local print media have been set up in 25,000 villages in the past two years.
USA: The USA has had more extreme events such as hurricanes, flooding, drought, record high temperatures and cold outbreaks in recent years.
US Department of Agriculture World crop weather analyst, meteorologist Dr Harlan Shannon said it was unclear yet whether the events were caused by variability or climate change.
He said the USA was monitoring crop production around the world including Russia, Australia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina using WMO data and satellite imaging of weather systems to help US economists assist American farmers in assessing marketing opportunities.
RUSSIA: More frequent and intense forest fires and more droughts are occurring. However warmer temperatures in future would have positive impacts on Russia because warmer weather would increase the area available for growing summer and winter wheat crops and other cereals.
Warmer temperatures would enable Russia to grow cotton in the south of the country. Director of the National Agro-meteorological institute, Agro-meteorologist Alexander Kleshchenko, said if soils that were normally frozen thawed building foundations could be threatened.
He said Russia was expecting droughts would be more frequent in future and drinking water supplies were being monitored.
FRANCE: Climate data shows varying increases in minimum and maximum temperatures in different regions of France.
Frost days during winter are decreasing but in the next decade vineyards may have to move north. Meteo France end-user services manager Philippe Frayssinet said England could become a place to produce good wine.
“If Champagne would not be the right place to produce Champagne it would be a real problem for the economy of the region — the same for Burgundy and Bordeaux. The sensibility to the climate is very high.”
He said there was an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as forest fires, heat waves and floods causing crop failures and reducing export income.
France has a colour-coded warning system with green indicating no risks, ranging through yellow for minor risk, orange for medium risk to red indicating an extreme event.
France has also stationed hundreds of meteorologists around the world in its overseas territories to monitor weather and climate data including 150 meteorology staff in the French West Indies, 50 in Martinique and 50 in French Guyana.
BRAZIL: Minimum air temperatures have increased almost 2 degrees C in the past 40 years. Rainy seasons have changed with more frequent heavy rains causing deaths, infrastructure damage and crop failures in soya beans, coconuts, grain and rice crops. Frequency of frosts have fallen, affecting citrus crops.
San Paulo state Meteorology Institute agro-meteorology head Olivaldo Brunini said burning of the Amazon forests was being reduced and farmers in the forest were turning to raising beef cattle and grain farming.
AUSTRALIA: Water allocations to irrigation farmers have fallen by more than 90 per cent in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Australia’s rice crop is down more than 90 percent to less than 100,000 tonnes a year since production peaked in 2004 at 2 million tones. Cotton production is down by almost 80 percent.
Corn production in the Murray-Darling Basin is down by 60-70 per cent and corn production is moving to northern Australia. Lost crop production is estimated at 1.5 billion a year and threatens Australia’s food security.
Peanut Company of Australia managing director Bob Hansen is spending $50 million to buy land and water rights to move some of his farming and processing operations from Queensland to the Northern Territory.
NEW ZEALAND: Temperature rises were first detected in New Zealand and the surrounding region in the mid 1970s. Temperatures have now risen by about 1 degree C, reducing the number of frost days by a third to a half.
World Meteorological Organisation commission for agricultural meteorology president Dr Jim Salinger discovered the temperature trend in the mid 1970s and his publication of a journal article sparked global research which found global temperatures were rising.
Dr Salinger said the main threat of climate change globally was to food security. Hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in India, Africa and China needed help to manage climate change effects on their farming systems.
Lower food production will mostly impact the semi arid sub tropics including Africa, the Mediterranean basin, the southern half of Australia, the south of South America and major cropping areas of the USA.
By 2030 world food supply will need to increase by about 50 percent to feed the estimated 9 billion global population. Food prices were likely to rise, he said. Already one billion people were on the brink of starvation.
Dr Salinger said New Zealand would warm more slowly than continents such as Europe or North America because it was an island and water temperatures warmed more slowly than land and air temperatures.
However, permanent snow and ice including glaciers in the south island have retreated by 55 per cent from 100 cubic kilometres of permanent snow and ice cover 100 years ago to 45 cubic km of permanent ice now.
Eastern New Zealand is predicted to receive lower rainfall with serious droughts becoming four times more frequent. New Zealand’s eastern wine-growing areas will be able to introduce warmer wine styles. Existing Kiwi fruit and apple-growing areas will no longer be ideal growing areas.
KOREA: Temperature rises threaten the country’s staple rice crop. Orchards have moved to the north of the country to cooler regions. Korea’s National Institute of Meteorological Research senior research scientist Kyu Rang Kim said typhoons had increased in frequency and intensity causing floods which have destroyed rice crops at harvest time.
Korea imports most of its food apart from rice.
PHILIPPINES: Increasing minimum and maximum temperatures have been recorded as have increasingly intense cyclones.
Philippines weather services chief of the Philippines atmospheric, geophysical and astronomical services administration Flaviana Hilario said the country had recently recorded the most severe cyclone ever to hit the country.
“In 2006 we recorded the highest wind speed due to tropical cyclone, 320kp/h. So far this is the highest. We will see whether in the future this will be the norm or if this was a single event,” she said.
During the 2006 cyclone season 2700 people died and cyclones caused $36 billion damage in the Philippines. The Philippines is replacing fossil fuels with bio-fuels and geothermal energy sourced from volcanoes.
ETHIOPIA: Failures of rain were shortening growing seasons causing reduced crop yields in the south of the country and causing shortages of staple crops such as teff, maize, sorghum, barley and drinking water.
Floods have increased in intensity in the eastern parts of the country, causing deaths of people and stock and destroying houses.
Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency research meteorologist Almaz Demessie said people were moving livestock in search of water and pasture and food were having to be bought from other areas when crops failed or people were leaving to find work so they could buy food.
TANZANIA: More rainfall seasons have been failing since the 1980s, severely affecting food supplies of people who are mostly subsistence farmers on small farms.
“If (the short rains) fail it means their survival is threatened and this becomes worse when the second rain fails because it means the whole year is a total failure and we’ve had the government intervening more often to give food assistance to the people,” Tanzanian principal agro-meteorologist Deusdedit Kashasha said.
“They produce on small farms which may not be enough for a year in a good season so if they don’t even have that small amount produced it becomes pretty dire.”
FIJI: Air temperatures have increased by 0.6 degrees in the past 50 years which is reducing sugar crop yields because sugar cane needs cool nights to concentrate the sugar. Sugar is Fiji’s major export crop.
Fiji Meteorological Service principal scientific officer Simon McGree said sea level rises were a major problem for the population of 850,000 people scattered on isolated islands.
Sea level rises were also causing sugar crops on coastal flats to be flooded, destroying crops and salinifying the land. Sugar plantations are having to move inland, reducing the available cropping area.
SAMOA: Cyclones have increased in frequency and intensity in the last ten years threatening the population of 180,000 living on four main islands in the Samoan Islands group.
Sea level rises have also caused coastal erosion. Samoan Meteorological Division Climate and Ozone Services principal scientific officer Sunny Seuseu said Samoa was researching ways to reduce greenhouse emissions by reducing fossil fuels and exploring renewable energy sources including wind, geothermal and solar power.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: Sea level rises have been recorded and king tides have washed over an atoll island in the north of the island group, destroying houses and local crops.
Solomon Islands Meteorological Service principal climate officer Lloyd Tahani said the government was making plans to evacuate people from low-lying islands in cases of climatic emergency and had established a team of climate scientists to work in the Solomon Islands to establish early warning systems.
COOK ISLANDS: Tide gauges installed in 1992 show sea levels have risen marginally but tropical cyclones are becoming more frequent and more intense.
In 2004-2005, the Cook Islands had five category five cyclones in five weeks lashing the 15 islands scattered over 240 square kilometres located 3000km north east of New Zealand with a population of 14,000 people.
In 2004-2005 season some islands were submerged and people had to climb coconut trees and rise the storm out. Local farmers then had to use boats and dive two to three metres to harvest their taro crops.
Cook Islands Meteorological Service director Aruna Ngari said islands had been partially submerged before not this was the first time they had been completely submerged.
He said some islanders were abandoning low-lying islands and moving to larger islands.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/26/the-worlds-meteorologists-report-from-the-frontline-of-climate-change/
26 May 2009
by Amanda Gearing
Climate change is wreaking havoc in many countries as severe weather events cause mass death and wipe out staple food crops, meteorologists have told a world climate conference in Queensland this week.
The World Meteorological Organisation conference of meteorologists and climatologists representing 187 countries showcased the latest communication tools being used to help countries protect people and food supplies threatened by climate change.
Staple food crop failures in developing countries are causing mass starvation, extreme rainfall is causing deadly floods, Pacific Islands are being completely submerged with people clinging to palm trees until storm surges subside, and France’s wine growing regions may have to move north.
The WMO gathering is held once every four years to assess global agricultural meteorology and recommend areas for future research in order to maintain sustainable global food supplies.
WMO agro meteorology division chief Dr Mannava Sivakumar said the world population was projected to exceed 9 billion by 2025.
“Even without climate change, to produce the extra food for the growing population is a major challenge so what climate change does is put an additional stress on what is already a major problem.”
“Because of the reduced rainfall, soils are going to be prone to erosion and degradation, crops may not be able to withstand higher temperatures or get enough water. It’s a double whammy that you have two big problems on your hands at the same time. The world has to look at it really seriously.”
Sivakumar said the international conference was vital to assist countries to provide farmers with timely, accurate forecasts to reduce the adverse risks posed by severe climate events.
I interviewed representatives from the USA, Russia, India, France, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Fiji, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and the Cook Islands and asked them if they were already seeing impacts of climate change in their country and what threats these impacts posed to the people and agriculture. I also asked them how the country was helping the people to mitigate the risk of climate change threats:
INDIA: Rising temperatures over the last ten years had caused more frequent heat waves over 46 degrees C leading to hundreds of human deaths among tribal people as well as animal deaths. Extreme weather events such as floods are causing human catastrophes, with villagers being drowned in floodwaters.
Indian Meteorological Department head of agro-meteorology Dr Laxman Singh Rathore said food supplies were secure now because monsoon season crops were not affected by higher temperatures but winter wheat crop yields in some years are reduced by warmer winter temperatures in northern India.
The Indian Government is setting up internet services in India’s 600,000 villages which will provide weather and climate forecasts and information to the country’s 600 million farmers.
Information centres with internet, television and radio communications and local print media have been set up in 25,000 villages in the past two years.
USA: The USA has had more extreme events such as hurricanes, flooding, drought, record high temperatures and cold outbreaks in recent years.
US Department of Agriculture World crop weather analyst, meteorologist Dr Harlan Shannon said it was unclear yet whether the events were caused by variability or climate change.
He said the USA was monitoring crop production around the world including Russia, Australia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina using WMO data and satellite imaging of weather systems to help US economists assist American farmers in assessing marketing opportunities.
RUSSIA: More frequent and intense forest fires and more droughts are occurring. However warmer temperatures in future would have positive impacts on Russia because warmer weather would increase the area available for growing summer and winter wheat crops and other cereals.
Warmer temperatures would enable Russia to grow cotton in the south of the country. Director of the National Agro-meteorological institute, Agro-meteorologist Alexander Kleshchenko, said if soils that were normally frozen thawed building foundations could be threatened.
He said Russia was expecting droughts would be more frequent in future and drinking water supplies were being monitored.
FRANCE: Climate data shows varying increases in minimum and maximum temperatures in different regions of France.
Frost days during winter are decreasing but in the next decade vineyards may have to move north. Meteo France end-user services manager Philippe Frayssinet said England could become a place to produce good wine.
“If Champagne would not be the right place to produce Champagne it would be a real problem for the economy of the region — the same for Burgundy and Bordeaux. The sensibility to the climate is very high.”
He said there was an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as forest fires, heat waves and floods causing crop failures and reducing export income.
France has a colour-coded warning system with green indicating no risks, ranging through yellow for minor risk, orange for medium risk to red indicating an extreme event.
France has also stationed hundreds of meteorologists around the world in its overseas territories to monitor weather and climate data including 150 meteorology staff in the French West Indies, 50 in Martinique and 50 in French Guyana.
BRAZIL: Minimum air temperatures have increased almost 2 degrees C in the past 40 years. Rainy seasons have changed with more frequent heavy rains causing deaths, infrastructure damage and crop failures in soya beans, coconuts, grain and rice crops. Frequency of frosts have fallen, affecting citrus crops.
San Paulo state Meteorology Institute agro-meteorology head Olivaldo Brunini said burning of the Amazon forests was being reduced and farmers in the forest were turning to raising beef cattle and grain farming.
AUSTRALIA: Water allocations to irrigation farmers have fallen by more than 90 per cent in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Australia’s rice crop is down more than 90 percent to less than 100,000 tonnes a year since production peaked in 2004 at 2 million tones. Cotton production is down by almost 80 percent.
Corn production in the Murray-Darling Basin is down by 60-70 per cent and corn production is moving to northern Australia. Lost crop production is estimated at 1.5 billion a year and threatens Australia’s food security.
Peanut Company of Australia managing director Bob Hansen is spending $50 million to buy land and water rights to move some of his farming and processing operations from Queensland to the Northern Territory.
NEW ZEALAND: Temperature rises were first detected in New Zealand and the surrounding region in the mid 1970s. Temperatures have now risen by about 1 degree C, reducing the number of frost days by a third to a half.
World Meteorological Organisation commission for agricultural meteorology president Dr Jim Salinger discovered the temperature trend in the mid 1970s and his publication of a journal article sparked global research which found global temperatures were rising.
Dr Salinger said the main threat of climate change globally was to food security. Hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in India, Africa and China needed help to manage climate change effects on their farming systems.
Lower food production will mostly impact the semi arid sub tropics including Africa, the Mediterranean basin, the southern half of Australia, the south of South America and major cropping areas of the USA.
By 2030 world food supply will need to increase by about 50 percent to feed the estimated 9 billion global population. Food prices were likely to rise, he said. Already one billion people were on the brink of starvation.
Dr Salinger said New Zealand would warm more slowly than continents such as Europe or North America because it was an island and water temperatures warmed more slowly than land and air temperatures.
However, permanent snow and ice including glaciers in the south island have retreated by 55 per cent from 100 cubic kilometres of permanent snow and ice cover 100 years ago to 45 cubic km of permanent ice now.
Eastern New Zealand is predicted to receive lower rainfall with serious droughts becoming four times more frequent. New Zealand’s eastern wine-growing areas will be able to introduce warmer wine styles. Existing Kiwi fruit and apple-growing areas will no longer be ideal growing areas.
KOREA: Temperature rises threaten the country’s staple rice crop. Orchards have moved to the north of the country to cooler regions. Korea’s National Institute of Meteorological Research senior research scientist Kyu Rang Kim said typhoons had increased in frequency and intensity causing floods which have destroyed rice crops at harvest time.
Korea imports most of its food apart from rice.
PHILIPPINES: Increasing minimum and maximum temperatures have been recorded as have increasingly intense cyclones.
Philippines weather services chief of the Philippines atmospheric, geophysical and astronomical services administration Flaviana Hilario said the country had recently recorded the most severe cyclone ever to hit the country.
“In 2006 we recorded the highest wind speed due to tropical cyclone, 320kp/h. So far this is the highest. We will see whether in the future this will be the norm or if this was a single event,” she said.
During the 2006 cyclone season 2700 people died and cyclones caused $36 billion damage in the Philippines. The Philippines is replacing fossil fuels with bio-fuels and geothermal energy sourced from volcanoes.
ETHIOPIA: Failures of rain were shortening growing seasons causing reduced crop yields in the south of the country and causing shortages of staple crops such as teff, maize, sorghum, barley and drinking water.
Floods have increased in intensity in the eastern parts of the country, causing deaths of people and stock and destroying houses.
Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency research meteorologist Almaz Demessie said people were moving livestock in search of water and pasture and food were having to be bought from other areas when crops failed or people were leaving to find work so they could buy food.
TANZANIA: More rainfall seasons have been failing since the 1980s, severely affecting food supplies of people who are mostly subsistence farmers on small farms.
“If (the short rains) fail it means their survival is threatened and this becomes worse when the second rain fails because it means the whole year is a total failure and we’ve had the government intervening more often to give food assistance to the people,” Tanzanian principal agro-meteorologist Deusdedit Kashasha said.
“They produce on small farms which may not be enough for a year in a good season so if they don’t even have that small amount produced it becomes pretty dire.”
FIJI: Air temperatures have increased by 0.6 degrees in the past 50 years which is reducing sugar crop yields because sugar cane needs cool nights to concentrate the sugar. Sugar is Fiji’s major export crop.
Fiji Meteorological Service principal scientific officer Simon McGree said sea level rises were a major problem for the population of 850,000 people scattered on isolated islands.
Sea level rises were also causing sugar crops on coastal flats to be flooded, destroying crops and salinifying the land. Sugar plantations are having to move inland, reducing the available cropping area.
SAMOA: Cyclones have increased in frequency and intensity in the last ten years threatening the population of 180,000 living on four main islands in the Samoan Islands group.
Sea level rises have also caused coastal erosion. Samoan Meteorological Division Climate and Ozone Services principal scientific officer Sunny Seuseu said Samoa was researching ways to reduce greenhouse emissions by reducing fossil fuels and exploring renewable energy sources including wind, geothermal and solar power.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: Sea level rises have been recorded and king tides have washed over an atoll island in the north of the island group, destroying houses and local crops.
Solomon Islands Meteorological Service principal climate officer Lloyd Tahani said the government was making plans to evacuate people from low-lying islands in cases of climatic emergency and had established a team of climate scientists to work in the Solomon Islands to establish early warning systems.
COOK ISLANDS: Tide gauges installed in 1992 show sea levels have risen marginally but tropical cyclones are becoming more frequent and more intense.
In 2004-2005, the Cook Islands had five category five cyclones in five weeks lashing the 15 islands scattered over 240 square kilometres located 3000km north east of New Zealand with a population of 14,000 people.
In 2004-2005 season some islands were submerged and people had to climb coconut trees and rise the storm out. Local farmers then had to use boats and dive two to three metres to harvest their taro crops.
Cook Islands Meteorological Service director Aruna Ngari said islands had been partially submerged before not this was the first time they had been completely submerged.
He said some islanders were abandoning low-lying islands and moving to larger islands.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/26/the-worlds-meteorologists-report-from-the-frontline-of-climate-change/
Debate over: droughts and floods on the rise
The Age
24 May 2009
by Amanda Gearing
CLIMATE change has already claimed the lives of many thousands of people — and millions more are at risk — as severe weather events rage around the world and staple food crops are wiped out, meteorologists have told a world climate conference.
More extremes of climate are bringing deadly floods, hurricanes, cyclones, droughts and ocean surges that are destroying vital food crops, leading to mass starvation in some countries.
The agro-meteorology chief of the World Meteorological Organisation, Dr Mannava Sivakumar, says debate about whether climate change is occurring or not is obsolete, as the effects of extreme weather incidents are clearly being felt across the globe.
As well as crop failures in both hemispheres, delegates to the conference in Queensland last week were told other examples of climate change included:
-Extreme rainfall leading to deadly flooding in India, as well as more frequent heatwaves over 46 degrees causing mass deaths of people and livestock.
-Severe cyclones in the Pacific Islands, including Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, have resulted in sea surges completely submerging some islands, forcing villagers to climb palm trees to save themselves.
-Frequent typhoons in Korea are dumping flooding rains that destroy rice crops, the country's main food supply.
-Rising temperatures in the south of France could devastate the winemaking regions of Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux.
-Drought and extreme flooding are wreaking havoc on crops in Ethiopia and other African countries, leading to mass starvation.
"Climate change impacts are going to be most serious in the semi-arid and arid tropics of the world," Dr Sivakumar said. "And unfortunately these are also the regions where the poorest of the poor countries of the world are located."
Dr Sivakumar, who first detected temperature rises in west African countries in 1984 by analysing climate data, says it is the failure of food crops triggered by the effects of global warming that poses the most pressing challenge to global food security.
In Australia, rice production has fallen by at least 90 per cent in the past five to seven years after decades of drought, and in other countries, many of them among the poorest of the world, rice and wheat crops have been completely wiped out by cyclones or droughts.
"If you look at these countries and ask the question, 'how are they going to feed their people in the next 20 to 30 years?', you have to address a number of issues at the same time (including poor governance as well as climate change)," Dr Sivakumar said.
He said there was no longer a question that humans had contributed to global warming; the question now was how they were going to feed the growing population as the effects of climate change ricocheted around the world.
"The International Panel on Climate Change's last four reports have shown … that we are changing the climate because of human activities, which will bring increased temperatures of 2 to 4.5 degrees centigrade to the global average and reduced rain in many parts of the world, especially in the semi-arid tropics, and increased rainfall in some parts," he said.
Dr Sivakumar said the world's population was expected to exceed 9 billion by 2025, presenting a food supply crisis for the world's governments and farmers — and climate change would make the task even more difficult. "It's a double whammy," he said.
Tanzania's principal agro-meteorologist, Deusdedit Kashasha, said more rainfall seasons had been failing since the 1980s, leaving families whose only food comes from subsistence farming to rely on government food hand-outs to survive.
Flaviana Hilario, chief of the Philippines weather service's atmospheric, geophysical and astronomical services administration, said the country had recently experienced its most severe cyclone, with deadly, destructive wind speeds of up to 320km/h.
"So far this is the highest. We will see whether in the future this will be the norm or if this was a single event," she said.
Dr Sivakumar said the sharing of information between the delegates — meteorologists and climatologists representing 187 countries — would help nations to make their food supplies more sustainable.
Better communication services must be developed so farmers can access information to help them increase crop production, he said.
24 May 2009
by Amanda Gearing
CLIMATE change has already claimed the lives of many thousands of people — and millions more are at risk — as severe weather events rage around the world and staple food crops are wiped out, meteorologists have told a world climate conference.
More extremes of climate are bringing deadly floods, hurricanes, cyclones, droughts and ocean surges that are destroying vital food crops, leading to mass starvation in some countries.
The agro-meteorology chief of the World Meteorological Organisation, Dr Mannava Sivakumar, says debate about whether climate change is occurring or not is obsolete, as the effects of extreme weather incidents are clearly being felt across the globe.
As well as crop failures in both hemispheres, delegates to the conference in Queensland last week were told other examples of climate change included:
-Extreme rainfall leading to deadly flooding in India, as well as more frequent heatwaves over 46 degrees causing mass deaths of people and livestock.
-Severe cyclones in the Pacific Islands, including Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, have resulted in sea surges completely submerging some islands, forcing villagers to climb palm trees to save themselves.
-Frequent typhoons in Korea are dumping flooding rains that destroy rice crops, the country's main food supply.
-Rising temperatures in the south of France could devastate the winemaking regions of Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux.
-Drought and extreme flooding are wreaking havoc on crops in Ethiopia and other African countries, leading to mass starvation.
"Climate change impacts are going to be most serious in the semi-arid and arid tropics of the world," Dr Sivakumar said. "And unfortunately these are also the regions where the poorest of the poor countries of the world are located."
Dr Sivakumar, who first detected temperature rises in west African countries in 1984 by analysing climate data, says it is the failure of food crops triggered by the effects of global warming that poses the most pressing challenge to global food security.
In Australia, rice production has fallen by at least 90 per cent in the past five to seven years after decades of drought, and in other countries, many of them among the poorest of the world, rice and wheat crops have been completely wiped out by cyclones or droughts.
"If you look at these countries and ask the question, 'how are they going to feed their people in the next 20 to 30 years?', you have to address a number of issues at the same time (including poor governance as well as climate change)," Dr Sivakumar said.
He said there was no longer a question that humans had contributed to global warming; the question now was how they were going to feed the growing population as the effects of climate change ricocheted around the world.
"The International Panel on Climate Change's last four reports have shown … that we are changing the climate because of human activities, which will bring increased temperatures of 2 to 4.5 degrees centigrade to the global average and reduced rain in many parts of the world, especially in the semi-arid tropics, and increased rainfall in some parts," he said.
Dr Sivakumar said the world's population was expected to exceed 9 billion by 2025, presenting a food supply crisis for the world's governments and farmers — and climate change would make the task even more difficult. "It's a double whammy," he said.
Tanzania's principal agro-meteorologist, Deusdedit Kashasha, said more rainfall seasons had been failing since the 1980s, leaving families whose only food comes from subsistence farming to rely on government food hand-outs to survive.
Flaviana Hilario, chief of the Philippines weather service's atmospheric, geophysical and astronomical services administration, said the country had recently experienced its most severe cyclone, with deadly, destructive wind speeds of up to 320km/h.
"So far this is the highest. We will see whether in the future this will be the norm or if this was a single event," she said.
Dr Sivakumar said the sharing of information between the delegates — meteorologists and climatologists representing 187 countries — would help nations to make their food supplies more sustainable.
Better communication services must be developed so farmers can access information to help them increase crop production, he said.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Walkley Magazine Article
Issue 50. April/May 2008
Trauma Overload
Reporting on death and accidents in regional and rural areas can exact a heavy toll
News reporters necessarily report on trauma. Overseas correspondents who report from war zones or areas of conflict or natural disaster are often exposed to physical risk and are sometimes required to confront extreme trauma.
To an extent reporters embarking on overseas assignments are mentally prepared to face traumatic situations.
Their supervisors are more or less aware of the reporter’s isolation and vulnerability.
By contrast, reporters who work either alone or with a small group of colleagues in regional and rural Australia can be exposed to human trauma which is often unexpected, repetitive and is more likely to involve their own acquaintances.
Their supervisors are less likely to be aware of the impact on staff members of being exposed to repeated traumatic situations.
The reporters are more likely to take the trauma home.
In my experience, reporters in rural areas learn to cope in different ways, which often requires them to re-negotiate their world-view.
Faced with the death and injury toll of the regular round of fatal car crashes, plane crashes and farm accidents, a young reporter’s world-view could be forced to shift.
Anyone who grew up thinking or assuming that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people, is challenged. In their everyday reporting they see sad, tragic, unfair things happening to good people, careful people, innocent people.
They might conclude the world is rather more chaotic than they first thought.
Yet their inexperience of life shields them to an extent from the trauma they are meeting in their daily work.
As a young reporter I was assigned to interview the mother of a youth killed in a car crash.
It was not until I spoke to her that I discovered she had had five sons, of whom four had been killed in car crashes. The latest crash claimed her last remaining son.
It has only been in much later years and as a mother myself with children who are driving, that I can look back and have some understanding of the depth of her grief.
Whilst my techniques for dealing with trauma were quite rudimentary in those days, I do remember looking for an angle in the stories that might prevent similar deaths or accidents – that just the reporting of the trauma made no sense unless some consolation, some solace, some ‘good’ might be wrought from it for someone in the future if possible.
One story I recall was about a car crash where a baby was killed when it was thrown from its mother’s arms and out of the car in a high-speed rollover.
Both parents survived and they gave a tearful warning to other mothers not to breastfeed their babies in moving cars.
It was not until I was a reporter and a mother that I found my professional ethics being more strongly challenged by trauma reporting.
Why report trauma when reporting it exposes traumatised and often bereaved people to the added trauma of media intrusion?
Can we personally justify adding trauma to a situation for the sake of another story? If so, how?
At base, trauma and death are reported because human life has value. This does not in itself justify adding to the trauma of someone who is bereaved.
Reporters are bound by the Code of Ethics of respecting people who are grieving.
But respecting people who are grieving does not mean not speaking to them at all, especially if they are willing to, or want to, speak to a reporter.
After being out of the workforce for several years to raise my children, the first ‘death knock’ I recall was the death of a healthy teenage boy who died suddenly running laps in a lap-a-thon to raise money for a charity.
All I had was a surname, a common surname, and I began dialling the list in the phone book.
After many calls, a distressed voice answered the phone - a familiar voice. I was invited to the house and listened while the bereaved mother told me about her son’s life and sudden death.
I gathered all the details I needed and a photo, which all ran page one the following morning.
The family was avalanched with messages of sympathy and support from friends, relatives and total strangers from around Australia.
I kept in contact and after a few months I was able to ask the mother if the media coverage had added to her trauma at losing her son. Her response surprised me.
She told me she had been grateful for the opportunity to publicly express her love for her son.
What had traumatised her more in the longer term was that she still didn’t know the cause of his death.
She knew his heart had been removed and sent for analysis but she didn’t have a result and for six months she had been frightened her other children could also have an undiagnosed fatal condition.
I phoned around Australia until I found the professor who had the boy’s heart and I was able to phone the mother back the same day and let her know that her son’s death was not caused by a genetic condition – her other children were ok.
Many people assume that relatives who are suddenly bereaved, especially in traumatic circumstances don’t want to speak to the media.
Working in a regional centre where I also live, has taught me that most people do want the opportunity to express their grief, to take the opportunity to express their love for a family member who has been killed, talk about their achievements, or even to warn others of a known or unknown danger.
I was forced to re-assess my own views about trauma reporting. I could not take it for granted that all families would want to shut out reporters at a time of family tragedy.
I had to be aware that some would want, indeed welcome, the opportunity I had given to my friend to talk about her son.
Other families have wanted and welcomed the opportunity to warn other people of a potential danger.
Some have found a consolation in a death which otherwise appears traumatic and they welcome the opportunity to convey that consolation to the public.
An elderly man washed down a mountainside by a flash flood and drowned was, at first glance, a tragic event.
His family, however, knew the seriously ill man went for a regular Sunday drive to the area, still connected to his oxygen tank, because the old drover loved the bush.
The family wanted the public to know his wish was that he not die in a hospital.
Apart from speaking to newspaper reporters, the old drover’s daughter went to the effort of facing television cameras at the scene of the accident to comfort the public that even though her father died by accident, he died in the place he loved and where he wanted to be.
Discovering that some families want to speak to the media during times of trauma, has given me determination to try to speak to the next of kin rather than to allow well-meaning relatives or friends to ward off reporters assuming, without even asking, that the next-of-kin don’t want to be interviewed.
Even though a family might welcome a reporter in the door, does not mean however that telling the story is easy for them.
Sometimes it’s very difficult. One of the most heart-rending interviews I recall was speaking to a woman about her fiancé who accidentally fell to his death from a Gold Coast high-rise building a week before their wedding.
On the day I met the bereaved woman, she had set aside time to speak to me before an appointment with the funeral director when she was going to put the wedding ring on her fiancé’s finger. She cried as she told me about her plan.
This was one of the few times I recall crying with an interviewee during an interview.
Although emotionally challenging, the published story powerfully conveyed the love of the woman for her fiancé.
Reporters who work alone in regional or rural centres are more likely to download their experiences of trauma reporting to their family and friends since they have few or no office colleagues.
Trauma is more likely to be taken home. Families cope with a regular flow of trauma from crime and court reporting, deaths and injury stories.
However there are some circumstances when the reporter or the family can be overloaded, such as if there is a death in the family at the same time as an overload of work-related trauma.
A fortnight of deaths and funerals stands out for me, beginning with a man killed in a light plane crash on a Sunday afternoon, two toddlers killed in a shed fire a few days later and five university students killed in a car crash all in the same fortnight as the death of my father-in-law, on the same day as the funeral of a work colleague of my husband, which I also reported.
Despite the juxtaposition of the long working hours on the stories, my own grief and my family’s grief, I achieved every deadline.
But the fortnight stands out as one where the trauma load I carried was not recognised as being overwhelming by myself or by my workplace.
I expected myself to deliver copy, my supervisor expected me to deliver copy, and I did it.
That fortnight didn’t trigger any effort by me or by my supervisor to obtain workplace support.
It was not until several months later when I covered the shooting death of a police dog squad officer and then the death of a helicopter pilot flying a medical mercy mission in bad weather soon after, that I was advised to find someone outside my family to provide me with a debrief.
In searching for the family of the pilot, I door-knocked, and a familiar face came to the door. I was shocked.
The door opened and the bereaved wife, a professional counsellor, sat me down and gave me a cup of tea before telling me of her husband’s career as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and ending with a suggestion that I should find a debriefing counsellor.
The story ran page one.
Over time, the process of reporting trauma does get easier, but the repetition of confronting death and trauma can become so emotionally draining that the reporter needs a break.
Reporters, in my experience, have generally avoided confronting their own vulnerability in reporting trauma.
We might like to think we are bullet-proof emotionally because of our job but underneath we are human beings who respond through our emotions to the world around us.
Foreign correspondents and war correspondents are not the only reporters who see and report trauma.
Reporters in any front-line reporting role are exposed over time to trauma, for which they have little training, little or no professional support and sometimes little understanding from their work supervisors, whose work is focussed on filling news holes.
Regional and rural-based reporters around Australia face the added challenge of professional isolation which results in them taking home the trauma to their families and friends.
Trauma Overload
Reporting on death and accidents in regional and rural areas can exact a heavy toll
News reporters necessarily report on trauma. Overseas correspondents who report from war zones or areas of conflict or natural disaster are often exposed to physical risk and are sometimes required to confront extreme trauma.
To an extent reporters embarking on overseas assignments are mentally prepared to face traumatic situations.
Their supervisors are more or less aware of the reporter’s isolation and vulnerability.
By contrast, reporters who work either alone or with a small group of colleagues in regional and rural Australia can be exposed to human trauma which is often unexpected, repetitive and is more likely to involve their own acquaintances.
Their supervisors are less likely to be aware of the impact on staff members of being exposed to repeated traumatic situations.
The reporters are more likely to take the trauma home.
In my experience, reporters in rural areas learn to cope in different ways, which often requires them to re-negotiate their world-view.
Faced with the death and injury toll of the regular round of fatal car crashes, plane crashes and farm accidents, a young reporter’s world-view could be forced to shift.
Anyone who grew up thinking or assuming that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people, is challenged. In their everyday reporting they see sad, tragic, unfair things happening to good people, careful people, innocent people.
They might conclude the world is rather more chaotic than they first thought.
Yet their inexperience of life shields them to an extent from the trauma they are meeting in their daily work.
As a young reporter I was assigned to interview the mother of a youth killed in a car crash.
It was not until I spoke to her that I discovered she had had five sons, of whom four had been killed in car crashes. The latest crash claimed her last remaining son.
It has only been in much later years and as a mother myself with children who are driving, that I can look back and have some understanding of the depth of her grief.
Whilst my techniques for dealing with trauma were quite rudimentary in those days, I do remember looking for an angle in the stories that might prevent similar deaths or accidents – that just the reporting of the trauma made no sense unless some consolation, some solace, some ‘good’ might be wrought from it for someone in the future if possible.
One story I recall was about a car crash where a baby was killed when it was thrown from its mother’s arms and out of the car in a high-speed rollover.
Both parents survived and they gave a tearful warning to other mothers not to breastfeed their babies in moving cars.
It was not until I was a reporter and a mother that I found my professional ethics being more strongly challenged by trauma reporting.
Why report trauma when reporting it exposes traumatised and often bereaved people to the added trauma of media intrusion?
Can we personally justify adding trauma to a situation for the sake of another story? If so, how?
At base, trauma and death are reported because human life has value. This does not in itself justify adding to the trauma of someone who is bereaved.
Reporters are bound by the Code of Ethics of respecting people who are grieving.
But respecting people who are grieving does not mean not speaking to them at all, especially if they are willing to, or want to, speak to a reporter.
After being out of the workforce for several years to raise my children, the first ‘death knock’ I recall was the death of a healthy teenage boy who died suddenly running laps in a lap-a-thon to raise money for a charity.
All I had was a surname, a common surname, and I began dialling the list in the phone book.
After many calls, a distressed voice answered the phone - a familiar voice. I was invited to the house and listened while the bereaved mother told me about her son’s life and sudden death.
I gathered all the details I needed and a photo, which all ran page one the following morning.
The family was avalanched with messages of sympathy and support from friends, relatives and total strangers from around Australia.
I kept in contact and after a few months I was able to ask the mother if the media coverage had added to her trauma at losing her son. Her response surprised me.
She told me she had been grateful for the opportunity to publicly express her love for her son.
What had traumatised her more in the longer term was that she still didn’t know the cause of his death.
She knew his heart had been removed and sent for analysis but she didn’t have a result and for six months she had been frightened her other children could also have an undiagnosed fatal condition.
I phoned around Australia until I found the professor who had the boy’s heart and I was able to phone the mother back the same day and let her know that her son’s death was not caused by a genetic condition – her other children were ok.
Many people assume that relatives who are suddenly bereaved, especially in traumatic circumstances don’t want to speak to the media.
Working in a regional centre where I also live, has taught me that most people do want the opportunity to express their grief, to take the opportunity to express their love for a family member who has been killed, talk about their achievements, or even to warn others of a known or unknown danger.
I was forced to re-assess my own views about trauma reporting. I could not take it for granted that all families would want to shut out reporters at a time of family tragedy.
I had to be aware that some would want, indeed welcome, the opportunity I had given to my friend to talk about her son.
Other families have wanted and welcomed the opportunity to warn other people of a potential danger.
Some have found a consolation in a death which otherwise appears traumatic and they welcome the opportunity to convey that consolation to the public.
An elderly man washed down a mountainside by a flash flood and drowned was, at first glance, a tragic event.
His family, however, knew the seriously ill man went for a regular Sunday drive to the area, still connected to his oxygen tank, because the old drover loved the bush.
The family wanted the public to know his wish was that he not die in a hospital.
Apart from speaking to newspaper reporters, the old drover’s daughter went to the effort of facing television cameras at the scene of the accident to comfort the public that even though her father died by accident, he died in the place he loved and where he wanted to be.
Discovering that some families want to speak to the media during times of trauma, has given me determination to try to speak to the next of kin rather than to allow well-meaning relatives or friends to ward off reporters assuming, without even asking, that the next-of-kin don’t want to be interviewed.
Even though a family might welcome a reporter in the door, does not mean however that telling the story is easy for them.
Sometimes it’s very difficult. One of the most heart-rending interviews I recall was speaking to a woman about her fiancé who accidentally fell to his death from a Gold Coast high-rise building a week before their wedding.
On the day I met the bereaved woman, she had set aside time to speak to me before an appointment with the funeral director when she was going to put the wedding ring on her fiancé’s finger. She cried as she told me about her plan.
This was one of the few times I recall crying with an interviewee during an interview.
Although emotionally challenging, the published story powerfully conveyed the love of the woman for her fiancé.
Reporters who work alone in regional or rural centres are more likely to download their experiences of trauma reporting to their family and friends since they have few or no office colleagues.
Trauma is more likely to be taken home. Families cope with a regular flow of trauma from crime and court reporting, deaths and injury stories.
However there are some circumstances when the reporter or the family can be overloaded, such as if there is a death in the family at the same time as an overload of work-related trauma.
A fortnight of deaths and funerals stands out for me, beginning with a man killed in a light plane crash on a Sunday afternoon, two toddlers killed in a shed fire a few days later and five university students killed in a car crash all in the same fortnight as the death of my father-in-law, on the same day as the funeral of a work colleague of my husband, which I also reported.
Despite the juxtaposition of the long working hours on the stories, my own grief and my family’s grief, I achieved every deadline.
But the fortnight stands out as one where the trauma load I carried was not recognised as being overwhelming by myself or by my workplace.
I expected myself to deliver copy, my supervisor expected me to deliver copy, and I did it.
That fortnight didn’t trigger any effort by me or by my supervisor to obtain workplace support.
It was not until several months later when I covered the shooting death of a police dog squad officer and then the death of a helicopter pilot flying a medical mercy mission in bad weather soon after, that I was advised to find someone outside my family to provide me with a debrief.
In searching for the family of the pilot, I door-knocked, and a familiar face came to the door. I was shocked.
The door opened and the bereaved wife, a professional counsellor, sat me down and gave me a cup of tea before telling me of her husband’s career as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and ending with a suggestion that I should find a debriefing counsellor.
The story ran page one.
Over time, the process of reporting trauma does get easier, but the repetition of confronting death and trauma can become so emotionally draining that the reporter needs a break.
Reporters, in my experience, have generally avoided confronting their own vulnerability in reporting trauma.
We might like to think we are bullet-proof emotionally because of our job but underneath we are human beings who respond through our emotions to the world around us.
Foreign correspondents and war correspondents are not the only reporters who see and report trauma.
Reporters in any front-line reporting role are exposed over time to trauma, for which they have little training, little or no professional support and sometimes little understanding from their work supervisors, whose work is focussed on filling news holes.
Regional and rural-based reporters around Australia face the added challenge of professional isolation which results in them taking home the trauma to their families and friends.
Exciting changes for journalists
Journalism has progressed since the beginning of my career in the early 1980s from manual typewriters and carbon paper between small sheets of copy paper to computer screens and now online blogs.
I started on computers in Mount Isa, transferred to London and had to revert to manual typewriters and copy paper then back home to computers again.
The technological changes have already altered the way reporters work and the way audiences receive their news every day.
For ten years, I have worked remotely from my newspaper office, faxing or emailing stories to Brisbane for publication.
In 1997 I typed a story on a computer, printed it out and drove to the local post office to fax it to Brisbane where the story was re-typed by copy takers.
The deadlines were early because of the process.
A couple of years later I was set up to email directly to the subs desk and breaking news could be in my head at 7pm and on the page by 8pm despite the 130km distance from reporter to printing press.
News websites and news blogs will, over time, reduce the number of newspapers published.Audiences and reporters are already linked by the web.
Constrictions created by hardcopy newspapers such as story length, time delays, printing and distribution are gone.
The freedom offered to reporters is only just beginning to change the way the industry works day to day.
However newspaper reporters already routinely taking digital recorders to record sources and upload the interviews to newspaper websites and digital cameras to upload digital video.
I started on computers in Mount Isa, transferred to London and had to revert to manual typewriters and copy paper then back home to computers again.
The technological changes have already altered the way reporters work and the way audiences receive their news every day.
For ten years, I have worked remotely from my newspaper office, faxing or emailing stories to Brisbane for publication.
In 1997 I typed a story on a computer, printed it out and drove to the local post office to fax it to Brisbane where the story was re-typed by copy takers.
The deadlines were early because of the process.
A couple of years later I was set up to email directly to the subs desk and breaking news could be in my head at 7pm and on the page by 8pm despite the 130km distance from reporter to printing press.
News websites and news blogs will, over time, reduce the number of newspapers published.Audiences and reporters are already linked by the web.
Constrictions created by hardcopy newspapers such as story length, time delays, printing and distribution are gone.
The freedom offered to reporters is only just beginning to change the way the industry works day to day.
However newspaper reporters already routinely taking digital recorders to record sources and upload the interviews to newspaper websites and digital cameras to upload digital video.
