Another way to cook the planet

Around 80 to 85% of coal in the ground cannot be mined by conventional methods. That’s 18 trillion tonnes according to the International Energy Agency’s Clean Coal Centre – enough to supply the world for 1000 years, at current requirements. Fred Pearce in the New Scientist (paywalled) takes a look at efforts to liberate this potential by a process called underground coal gasification (UCG). Apparently that’s enough to add about 10°C to global warming, if the carbon is not sequestered.

The process involves burning the coal in situ underground, bringing the gases thus created to the surface and then burning them in a conventional power station. This image from the British Geological Survey illustrates the process:

USG_Figure_03_001_600

The “Zero emissions power generation” is totally misleading (see below).

Stalin’s engineers and their successors have been doing it to a brown coal seam for 50 years near Angren, a town east of Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Air is piped 300 metres down one well, the gas comes up another. It is cooled, scrubbed of coal dust and compressed on site, then piped across the plain to Angren. Australians bought the operation seven years ago, with a view to scaling up the technology to transform the world’s energy markets.

A cocktail of gases is created when the coal is burned – methane (natural gas), CO2, which can be disposed of safely, carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrogen. There are four ways the gases can be used:

  • Gas to electricity. Methane is burned in a power station.
  • Gas to chemicals. Hydrogen, methane and CO have value as feedstock in the chemicals industry.
  • Gas to liquid. Methane can be liquified to LNG, or CO and hydrogen can be turned into synthetic diesel.
  • Gas to tech. Hydrogen can be used as a transport fuel.

As methane burns it oxidises to CO2 and water. Potentially, it is said, the same infrastructure of pipes can be used to pipe the CO2 from the power station back to the mine and insert it in the place vacated by the burnt coal. Obviously you’d have to double the pipeline for continuous operation. And obviously the process would add to the expense.

A second concern is that chemicals can leak to contaminate groundwater. If the rocks above the seam are impermeable before the process, they may not be after. Fracturing is estimated to occur up to 60 times the width of the seam. In fact fracturing the nearby rocks could release even more gas for use.

USG_cougar-energy_cropped

Australian engineers trialled an adapted process at Chinchilla in Queensland in the 1990s. Within two years UCG was shown to be feasible. But in 2011 benzene and toluene leaked into a nearby borehole in an operation near Kingaroy. Similar problems had emerged in the US, so Qld authorities shut the operation down for investigation. Last July ‘Can do’ Campbell’s mob came up with the idea that you could only operate if you successfully decommissioned a commercial scale operation to show that you could do it. So you had to start an operation, stop it, get your operating ticket, then start up again. Brilliant!

There were three companies involved in Qld – Linc Energy, Carbon Energy and Cougar Energy. They responded by shutting Chinchilla down after more than a decade of successful production, and relocating to China, the US, Argentina, Chile and Indonesia.

There are trials elsewhere, including Canada and South Africa. At Cook Inlet in Alaska and Swan Hills in Alberta, Canada, there are plans to go commercial as early as 2015. In Britain, they reckon 70% of coal has never been mined. Furthermore there is 10 billion tonnes of the stuff under 400 square kilometres in the North Sea. An Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil has been set up with £1 billion seed money to stimulate the industry. Half a dozen start-ups have been spawned. There is interest also in supplying feedstock to energise the flagging chemicals industry in Scotland.

All this momentum is a worry unless in practice ‘clean’ coal turns out to be completely clean. For example in Britain it is said that only 30% of CO2 could be sequestered. There they are throwing £1 billion at the problem.

Remember, for a safe climate we need to reduce the concentration of emissions initially to 350 ppm. Or you can go back and depress yourself by re-reading The game is up.

Our best chance lies in the possibility of renewables becoming cheaper than the fossil alternatives. If we rely on the human race acting rationally in its own longer term self interest our prospects are not good.

Food follies

Nash_CCA_13-08-2010_EGN_04_a300410-08-01_t460_croppedFiona Nash is Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate and Assistant Minister for Health. Back in mid-February there was a kerfuffle over taking down a food labelling site and the apparent conflict of interest of her then chief of staff, one Alastair Furnival.

The basic story is this. Food labelling has been under review for years by the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council. According to The Guardian back in Labor’s time the ministerial council approved a five star labelling system indicating food nutrition.

The website included a calculator that provided a star rating based on the ingredients and nutrient content of a food item, taking into account energy, saturated fat, total sugar, sodium, fibre, protein and fruit and vegetable content.

It’s a voluntary system. The website, specifically approved by the council, was to provide guidance to manufacturers and distributors who could then, if they wished, include the rating on the labelling. Meanwhile the site would be available to the public.

The staff of the department of health duly set up the site. Within hours Nash demanded that it be taken down. The public servants refused, saying they were working for the ministerial council. Furnival then intervened with their bosses, heavied them and the site came down. This shouldn’t happen.

Much of the controversy then was over Furnival’s former and possibly current links with sections of the food industry hostile to the project, what Nash told the senate about this, how she had to then provide ‘further information’ which was pretty much the opposite.

One bottom line is that Laura Tingle reckons Nash definitely misled the senate. On that basis she should have resigned or been sacked.

A side issue relates to the vetting of Furnival’s appointment in the PM’s Department. Andrew Elder points out that Peta Credlin, Abbott’s supremo, knew personally all about Furnival before he was appointed.

BTW who do you reckon is in charge here?

Abbott_ak_lead_credlin_20131204182638618280-450

Elder also points out how dunderheaded and useless your average gallery journalist is.

All these interesting aspects distract attention from what Nash was really up to. She claims the site was premature. She has initiated a cost-benefit analysis which she says needs to be completed first. Other ministers who are part of the Council say that this analysis is a Commonwealth initiative and as such has nothing to do with the Council.

The real agenda seems to be a delaying tactic. The vote in favour of the site was narrow and Nash is hoping to revisit the issue with the prospect of a different result after the elections in SA and Tasmania.

Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy at Curtin University, speaking to Peter Lloyd, reckons that’s not all she’s done.

Look I think the major issue now is not about one staffer who is gone but about whether the Federal Minister responsible for prevention understands the importance of prevention and will take the action that’s needed.

You look at the three big prevention priorities – tobacco, alcohol, obesity – and they’re also the three big priorities or three of the biggest priorities if we want to close the Indigenous life expectancy gap, and this Minister so far does not have a good record.

She’s scuppered a food labelling system, she’s defunded the major peak national alcohol treatment organisation and her party still accepts tobacco funding. So I think it raises much bigger question marks about Senator Nash than it does about the Mr Furnival.

I couldn’t agree more.

Problem is, there could be a cost to Radio National in reporting inconvenient material like that. I’m expecting a major push to kill off RN coming out of the current reviews of the ABC. I suspect the LNP sees RN as an unseemly steaming cesspit of lefties.

Blogging hiatus

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My dearly beloved sister and her husband from Canada will be staying with us until Friday 20th. Naturally my priority will be with them, so blogging for me will be disrupted during this time. I still have a few posts in the draft bin from the time I was active before the blog opened. I might manage to rummage through the pile and post a couple.

Because of house geography I’m restricted in my computer access and at this time of night must work from my wife’s computer, which for me is less than ideal.

From Monday to Wednesday we will be paying a visit to Byron Bay and Casino sans internet access.

Many moons ago as it happens and not the main reason for our visit, my sister and her husband had their honeymoon at Byron Bay. My wife and I had half ours at Lennox Heads and have not been back since 1982. When the Commonwealth Games was held in Brisbane we decided to take leave and go down to NSW where we could watch on TV.

Anyway bear with me for the next five days and we’ll see what happens.

Saturday salon 14/6

voltaire_230

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Blue sky

In Spanish speaking Latin America, and now in some other countries, there is a form of protest where people bang pots, pans, and other utensils to make a political point or register their displeasure. It’s particularly effective in densely populated cities, where people can protest without leaving their homes. The Spanish term is cacerolazo.

In pot banging diplomacy quantity matters. There needs to be critical mass before the authorities feel compelled to respond.

Potentially the Blue Sky movement could colour our suburbs blue, but if not countless conversations will be engendered and you never know where that might lead!

After the last election some friends of my younger brother Len, feeling blue, decided to turn blue into an optimistic colour, and invented the Blue Sky movement. To join all you have to do is ‘like’ the Facebook site put something blue on your front footpath visible from the road, take a photo and post it on the site. And take the Blue Sky Pledge, which includes reducing your own emissions, displaying blue for 12 months, and encouraging others to join.

Here’s one example:

Blue sky_10325198_306417569521903_2138384990446088881_n_500

We’ve just joined. This makes me wince:

Brian and Margot_1913442_305184202978573_4031178450688941073_o_500

I’m actually standing with my heels on a pile of yet to be distributed forest mulch, so I’m not that tall.

The blue plastic is an offcut from a new swimming pool cover. Having a swimming pool is not recommended to produce low electricity bills. We’d gladly fill it in and grow vegetables, but that would cost a small fortune. We are planning to post a laminated Blue Sky flier on the wooden fence, which would be easily visible from the footpath, frequented by walkers heading for nearby parks.

If you click on “Community” or “About” at the head of the Blue Sky FB page and then click “more” you’ll get the full Blue Sky spiel.

The goals of Blue Sky are –

* To provide a simple and easy way in which people can show their support for action on climate change.

* To encourage participants in their attempts to reduce their own carbon footprint.

* To encourage others to take climate change seriously

* To build the support for meaningful action and a sense of urgency for this action to be undertaken.

* To encourage as many people as possible to make the Blue Sky pledge.

I’ve included the link to the Blue Sky Facebook page in the sidebar list of Selected Climate Sites. Blue Sky FB is often used to share links.

Whereas cacerolazo requires considerable effort and is necessarily limited in time, once you make the effort of joining Blue Sky the deed is done and the effect continues. And it costs nothing.

Note: I outlined several forms of activism including Blue Sky in Climate clippings 87 last November.

Planetary guardrails for sustainable development

The United Nations often gets accused of talk and no action. Perhaps, however, it is necessary to do a lot of talking before action, in order to clarify both purpose and means and to achieve genuine consensus. The UN does have a consensus model of decision-making, where one vote can be a veto. This being so, lots of talk is inescapable.

Two years ago the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) was highly critical of the leaderless talkfest on development issues. Now two years later, as decisions are soon to be made after tsunami of talking, they have entered the debate with I think an important contribution about the need for planetary guardrails for development.

Civil society groups were scathing.

George Monbiot describes it as 283 paragraphs of fluff.

That’s how I began my post on Rio+20, written in October 2012, when Larvatus Prodeo was in hiatus and Climate Plus did not yet exist, so it has never been on the front page and no doubt has had a very small audience. I commend it to you.

Highly critical too was the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), a body set up in in 1992 to advise the German Government prior to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and remains the official advisory body on climate change. The WBGU has a brief which goes beyond climate change and indeed the environment to change generally.

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However, climate change is always front of mind, because one Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber co-chairs the WBGU and is also Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Schellnhuber perhaps is to European climate science what James Hansen is or was to American climate science, but not held at arms length by government actors. He has personal and official access to the president of the European Union and the German chancellor Angela Merkel. No doubt it helps that Merkel has a background as a research scientist in a similar discipline to Schellnhuber’s PhD, and was minister for the environment in Helmut Kohl’s government.

WBGU saw the verbiage at Rio+20 as exemplifying

an international crisis of leadership and confidence, a “G-Zero World” in which no leading power effectively is taking the initiative and no coalitions capable of taking action are emerging.

Many think this may have now changed with recent decisions made by the US and China and co-operation between the two.

Rio+20 made one significant ‘decision’. The Millennium Development Goals process comes to a natural end in 2015. Obviously it should be replaced by something to continue the work, so Rio+20 decided that there should be a new process to establish a new set of ‘sustainable development goals’ (SDGs).

The cynic in me suggests that this was the outcome planned by bureaucrats before the conference started and the purpose of the pointless verbiage was to ensure that the conference did not stray into inconvenient areas. But as I said in 2012:

The WBGU press release commented favourably on the supporting program, which “showed that the transformation towards sustainability is already in full swing”. The conference site registered over 500 on-site side events over 10 days. In Rio+20 in numbers they suggest there were thousands if you count those off-site as well. In a sense the official summit was a side-show.

At the conference there would have been plenty of bookable rooms like this:

image18_505

On the official level, having been given a head of power, the UN machine then swung into action, meaning more talk, in spades. It generated a high level panel of eminent persons (you can bet Schellnhuber was there), an Open Working Group withy the main carriage of ‘doing something’ and a UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda to undertake thematic and regional consultations. There is also a Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), led by Jeffrey Sachs, economist and advisor to Ban Ki-moon on development issues.

More talk too on the unofficial side. In Melbourne on 20-21 June there will be a C20 Summit of civil society leaders to make recommendations to the November G20 meeting, if Abbott extends the agenda to such trivia.

As discussed here the problem with SDGs is that if you try to do everything then effort becomes dissipated. If you narrow the focus too much then important issues may be missed. The Millennium Development Goals were thought to have struck a good balance. They covered the eight areas of poverty alleviation, education, gender equality and empowerment of women, child and maternal health, environmental sustainability, reducing HIV/AIDS and communicable diseases, and building a global partnership for development.

So far the Open Working Group has wrangled the possible goals into 19 focus areas (now said to be 16) in eight clusters:

Cluster 1
– Poverty eradication
– Promote equality

Cluster 2
– Gender equality and women’s empowerment
– Education
– Employment and decent work for all
– Health and population dynamics

Cluster 3
– Water and sanitation
– Sustainable agriculture, food security, and nutrition

Cluster 4
– Economic growth
– Industrialization
– Infrastructure
– Energy

Cluster 5
– Sustainable cities and human settlements
– Promote Sustainable Consumption and Production
– Climate

Cluster 6
– Conservation and sustainable use of marine resources, oceans and seas
– Ecosystems and biodiversity

Cluster 7
– Means of implementation/Global partnership for sustainable development

Cluster 8
– Peaceful and non-violent societies, rule of law and capable institutions

There’s more detail here.

No-one can say there hasn’t been widespread consultation:

Director Well for India examines a map

WBGU have now entered the debate by suggesting that development and environmental protection must be considered together and not contradict one another, the key message of the 1992 Earth Summit. Moreover, human change must operate within planetary guardrails to avoid permanent damage. Accordingly they have suggested adding an SDG entitled ‘safeguarding Earth system services’.

Within that goal they recommend six long-term targets:

1. Climate change: The warming of the climate system should be limited to 2°C. Global CO2 emissions from fossil energy sources should therefore be stopped completely by about 2070.

2. Ocean acidification: In order to protect the oceans, the pH level of the uppermost ocean layer should not fall by more than 0.2 units compared to pre-industrial figures in any major ocean region. CO2 emissions from fossil energy sources should therefore be stopped completely by about 2070 (congruent with Target 1).

3. Loss of biological diversity and ecosystem services: The human-induced loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services must be halted. Its direct anthropogenic drivers, e.g. the conversion of natural ecosystems, should be stopped by 2050 at the latest.

4. Land and soil degradation: Anthropogenic land and soil degradation must be halted. Net land degradation should be stopped by 2030 – world-wide and in all countries.

5. Risks posed by long-lived and harmful anthropogenic substances: The substitutable use of mercury and anthropogenic mercury emissions should be stopped by 2050. The release of plastic waste into the environment should be stopped worldwide by 2050. The production of nuclear fuels for nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors should be stopped by 2070.

6. Loss of phosphorus: Phosphorus is an essential resource for agriculture and therefore also for food security. The release of non-recoverable phosphorus into the environment should be stopped worldwide by 2050, so that its global recycling can be achieved.

Moreover:

the SDGs are not an agenda ‘exclusively for developing countries’; rather, they should apply to all states. Only in this way can curbing global environmental change become a joint task for humankind.

I think you’ll find this mob suggested the 2°C guardrail which took more than a decade to be adopted in 2009. In 2009 they came up with the budget approach to emissions stabilisation, yet to be adopted by international negotiators, although it seems the obvious, rational and equitable way to share the burden. Perhaps they will have better fortune this time! At least their suggestion comes when thinking is fluid.

At least it rescues climate from a mere sub-component of Cluster 5, to an essential part of the frame for the whole exercise, which is as it should be.

Abbott’s climate play: dropping off the back of the peloton

peloton-1-200

In road cycling terms, Australia’s climate effort is dropping off the back of the peloton. More than that we are now spreading tacks on the road up front.

Abbott, with his soul-mate from “Canadia” Stephen Harper, is proposing to build an alliance of conservative world leaders to block what he calls job-killing carbon pricing.

Dr Robyn Eckersley of Melbourne University who has been conducting research on climate change leadership finds that this would be “a very retrograde step at a very crucial time in international climate negotiations”. She also finds that he may struggle to find partners. The UK under David Cameron are unlikely to join. New Zealand has a conservative leader, and a carbon pricing scheme. Perhaps he’ll enlist the support of Saudi Arabia, who Eckersley sees as the biggest spoiler of all.

Eckersley points out that British Columbia, Quebec and California, one of the biggest economies in the world, have carbon pricing. China is launching seven provincial pilot emissions trading systems.

Abbott claims that the world is moving away from carbon pricing to ‘direct action’ type policies. Sophie Vorrath at RenewEconomy cites the World Bank as saying that carbon pricing is here to stay with more than 60 carbon pricing systems currently in operation or development globally.

At a press conference Abbott said that climate change is “not the only or even the most important problem that the world faces.”

Abbott doesn’t realise that the economy exists within the environment.

In this post last November on the outcomes of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Warsaw I referred to a graphic by Climate Tracker:

Climate-Action-Tracker-Visual-COP19-FINAL_cropped_500

There is Australia at the back of the peloton. If everyone did what we are doing the world would be toast, and with no economy to speak of. Climate Tracker currently sees Australia’s effort as “inadequate” and getting worse. With our performance the world would be heading towards 600 ppm and 4°C.

Abbott’s Canadian performance was no doubt intended to be one in the eye for Barack Obama, who Abbott sees next. The signal is that Obama would be wasting his time persuading Abbott to put climate change on the G20 agenda.

Laura Tingle, talking to Phillip Adams, opined that addressing climate change in the G20 would be a precedent since the G20 so far has restricted itself to economics. She also said that there was nothing doing in terms of international co-operation, and they were all off doing there own thing.

That would be news to the people currently attending climate talks from 4 to 15 June in Bonn under the auspices of the UNFCCC. In the Warsaw post I laid out the sequence as follows:

The timetable is that leaders will meet with the UN Director General in New York on 23 September 2014 with a show and tell of their thinking on contributions, and no doubt receive some jaw-boning from him in return.

There will be more talking at the 20th COP in Lima from 1-12 December 2014, where a draft new climate agreement will be tabled. Then in April 2015 countries will seriously start putting their “contributions” (rather than “commitments”) on the table “without prejudice to the legal nature of the contributions”. These “contributions” might be targets but could be other efforts to keep emissions down.

All this is aimed to get a legally binding agreement which reflects the “common but differentiated responsibility” of each state to be concluded at the Paris COP at the end of 2015 – for implementation in 2020 when the Kyoto Protocol officially expires.

So the leaders meet in September, but then not again before the deal is sealed in Paris in December 2015. In Lima I believe only the ministers will attend, noting that we did not bother to send a minister to Warsaw.

A new climate agreement is mainstream in policy and planning for the economy.

In spreading tacks on the road and trivialising the issue of climate change, Abbott and his government have form. In opposition in 2012 they would not grant Greg Combet a pair to attend the Rio+20 conference. In Warsaw, without a minister (who would have been Julie Bishop, since Greg Hunt is not allowed to conduct international negotiations) the Australian delegation was notorious, earning four “Fossil of the Day” awards and the overall “Colossal Fossil” for the meeting. Civil society groups like Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth, took the unprecedented step of simply walking out with a day still to go, muttering “Australia” as they went.

Being serious about climate change, the last thing Barack Obama would need is that kind of leadership at the G20.

Climate clippings 99

This edition is somewhat themed around climate policy and planning in China, the US and Australia. It also includes items on puffins in Maine, the Lowy Institute poll and the warm weather we’ve been having in May.

1. Petey Puffin dies on camera

Puffin_maine_500

Puffins were once common on the coast off Maine but were eliminated by overhunting. In recent years there has been a project to repopulate the area, which was proceeding well accompanied by a cam project where children around the world could watch the birds in their habitat. Petey Puffin, a chick being fed by its parents became a popular focus. The only problem was that the parent birds kept bringing him butterfish which were just too large for him to swallow. This went on day after day until the chick died on camera.

The project co-ordinator then checked the 64 other burrows being monitored to find that only 30% of chicks survived.

Problem was that hake and herring normally abundant around Maine had moved north as the water warmed to be replaced by butterfish.

The warmer water brought many other changes to the waters off Maine.

Incidents such as these remind people that they are living in the midst of climate change.

Puffin_MAINE_B_300

2. President Obama gets serious on climate change

From John Abraham at Climate Consensus – the 97%:

President Obama just announced a major effort to reduce global-warming gases from United States power plants. These new rules, and his prior strong actions on climate change, signify a major shift for the United States. No longer is the U.S. the world laggard on dealing with climate change – we are quickly becoming the leader.

We finally have a president that understands science. We finally have a president that honestly includes scientists as decision makers – rather than effectively muzzle them. We finally have a president that recognizes the social and economic costs of climate change. We finally have a president who is charting a pathway that may lead us to bend the curve of emissions downward so that the most serious climate change consequences are avoided.

Most importantly, we finally have a president who is a world leader.

3. Not everyone is happy

John Podesta before rejoining the White House inner circle in an interview said history will not applaud the measures taken by Obama as it fails to meet what the science demands. It won’t limit us to a 2°C temperature rise, and 2°C is too dangerous.

A 30% reduction by 2030 from 2005 levels shrinks to 7.7% if you use the international baseline of 1990. Moreover, coal will be replaced by gas, where the ‘fugitive’ methane emissions are not counted.

Podesta says that in Obama’s first term his top aides never took climate change seriously. Ironically, Podesta as Obama’s transition director in 2008 helped select those aides.

4. China to cap emission

China will seek to cap fossil fuel emissions for the first time, we are told.

Reading carefully it seems that emissions will still grow, but not as fast as business as usual.

Pointing out that there are 1.6 billion people in the US and China, Amanda McKenzie CEO of Climate Council thinks the decisions are a game changer.

5. Time for Tony Abbott to admit his climate policy is crap

In case you missed it, that is Giles Parkinson’s advice to Abbott.

Parkinson says Australia should be embarrassed by its lack of action compared to the United States and China, which has indicated it will place a cap on its emissions as soon as 2016.

Ironically, Abbott could have a pretty good collection of climate and renewable energy policies just by doing nothing. Everything Labor put in place is still there, apart from Tim Flannery and the Climate Commission, which has morphed into the Climate Council with private money and public donations.

6. Lowy poll

The Lowy Institute Poll 2014 is now available.

The number of Australians now saying global warming is a “serious and pressing problem” and that “we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs” is now 45%.

Some 38% now say the the problem of global warming should be addressed, but its effects will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem gradually by taking steps that are low in cost. 15% think we should leave it until we are sure it’s a problem if costs are involved. Here’s the graph:

Lowy poll 1_cropped_600

63% of people thought the government should be taking a leadership role in reducing emissions.

Lowy poll 2_cropped_600

I guess Abbott would claim that’s what they are doing.

7. Heat wave in May

Will Steffen talks here and here about the unusually warm period in May, which I believe officially rates as a heat wave.

A remarkable, prolonged warm spell occurred over the period 8-26 May, with daytime temperatures 4 to 6°C above normal over much of south-central Australia, extending from South Australia and northwest Victoria into Queensland and the Northern Territory.

The Scientific American noticed.

BOM think we are in for a warm winter:

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And drier for large parts of the southern mainland:

rain.national.lr

Reminder: Use this thread as an open thread on climate change.

Saturday salon 7/6

voltaire_230

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

A Coast to Coast odyssey: Stage 2 – Cleator to Ennerdale Bridge

Last night we had a wonderful evening at the Jasmine Cottage B&B in Moor Row.

IMG_0343a

Our lovely host Jean couldn’t have done more to make our stay restful and enjoyable.  In the evening, she drove us to a near-by pub in Cleator for dinner and arrived exactly on-time to pick us up 2 hr later to ferry us back to the B&B.  As well, I inadvertently rushed out of the door the next morning without clearing out the hanging space in my room.  Jean kindly offered to bring my gear to our next overnight stay in Ennerdale Bridge for a small gratuity!  Thanks heaps Jean!

Our journey today took us through Cleator, then over Dent Fell and 0n to Ennerdale Bridge where we stayed at a local pub.

As we entered Cleator, we came across the local cricket club, with an excellent turf pitch and interesting covers (need them to cope with the English weather, I guess).

IMG_0354a

We were also interested to see a Royal Post van driving down very narrow lanes around Cleator, presumably to clear neighbourhood letter-boxes.  Please, no-one tell David Cameron that such inefficiency still exists!

IMG_0360aThe centre of Cleator consists of strip housing that was originally built for workers in the local mines.  Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done to beautify them.  But outside the town centre, we were struck by the number of beautiful gardens.  Here are just a few examples:

IMG_0350a IMG_0348a IMG_0346a IMG_0345aOn the edge of town, there was an especially attractive row of gardens backing on to the local beck.

IMG_0372aMost of the small towns along the C2C route have a cooperative store that services not only the local community, but also the passing parade of C2C walkers.

IMG_0365aSo we stocked up with lunch to have along the path – in this case delicious individual quiches that were freshly baked in-store.  Visible from the same point as I took the previous photo was this …. what is it?

IMG_0366aSoon we were on our way out of town to Dent Fell.  It is the rounded rise in the background of this photograph.  Looks like easy stuff, right?  Well, we’ll see!

IMG_0368a Dent Fell is said to be a Lake District outlier – much smaller than the true fells of Lakeland … rather like a pimple on the Cumbrian coastal plain.  We were told that the ascent from this side is easy, but that the descent down the other side is much more challenging.  Can’t wait for that … it’s all been pretty tame so far!

IMG_0401aAs we climbed, we came to several ‘false tops’, only to find that the climb would go on after what we thought was the summit.  Around the lower slopes, there are extensive pine plantations.  Above, you can see reasonably mature trees on the right, a clear-felled area to the rear and some new planting on the left.  We couldn’t understand why harvesting was being done by clear-felling?  Why not selectively thin and leave the best stems to grow into large saw-logs?

So far, so good.  We had read dire warnings about deep bogs around this part of the path, but couldn’t really comprehend what thus would really be like.  I must have sensed trouble brewing because I started taking a series of photographs.

IMG_0391aAt the next step, one of our team was down …. and it was grit and mush up to the wast!  When the bog is so deep, it’s surprisingly difficult to extricate yourself from it.  You can see one of the men in our party appear from the plantation further up the track and another coming slowly to help … and with all of the hilarity, me continuing to take pictures.  It turned out to be women helping each other on this occasion!

IMG_0394aBut why wasn’t Tricia holding the other Tricia’s hand to help her up?  Because she didn’t want to be pulled over as well! There are limits, it seems.

Pretty soon we had passed all of the false tops (or so we thought) and arrived at a large cairn to mark our arrival.  The views back over the Cumbrian Plain were are simply stupendous!  About 300 degrees, with a patchwork of cultivated and grazed fields, a network of dry stone walls and both small and large villages, with characteristic sharp boundaries between agricultural areas and the towns (ie little acreage urban sprawl or ribbon development).

IMG_4053aThe sharp rise of the St Bees Headland could be seen clearly, IMG_4058aand the drop down from the headland where we left it during stage one (just before the town of Whitehaven) could be seen further to the north.   IMG_4051aThe other striking landmark from the top of Dent was the Sellafield nuclear power station.   We were told by an English C2C walker that the name of the station was changed after a significant nuclear accident several decades ago.  I have a vague recollection of the leak, but the public relations effort to rehabilitate the reputation of the station passed me by.  IMG_4067aOver a brew, we had an interesting conversation with a family group of three who were on the last leg of their east to west crossing.  They told us what a delight we were in for … some of it not easy (it’s really difficult to know what that means!), but very rewarding.  We bid them farewell as they headed off towards Cleator.  IMG_4062aIt turns out that the cairn at the top of the Dent climb is another false top.  The true top is further along, where the views are to the east.  So this was our first sighting of the Lake District and the Lakeland Fells.  And the boggy herb field in the foreground was also a pleasure.  IMG_0412aThe soil scientist in our midst was quick to notice the different parent material on the eroded path as we started to descend.  This was slate and would weather into finer material than sandstone, hence the bogs!

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Our descent from Dent commenced with a sharp shower of rain (ie, everything was then slippery), and was quickly followed by a climb over a deer fence stile.  Best be careful here!  IMG_0423aThen, the descent began in earnest … Laurie about to head over the edge!

IMG_0432aWhile the path was mainly a grassy slope at this point, the gradient was steep.  Given that the horizon in the background of the photo below is horizontal, this picture gives an idea of the slope that we were walking down.  Stedman (the guide book of choice for most C2C walkers) says that this is the steepest part of the whole C2C path.  But I know that it’s not the steepest part of the whole route …. but more on that in a future post!

IMG_4069aTowards the bottom of the descent, there is an even steeper rocky and stony section – another one of our group lost their footing here, but thankfully only sustained a slightly bruised hand.

IMG_0457aAfter the rigours of Dent Fell, we followed a small stream up to its head-waters with the delightful name of Nannycatch Beck.  On the opposite side were steep pastures and occasional scree slopes.  One of the scree slopes reminded us of home!

IMG_0460aAnd even the sheep seemed to tire of the steep slopes of their pasture!

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There were also rocky outcrops on the steep slope as well.  Here’s me in front of one, on the other side of the camera  (see Michael, I was there!).

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For the first time, we noticed a box on the side of the road that appeared to be used in winter to hold salt for de-icing the roads (we came across many of these as we moved through Lakeland – sometimes full of rubbish!).

IMG_0474aI can imagine sections of road needing salting in the dead of winter.  But how is it applied?IMG_0476aThen, Tricia was off to find the first of many rock circles that apparently can be seen along the C2C path.

IMG_0480aWe read that his circle was constructed by a local identity several decades ago.  No antiquity here!

IMG_0485a But still worth pondering the historical purpose of these circles.  Some sort of pagan ritual? Or the site of some type of community competition?  Doug (the Soil Scientist) can’t decide!  IMG_0488a

When walking through these fields, it’s easy to forget that these pastures are actively managed and that people make a living from them (or not … but that’s another story!).  Here, a farmer appears to be heading out to apply fertiliser to some pasture.  IMG_0491a

It was good to finally arrive at The Shepherd’s Arms Hotel, our accommodation for the night in Ennerdale Bridge. IMG_0500a

Vital stats for Stage 2

Distance for Stage 2:  13 km

T0tal distance:  27 km

Level of difficulty:  moderate

Highlight:  the magnificent views over the Cumbrian coastal plain from Dent Fell

Update (from Brian): To access the whole Coast to Coast odyssey series, click on Len’s name or go here.