A personal view of Australian and International Politics : October 2019

Thursday 31 October 2019

Army officer tells impeachment inquiry of gaps in Trump's Ukraine transcript

Lt Col Vindman reportedly said omissions included references to Joe Biden and Burisma

Lt Col Alexander Vindman arrives for a closed-door deposition at the US Capitol in Washington DC on Tuesday.

A decorated army officer and the top Ukraine expert on the national security council has reportedly told House impeachment investigators that the White House transcript of a call between the presidents of the US and Ukraine left out important words and phrases.
The New York Times cited three sources familiar with Alexander Vindman’s testimony on Tuesday who said the omissions included Donald Trump making reference to recordings of the former vice-president Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy making reference to Burisma, the company for which Biden’s son Hunter worked.
Lt Col Vindman tried to edit the White House reconstruction of the call to correct the omissions, but some of his edits were not incorporated into the transcript, according to the report.

The arrival of Vindman tipped Republicans into a spiral of internal conflict over how far to go – and what lines were unacceptable to cross – in defending the US president.
Vindman appeared on Capitol Hill wearing his US army dress uniform, which bore a combat infantry badge and a Purple Heart medal, bestowed when he was wounded by an improvised explosive device in Iraq.
Like prior testimony in the month-old impeachment process, Vindman’s opening statement, published the night before, had the potential to be extraordinarily damaging for Trump.
A top Ukraine expert, Vindman, 44, described his alarm at witnessing Trump and others attempting to force Ukraine into a charade designed to harm Trump’s political rival Joe Biden and sow doubts about Russian tampering in the 2016 US election.
That alleged conduct is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, which could result in charges against Trump of abuse of power and other offenses.
“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a US citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the US government’s support of Ukraine,” Vindman testified.
Top Democrats later said his testimony was “extremely disturbing” and called him “very credible”.
Trump’s defenders zeroed in on the fact that Vindman was born in Ukraine, having left the Soviet Union in the 1970s with his family when he was three – a story celebrated in news reports at the time as a quintessential tale of American promise.
After joining the army, serving in multiple overseas deployments, and earning a master’s degree from Harvard in Russian, Eastern Europe and Central Asian studies, Vindman worked for the White House.
But that did not protect him from attack on Tuesday by Trump, who expressed outrage on learning that Vindman was one of the aides who listened to a July call Trump held with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Vindman was the first White House official to provide direct testimony on the contents of the 25 July call, which to this point have not been disputed by any party in the impeachment inquiry, including the White House, which last month released a summary of the call.
“Why are people that I never even heard of testifying about the call?” Trump tweeted. He then accused Vindman of being a “Never Trumper”, or a dyed-in-the-wool Trump critic, but the claim was quickly debunked in multiple reports.
That did not stop Trump’s defenders in the media from attacking Vindman as disloyal.
“Here we have a US national security official who is advising Ukraine, while working inside the White House, apparently against the president’s interest, and usually, they spoke in English,” said Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “Isn’t that kind of an interesting angle on this story?”
Her guest, John Yoo, a former George W Bush administration lawyer infamous for drafting a framework for torture, agreed. “You know, some people might call that espionage,” Yoo said.
But the backlash in the Republican ranks, rare where Trump is involved, was unusually harsh.
“That guy’s a Purple Heart. I think it would be a mistake to attack his credibility,” John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, told Politico. “You can obviously take issue with the substance and there are different interpretations about all that stuff. But I wouldn’t go after him personally. He’s a patriot.”
Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the daughter of former vice-presidentDick Cheney, and a member of the House Republican leadership, echoed Thune in a press conference.
“We need to show that we are better than that as a nation,” said Cheney. “We’re talking about decorated veterans who have served this nation, who put their lives on the line. And it is shameful to question their patriotism, their love of this nation, and we should not be involved in this process.”
As news of Vindman’s testimony leaked, it emerged that he had kept his own set of notes about the 25 July call between Trump and Zelenskiy, in which Trump asked for a “favor” and repeatedly brought up Biden, a leading Democratic candidate in the 2020 election.
Vindman’s remarks were “extremely, extremely, extremely disturbing”, the acting House oversight committee chair, Carolyn Maloney, later told NBC News.
The committee member Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said Vindman was a “very credible” witness.
Pressure on Trump is mounting rapidly. House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would vote Thursday on a resolution to move the proceedings out of closed-door depositions and into open hearings.
On Tuesday afternoon, the text of the resolution to be voted on was made public, noting that the House intelligence committee would lead planning of the public hearings.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a prominent Trump defender, has called the House proceedings a “sham”.
But with each witness, Trump’s defense has weakened. He insists he was only interested in rooting out corruption in Ukraine, denied a political motive for seeking investigations of Biden, denied that military aid for Ukraine was withheld for inappropriate leverage, and denied that any of his conduct was untoward.
The only defense left on Tuesday was to attack the messenger. But the attacks appear to have bounced off the medals on Vindman’s chest.

Julia Carrie Wong contributed reporting

Climate crisis: business leaders say cost to taxpayers will spiral unless new policies introduced

Environmental investigations

Environment

Organisations such as Australian Industry Group and National Farmers’ Federation letter says greater private-sector action needed

Supported by

About this content

Adam Morton and Katharine Murphy

Industry, farming and investor groups say the federal government signed up to a goal of global net zero emissions under the Paris agreement and have warned unless new policies are introduced taxpayer spending on climate programs will need to be dramatically increased.
A joint letter by 10 business organisations, including the Australian Industry Group and the National Farmers’ Federation, says the government will either need to back new climate policies that drive private-sector action or boost taxpayer funding now and into the future.
The letter was sent to a panel of business leaders and policy experts appointed by Angus Taylor, the emissions reduction minister, to find new ways to “enhance” the emissions reduction fund, the government’s main climate policy. The panel’s appointment, which was not made public, is seen as an admission the fund is not reducing national pollution.

Only select groups were asked to give feedback to a discussion paper circulated by the panel. The Clean Energy Council confirmed it wasn’t approached “directly” to participate in the rapid-fire review, which began in mid-October and is expected to offer initial feedback early next month, but said it welcomed the government’s putative shift on one of its signature policies.
The business group letter says the 10 organisations have different views on policy but agreed on broad principles that should underpin what the government does.
It says Australia’s medium-term climate target set for 2030 is just a staging post on the way to meeting the Paris deal goals of keeping global heating well below 2C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C.
This would ultimately mean global net zero emissions. In Australia, it would require policy mechanisms that could efficiently deliver “immediate, cost-effective abatement opportunities” in every part of the economy and also encourage innovation.
The letter says the emissions reduction fund has worked in “the land sector” – mostly projects supporting native vegetation – but was poorly suited to driving cuts in industry and buildings and unlikely to bring change in energy and transport.
The groups would support well-designed policies that put less of the cost of cutting emissions on taxpayers, as the emissions reduction fund does, and instead encouraged the private sector to act.
“In the absence of such policies, the government will need to commit more resources – both now and over time – to finance abatement,” the letter says.
The panel, which is headed by Grant King, the outgoing president of the Business Council of Australia and a former chief executive of Origin Energy, was appointed after the government has been privately sounding out some groups about an overhaul of the fund for months. But stakeholders were taken aback when the panel approached them to provide detailed comments on options in less than two weeks.
Interviewed on the ABC, King said it was sensible for the government to look at how the fund was working and take on feedback. “What the government has done is say ‘let’s run a quick process … that’s going to listen to that feedback and see whether we can enhance the way the fund works’,” he said.
King stressed the government’s target, a 26-28% cut below 2005 levels, was not a cap. “What we want to do is exceed those targets and we can do that that, we believe, through listening to people’s experience … and improving the way it is working,” he said.
Taylor agreed the government would “like to beat our targets” and said the review was about “using the best expertise we can”.
“We are doing everything we can to use that money [committed to the fund] to maximise the abatement we get from it,” he said.
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, gave the Coalition a blast for failing to have a coherent policy. “The government doesn’t have an energy policy,” he said. “It doesn’t have a plan. What they need to do is to have a comprehensive plan for energy.”
Kane Thornton, the chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said he welcomed “any steps towards stronger national climate and energy policy to provide the necessary certainty for investors”. He noted the emissions reduction fund had to date focused on areas other than energy, such as agriculture and industrial processes.
Thornton said his organisation, which represents major renewable energy players, had “not been directly approached to participate in the review of the (fund) to date”. But he would welcome any opportunity to put forward ideas that would ensure the fund played a more substantial role in providing investor confidence across all sectors of the economy.
As well as contributing to the joint letter, the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) has contributed its own submission to the process, urging the Morrison government to pursue least cost abatement in the reboot.
Its submission says market mechanisms, including “price signals and tradable instruments”, can be efficient and effective if well designed, but there are also roles for careful regulation and public funding. “The existing landscape of policy and proposals is far from consistent with these principles,” it says.
The discussion paper floats changing the scheme known as the safeguard mechanism, which was supposed to limit emissions from big industry but in practice has allowed pollution to increase, so companies that emit less than their limit are awarded carbon credits they could sell to the government or business.
The Ai Group says adjusting the safeguards regime is an important option for the government, but will “require especially careful and consultative development”. It says in theory it should be simple to reward facilities for emissions cuts when they emit less than tight limits, or baselines, but in reality “there are many difficult issues involved”.
Other signatories to the business group letter backed by the Ai Group are the Investor Group on Climate Change, the Property Council, the Energy Users Association, the Energy Efficiency Council, the Green Building Council, the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity, the Carbon Market Institute and the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council.
The emissions reduction fund works as a reverse auction, rewarding landowners and businesses that make cheap, viable bids for taxpayers’ support to cut pollution. The most recent auction bought emissions cuts equivalent to only 0.01% of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas pollution after officials found just three projects worth backing.
The emissions policy review came to light as the government announced it would give the government green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, an extra $1bn to invest in projects aimed at ensuring a reliable electricity supply. The new fund is earmarked for power generation, storage and transmission projects such as pumped hydro, batteries and gas.

National emissions have risen each year since 2015 and analyses have found the government would not reach its 2030 target, a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, unless policies changed. Scientists say Australia should be aiming for deeper cuts if it is play its part under the Paris agreement.

Electric cars could be charged in 10 minutes in future, finds research

Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars

Scientists are developing rapid-charging batteries that could be in use in a couple of years

Nicola Davis

@NicolaKSDavis

New battery technology could give electric cars more than 200 miles of charge in as little as 10 minutes, according to new research.
Lithium ion batteries have had a dramatic impact because of their ability to store a large amount of energy in a small, compact battery and be recharged again and again. A trio of scientists were awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for their contributions to the development of the batteries earlier this month.

However, lithium ion batteries also present a worry for drivers: that their vehicle will run out of power mid-journey and leave them potentially facing a lengthy recharge.
Now scientists say they are addressing the issue by making it much quicker and easier to charge the battery, meaning cars will spend less time at charging points and get back on the road faster.
“If we have a ubiquitous fast-charging infrastructure on the roadside, drivers need no longer to worry about the cruise range. After driving 200-300 miles per charge, one can pick up another 200-300 miles by charging for 10 minutes,” Dr Chao-Yang Wang, a professor at the Pennsylvania State University and co-author of the study, told the Guardian.
Rapid charging in a matter of minutes requires a high current. However, at low temperatures – even at 30C (86F) – such charging of lithium ion batteries can cause problems as metallic lithium forms in spikes around the anode. Higher temperatures of about 60C (140F) would allow the lithium ions to move fast enough to avoid this problem – but keeping a battery hot can also result in problems.
“At high temperatures battery active materials will react with the electrolyte to form passive surface films, consuming active lithium as well as causing high resistance,” said Wang.
The formation of such films take time, he said. As a result, the team came up with the idea of keeping the battery at 60C for just long enough to charge it up.
To do so, the team developed a battery that uses thin nickel foil to create an internal self-heating structure. By heating the battery to 60C, then cooling it to room temperature, they were able to charge the battery to 80% in 10 minutes but avoid damaging it, even when repeatedly charged in this way. A Tesla Model S currently takes 40 minutes to charge from a flat battery to 80% using a supercharger.
While the team used single cells of smaller capacity, about 10 amp hours, in their study, they say the technology could be applied to develop a battery for an electric car.
“We can charge batteries of different sizes with the same [charging] time as long as the charge current increases proportionally with the battery size,” said Wang. “For car battery of 150 amp hours, a fast charge station would have to provide a 900 amp current for 10 minutes.”
That, he said, was already feasible with existing fast chargers.
The future, Wang said, looks bright. “Our technology is simple but elegant … I guess that it will take two to three years of in-vehicle testing and evaluation before it is used in commercial vehicles.”

Prof Clare Grey from the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study, welcomed the research. “The interesting point is that it suggests that the positive effects of heating – reduced lithium plating – outweigh the considerable degradation processes that kick in at higher temperatures,” she said. But, Grey added, there is a long way to go, saying that the approach now needs to be scaled up to larger battery packs while there could be other degradation mechanisms that need to be considered. “But,” she added, “it’s important to challenge conventional wisdom and come up with innovative approaches.”

Unravelling Rudolph Giuliani’s labyrinthine ties to Ukraine

Rudy Giuliani

Former New York mayor finds himself at centre of impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.

Andrew Roth in Kyiv

In 2003, Rudolph Giuliani made his first trip to Ukraine to lay a symbolic capsule at the site of a new memorial to the victims of 9/11, the tragedy from which he had emerged as “America’s mayor.”
The ceremony, organised by a local businessman and politician named Vadim Rabinovich, was a modest affair attended by Kiev’s deputy mayor and diplomats from the US and Israel, but it marked the beginning of what would become a lucrative string of deals for Giuliani in the former Soviet state.
“I have met many young and promising politicians here who are not indifferent to the fate of their government,” Giuliani told local reporters. “I have understood how hospitable and friendly the people of Ukraine are, how they honestly strive to reach out to Americans, how much they want to oppose violence and terror.”
Sixteen years later, Rudolph Giuliani’s labyrinthine ties to Ukraine have emerged as a central element in the impeachment inquiry against his client, Donald Trump, as details emerge of what one senior diplomat called a “shadow foreign policy” to trigger an investigation into Joe Biden.

The following account is based on interviews with associates of Giuliani and his business partners in Ukraine, prosecutors familiar with his attempts to gather information about the Bidens, and officials and politicians concerned about the flamboyant former mayor.
The Guardian’s reporting shows that Giuliani boasted of his ties to Trump to gain access to high-ranking prosecutors and officials while his associates used the Giuliani name to bolster their reputations and legitimise dubious business ventures.
“He announced that he was a lawyer for the president of the United States, that he was working for Donald Trump, there was nothing to hide,” said Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian embassy official who met with Giuliani in the US over burgers and cigars.
Giuliani’s ties became a US political story when two Soviet-born American businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, helped connect Giuliani with powerful Ukrainian prosecutors who claimed to have information about a scandal tied to Biden’s son, Hunter, and in turn sought to trade in on Giuliani’s name to advance their own business interests.
The pair were arrested on charges of violating campaign finance laws while attempting to travel to Vienna, shortly after they met with Giuliani in Washington DC. Giuliani is also reportedly under investigation for whether his work in Ukraine broke laws on foreign lobbying.
A crucial contact for Giuliani was Yuriy Lutsenko, an embattled top prosecutor who faced being fired after the election of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Lutsenko, who has himself been accused of corruption by civil society activists, said he met Giuliani because he was ready to discuss a joint official investigation into Burisma – the gas company where Hunter Biden worked – and also to pursue a separate investigation into money stolen by the previous government.
Lutsenko was one of five prosecutors contacted by Giuliani, including the former general prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who resigned under pressure in 2016.
In Ukraine, Lutsenko was widely seen as an intriguer. Yegor Sobolev, a former politician and head of the Ukrainian parliament’s anti-corruption committee, said that he was “a new kind” of prosecutor, “not afraid to step across the line and get involved in politics” unlike his predecessors.
Lutsenko also clashed with the then US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who told congressional investigators earlier this month she had learned of a “concerted campaign” to have her fired. Yovanovitch was abruptly removed in May after Giuliani pressed for changes at the embassy.
According to the indictment against Fruman and Parnas, the campaign against her was led by a Ukrainian official, but Lutsenko denied he had asked Giuliani to lobby to have Yovanovitch fired.
“Giuliani and especially these two guys [Parnas and Fruman] told me that they are against her as an ambassador long before our meeting,” Lutsenko said in a telephone interview from London where he is attending English classes.
“Yes I had not a good relationship with her because she tried openly to control my activity and to interfere in our activity … but I never asked about any deal.”
Lutsenko said last year that Yovanovitch had given him a list of people he should not prosecute, but later retracted the claim. A law enforcement source has told the Guardian that Lutsenko exaggerated claims to Giuliani, including the “don’t prosecute” list, in order to curry political favour to help him keep his job.
Giuliani has since claimed, without evidence, that the “don’t prosecute” list was part of a liberal anti-Trump conspiracy bankrolled by the philanthropist George Soros
Also in Giuliani’s meetings with Lutsenko were Parnas and Fruman, two Florida real estate developers born in the former Soviet Union, who had become key operatives for Giuliani to dig up dirt in Ukraine. They had turned heads with a $325,000 donation to a Trump-aligned political action committee in May 2018, facilitating access to the White House and the US president’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago.
They also paid Giuiliani $500,000, the former New York mayor has said, and accompanied him to high-profile events such as the state funeral of George Bush, the former US president, in December.
Fruman, 53, had the better connections in Ukraine. Since the 1990s, he had run a luxury goods business in Odessa, the Black Sea port city, that provided everything from Jaguar automobiles to exotic food products to Ukraine’s jet set, and he also owned stakes in hotels and Kyiv clubs including Buddha Bar.
But business could be unpredictable: SEC records show that Fruman’s company, Fd Import & Export Corp, sued in 2001 for nearly $1m in damages when a shipment of bananas from Ecuador to Ukraine was shown to be diseased and “fraudulently and intentionally” mislabeled as Bonita bananas.
By 2016 – even before a difficult divorce settlement with his ex-wife – Fruman was seen as desperate.
“He was just a bankrupt guy, a crook I would say, who was looking for some fortune and opportunities,” said David Sakvarelidze, a former Ukrainian regional prosecutor who met Fruman after he was assigned to work in Odessa in 2015. “He had big financial troubles and I was told he basically already was living in the United States at that time, in Miami. He was looking for some opportunities to settle his financial problems. Maybe he could use his connections to Giuliani’s team to settle his financial troubles, that’s my presumption.”
Fruman and Parnas appeared to do just that, attempting to persuade the Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky to set up a meeting with Zelenskiy, the new president, and also pitching a scheme to replace the head of Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state oil and gas company, with an executive who could direct business their way.
Rick Perry, the US energy secretary, later made similar efforts, lobbying the Ukrainian government to make changes to Naftogaz’s board of directors, the Associated Press reported.
Fruman also had become a major player in Kyiv’s Jewish community, employing Giuliani’s public profile to help fundraise for one of Ukraine’s top rabbis, Moshe Reuven Azman.
At a celebration for the 120th anniversary of the founding of Kyiv’s Brodsky synagogue, Fruman pledged to raise more than $1m for orphans at a village established by Azman for Jewish refugees from the war in east Ukraine. And in an interview with an Israeli journalist, Fruman claimed to have delivered a handwritten note from Azman to Trump. Azman declined repeated requests for interviews.
Also present at the synagogue was Rabinovich, the Ukrainian businessman, who donated the memorial in Kyiv to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York bearing the words “thou shalt not kill”. Through his library foundation, Rabinovich claimed Giuliani had not been paid and said he had not seen Giuliani since the visit.
But the 2003 visit heralded a decade of consulting and publicity trips to Ukraine for Giuliani, who has traded on his US political connections and his reputation as the mayor who steered New York through the Trade Centre attack to collect a small fortune in lucrative speaking fees and security contracts in the ex-Soviet state.
In 2008, he consulted the former heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko during his campaign to become the mayor of Kyiv. In 2017, he spoke at a conference organised by Victor Pinchuk, the Ukrainian metals magnate who had previously donated $150,000 to Trump’s charitable foundation, attracting scrutiny from the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller.
His security firm was also hired by Pavel Fuks, a wealthy businessman from Kharkiv, in 2017 to consult the city on its emergency services and foreign investment. While the value of the contracts have not been made public, a person with knowledge of Giuliani’s business dealings said their total value was well above $1m.
For many Ukrainians, Giuliani was seen as a bridge into exclusive political and decision-making circles that could review US policy toward Ukraine.
“Giuliani was not searching for us, we were searching for him,” Telizhenko, the former Ukrainian embassy employee, said of how Ukrainians concerned about political pressure in the country sought out Giuliani.

Giuliani “knew the names, who was connected to who. He’s the filter in all this situation ... He might be the top expert on Ukraine in the United States”.

Wednesday 30 October 2019

Greenland ice cap melt measured by satellites — and it's enough to cover Tasmania in almost 5m of water

ABC Weather

By Ben Deacon

Updated about 6 hours ago

Photo: Sled dogs make their way in north-west Greenland with their paws in melted ice water. (AP: Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut/Steffen M Olsen)

In late July, polar scientist Martin Stendel was sweltering at his desk in Copenhagen as Europe suffered its worst ever heatwave.

Key points:

Greenland's ice cap is melting, and that water is draining into the ocean, contributing to sea level rise
In July this year, it's estimated more than 30 billion tonnes of ice melted in three days
Australian scientists have been able to use NASA satellites to accurately weigh how much ice is melting

As temperatures climbed to more than 15 degrees Celsius above average, the meteorologist realised the record heat was about to hit the arctic.
"I looked at the forecast, and one could see that this heatwave, or this anomalous temperature, was on its way to Greenland," Dr Stendel said.
Greenland holds the second-largest reserves of fresh water on the planet, after Antarctica.
But year in, year out, the Greenland ice cap has been melting, and that water is draining into the ocean, contributing to sea level rise.

Second greatest ice melt event

Man speaks at an event, in front of a slide of the globe

Photo: Danish climate scientist Martin Stendel's team estimated over 30 billion tonnes of ice melted in a three-day event over summer. (Supplied: Martin Stendel)

Over the next week, Martin Stendel looked on as Greenland suffered the second greatest melt event in recorded history.
"Gigatonnes and gigatonnes melted. And actually, this contributed in a measurable way to sea level rise," Dr Stendel said.
Martin Stendel's team at the Danish Meteorological Institute estimated that more than 30 billion tonnes of ice melted in just three days.
Even more troubling, the highest point in Greenland — above 3,000m in altitude — reached temperatures above zero.
"This has happened only seven times, seven times over the past 2,000 years," Dr Stendel said.

"So, in this 2,000-year record, we've had two events in the past decade — in 2012 and now in 2019."

Photo: GRACE works by measuring the distance between two satellites as they change speed due to minute changes in gravity (Supplied: NASA)

Australian scientists weigh Greenland

When the heatwave hit Greenland in early August, Paul Tregoning from the Australian National University in Canberra was waiting for the first data from NASA's new GRACE-FO mission.
GRACE-FO stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On and it uses a pair of satellites that literally weigh the Earth's water from space by detecting tiny changes in gravity, caused by changes in mass on Earth.

Scientist sits in front of computer screens of earth

Photo: Dr Paul Tregoning at the Australian National University uses twin satellites to accurately measure the change in weight of ice on Greenland. (Supplied: Paul Tregoning)

"One satellite is following 200 kilometres behind the other," Dr Tregoning explained.
"The change in distance between the satellites is measured really accurately, down to a 10th of a thickness of a human hair, or about a micro-metre.
"If there is less ice in a location, then there'll be weaker gravity that will affect the change in distance between the satellites, which is what we measure."
Like a huge ice cube, as Greenland melts it weighs less. These changes in mass affect how the satellites orbit Earth, which can be detected in the measurements made by GRACE-FO.

Graphs showing the melting of the Greenland ice cap

Photo: GRACE data shows the steady decline in the mass of the Greenland ice cap. (Supplied: Paul Tregoning)

Dr Tregoning's team have devised a new way of calculating the weight of large masses like the Greenland ice cap, using data from GRACE-FO.
The first GRACE satellites were launched in 2002, the mission going on to far outlive its five-year design lifespan.
But in 2017 the first GRACE satellites finally stopped working and climate scientists lost one of their most powerful tools to track ice cap melt.
New GRACE Follow-On satellites were launched in 2018, with technology on board based on designs by the ANU's Daniel Shaddock.
In recent months, the first verified data from the new GRACE-FO mission was released publicly by NASA. But it required expert knowledge to turn instrument data into estimates of mass loss of ice sheets.
"We've got our eyes back in the sky. We can see again what's going on," Dr Tregoning said.

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Enough melted ice to cover Tasmania

Photo: Professor Daniel Shaddock and colleagues preparing to test the GRACE Follow-on retroreflector (Supplied: Australian National University)

Using the fresh data, Dr Tregoning measured that Greenland this September weighed almost a third of a trillion tonnes less than it did the previous month.
He said the melting over the entire summer was more than 10 times the 30 gigatonnes melted in the 3-day heatwave event, and painted this picture.

"The mass loss in Greenland between August and September 2019 would amount to 42 millimetres of water covering the whole of Australia, or 4.7 metres over the whole of Tasmania."

These figures closely track the amounts calculated by Martin Stendel from the Danish Meteorological Institute, who used computer models to estimate 329 billion tonnes of ice was lost in Greenland in the year from September to September.
The GRACE missions have now been documenting the melting of the Greenland ice cap for 17 years.
Ice loss varies from year to year, but the trend is relentlessly downward.
"From mid-2003 to mid-2019 there has been the equivalent of about 2 metres of water scraped off the entirety of the Greenland ice sheet," Dr Tregoning said.

"If you then convert that into the effect that it would have had on global sea level, the amount of ice that has melted from Greenland since the beginning of the GRACE mission has added about 12 or 13 millimetres of water across the whole of the global oceans."

Given that we are looking at an average 20-centimetre sea level rise historically since the industrial period, that is significant.
"Greenland was not contributing to global sea level rise a few decades ago," Ian Fenty from NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) team said.
"And now it's a major and possibly accelerating contributor to the rise."

Retreating ice, rain at Christmas

Ian Fenty was on a ship off the coast of Greenland when the heatwave struck in July.
"Well, it was weird to be in a t-shirt in the middle of a heatwave at 76 degrees north," Dr Fenty said.
"It makes me think this is the new normal in Greenland."
He said the people of Greenland were watching their environment change around them.
"A few years ago, it rained on Christmas Day and it's extraordinary, right? You would think of the dead of winter in Greenland, you're definitely getting snow. To have a wet, rainy Christmas seems extraordinary," Dr Fenty said.
"People know that the ice is retreating."

Photo: Terminus of outlet glacier in west Greenland. Supplied as supporting material for Nature paper. December, 2018. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: Matt Osman)

OMG — Oceans Melting Greenland

Dr Fenty said warmer air temperatures were only half the story when it came to melting glaciers. His cheekily named OMG team was looking at how warmer sea temperatures, not just warmer air temperatures, were also melting Greenland's ice caps.
Where glaciers meet the sea, warmer sea water was melting and eroding the ice, leading to glaciers moving faster and melting further.
"We lose about half of the ice loss from the atmosphere and the other half along the margins, and the ocean plays a first-order role in determining how much ice is lost on the margins," Dr Fenty explained.
It was this eroding of glaciers by warmer oceans that most worried the ANU's Paul Tregoning.
"Now, a 13 millimetre rise in 18 years may not sound like it's dramatic, but the concern that we should have is that, particularly in the Antarctic ice sheet, there is an enormous amount of potential large global sea level that is locked up below sea level and may be released if we continue to warm our climate and oceans as we have been doing recently."

YouTube: The Greenland ice sheet is up to 3 kilometres thick in places

Rising sea levels pose threat to homes of 300m people – study

Sea level

Figure based on new analysis of coastlines is more than three times previous estimate

Jonathan Watts

@jonathanwatts

More than three times more people are at risk from rising sea levels than previously believed, research suggests.
Land that is currently home to 300 million people will flood at least once a year by 2050 unless carbon emissions are cut significantly and coastal defences strengthened, says the study, published in Nature Communications. This is far above the previous estimate of 80 million.
The upward revision is based on a more sophisticated assessment of the topography of coastlines around the world. Previous models used satellite data that overestimated the altitude of land due to tall buildings and trees. The new study used artificial intelligence to compensate for such misreadings.
Researchers said the magnitude of difference from the previous Nasa study came as a shock. “These assessments show the potential of climate change to reshape cities, economies, coastlines and entire global regions within our lifetimes,” said Scott Kulp, the lead author of the study and a senior scientist at Climate Central.
“As the tideline rises higher than the ground people call home, nations will increasingly confront questions about whether, how much and how long coastal defences can protect them.”
The biggest change in estimates was in Asia, which is home to the majority of the world’s population. The numbers at risk of an annual flood by 2050 increased more than eightfold in Bangladesh, sevenfold in India, twelvefold in India and threefold in China.
The threat is already being felt in Indonesia, where the government recently announced plans to move the capital city from Jakarta, which is subsiding and increasingly vulnerable to flooding. The new figures show 23 million people are at risk in Indonesia, up from the previous estimate of 5 million.

Benjamin Strauss, Climate Central’s chief scientist and CEO, said more countries may need to follow Indonesia’s lead unless sea defences were strengthened or carbon emissions were cut. “An incredible, disproportionate amount of human development is on flat, low-lying land near the sea. We are really set up to suffer,” he said.
The authors say the calculations could still underestimate the dangers because they are based on standard projections of sea level rise in a scenario known as RCP2.6, which assumes emissions cuts in line with the promises made under the Paris agreement. Countries are currently not on course to meet these pledges.

In a worst-case scenario with greater instability of the Antarctic ice sheet, as many as 640 million people could be threatened by 2100, the scientists say.
Strauss said a World Bank study using the old elevation data estimated damages of $1tn per year by mid-century, and this would need to be updated. More sophisticated topographical measurements would also be necessary, he said.

“The need for coastal defences and higher planning for higher seas is much greater than we thought if we are to avoid economic harm and instability,” said Strauss. “The silver lining to our research: although many more people are threatened than we thought, the benefits of action are greater.”

Review of federal environment laws will cut 'green tape' and speed up approvals

Environment

Environment minister says cutting delays in project approvals could save the economy $300m a year

Adam Morton Environment editor

@adamlmorton

The Morrison government has promised a review of national environmental laws will “tackle green tape” and reduce delays in project approvals that it said costs the economy about $300m a year.
Hundreds of scientists have asked the government to use a legally required review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) to strengthen the legislation so it could be used to stem a worsening extinction crisis.
Announcing the review on Tuesday, Sussan Ley, the federal environment minister, emphasised the government’s goal was to deliver greater certainty to business groups, farmers and environment organisations.
The review, a once-a-decade examination required under the 1999 act and expected to take a year, is headed by Graeme Samuel, a businessman, Monash University professorial fellow and former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Ley said the review was not about ideology, and all sides in environment debates agreed complexities in the act were leading to unnecessary delays in reaching decisions about development proposals.
“The act has been a world benchmark in environmental protection but needs to be adapted to changes in the environment and economy,” she said. “I’ve asked Professor Samuel to look at how we can improve efficiency and make clear and simple decisions that deliver strong, clear and focused environmental protection.”
Samuel said he came to the review as “a clean skin” and the review would aim to consult “every person in Australia who has an interest in the environment and in the issues of regulation”.
“I come with a clean sheet of paper, I have no preconceived views,” he said.
The expert panel working alongside Samuel is: Wendy Craik, the chair of the Climate Change Authority and a former National Farmers’ Federation chief; Erica Smyth, a geologist with decades of experience in the minerals and petroleum industry; Bruce Martin, a Wik Ngathan man and community leader from Cape York peninsula; Andrew Macintosh, an environmental law and policy expert at the Australian National University.
Environment groups noted the panel did not include anyone with a history of working to save endangered species. Craik previously headed a review of how conservation laws could better serve the agriculture industry that was completed earlier this year.
The future of the act was a point of difference at this year’s federal election, which saw a concerted campaign by environment groups for stronger environmental laws that was backed by Labor but rejected by the Coalition.
Green groups, academics and lawyers want tougher laws overseen by an independent environment protection authority, but business, minerals industry and farming representatives want the development approval process to be streamlined and fast-tracked.
This week more than 240 Australian conservation scientists signed an open letter to the prime minister, Scott Morrison, that said Australia’s environment laws were failing because they were too weak, had inadequate review and approval processes and were not overseen by an effective compliance regime.
They urged him to lift spending on conservation and back laws to address an extinction crisis under which three native species became extinct in the past decade and could lead to another 17 being lost in the next 20 years. More than 1,800 Australian plants and animals are listed as threatened with extinction.
Basha Stasak, a nature campaign manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the group looked forward to working with Samuel and the panel to ensure the review left “an environmental legacy Australians can take pride in”.
She said the review must be seen through the lens of the extinction crisis: “In that light, we are disappointed the review panel does not include a conservation scientist.”
Suzanne Milthorpe, from the Wilderness Society, agreed. “We are concerned that the government has overlooked the vast level of scientific and practical conservation experience available by not appointing ecologists or conservation practitioners to the expert panel,” she said.
Andrew McConville, chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, said the oil and gas industry believed there did not need to be a trade-off between environmental outcomes and economic growth.
“[The association] supports the consideration of reducing regulatory burden while delivering equivalent or enhanced levels of environmental protection,” he said.
Labor’s environment spokeswoman, Terri Butler, urged the government must use the review to restore community and industry confidence in environmental processes, and linked delays in approval decisions to environment department budget cuts.
Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said Ley was in denial about the extinction crisis and accused her of planning to use the review to water down the laws to favour of miners and developers.
A Guardian investigation last year found most campaigners and political veterans believed environmental protection was harder to win in Australia than at any time since before the wave of landmark 1980s decisions to save Tasmania’s Franklin river, recognise the Daintree rainforest and Kakadu national park and block mining in Antarctica. Some described the EPBC Act as legislation designed to manage developments, not protect the environment.
Less than 40% of nationally listed threatened species had recovery plans in place to secure their long-term survival. The federal environment department admitted earlier this year it did not know whether the recovery plans that were in place were being implemented. Conservation groups found spending on environment department programs has been cut by nearly 40% since the Coalition was elected in 2013.
A United Nations global assessment released in May found biodiversity across the planet was declining at an unprecedented rate, with 1m species across the globe at risk of extinction and human populations in jeopardy if the trajectory was not reversed.

Ley said Samuel would release a discussion paper in November before meeting interest groups. The government has set up a dedicated website for the review here.