Climate change threatens Queensland's coasts

Craig Johnstone, couriermail.com.au 26 Jul 08;

THE Queensland Government has admitted its strategy to protect coastal towns and suburbs from climate change is a failure.

It has appealed for federal funding to help build sea walls and levees to hold back storm surges and rising sea levels.

In a disturbing report sent to Canberra, the Government says its coastal management plans do not deal adequately with climate change risks and that existing residential and commercial development is now vulnerable to sea level rise and storms.

The Government has begun planning for Queensland to experience a sea level rise of nearly 1m over the next 50 years - about triple the level originally forecast.

It has ordered reviews of all its coastal management plans and urban planning strategies to ensure they take into account what the latest science says about the impact of climate change on existing and future development.

Climate Change Minister Andrew McNamara said Queensland's canal estates were of particular concern.

"Canal developments effectively bring rising sea levels kilometres inland," he said.

"You have engineered in issues about rising sea levels far beyond the natural coastline."

The Government was currently investigating "what are the possibilities" of constructing barriers to protect certain communities from storm surges and rising sea levels, he said.

Reviewing planning strategies to force councils not to approve development in areas at risk from the impact of climate change was "good old-fashioned risk management", he said.

News of the Government's actions came as an official briefing note to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd showed the sea level in far north Queensland was likely to rise by 20cm above 1990 levels by 2030.

The note, prepared for Mr Rudd's visit to Cairns yesterday, warned that the increased intensity of cyclones hitting Cairns would produce storm surges and floods that would cover up to 72 sq km of the city's area, more than double original forecasts.

Touring the Great Barrier Reef yesterday, Mr Rudd said coral bleaching was happening at "a pace of knots".

He added: "Those who are still climate change sceptics need to have a long, hard look at the absolute importance of preserving this wonderful asset."

Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong warned last month that more than 700,000 coastal addresses around the nation and about $25 billion in assets were at risk from storm surge and rising sea levels.

Insurance Australia Group has called for homeowners in low-lying areas to be charged a levy on their insurance to cover land that would be flooded due to climate change.

In a recent report, the Queensland Office of Climate Change said the sea level rise would cause one-in-100 year storm tides to create surges measuring 0.45m along the Sunshine Coast and 0.5m at Hervey Bay".

In a submission to a parliamentary committee investigating how coastal communities can cope with climate change, the Government says "coastal hardening" - or sea walls and levees - will be needed.

"Consideration needs to be given to the potentially high financial cost to Australia which will undoubtedly flow from the need for coastal hardening against the impacts of climate change," the submission says.

"The Queensland Government supports thought being given to a future financial framework to address the problem in the context of future national budget framing."

Treasurer Wayne Swan would not be drawn on the issue yesterday, saying his infrastructure priorities remained ports, rail and roads.

However, Premier Anna Bligh has said a prime reason for reviewing the South East Queensland Regional Plan is to ensure it takes the impact of climate change into account.

"When Terry Mackenroth first undertook this plan, frankly, whilst the issue of climate change was being talked about, I do not think people had any real understanding of what the long-term planning issues might be for approval of waterside dwellings, for example, and where density may or may not be appropriate," she said last week.

The future is grim reveals climate change report
Peter Michael, couriermail.com.au 26 Jul 08;

QUEENSLAND will become hotter and super-cyclones will batter the coast as far south as Brisbane by 2070, the nation's top scientists have warned.

In a top-level ministerial briefing note seen by The Courier-Mail, the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, the co-ordinating body for the nation's 15 peak scientific bodies, offers stark predictions about climate change.

The confidential report to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Environment Minister Peter Garrett and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong paints a bleak picture of stronger and more frequent cyclones, coral bleaching and the extinction and loss of flora and fauna.

Mr Rudd yesterday fired an angry salvo at climate change sceptics saying: "It's real. Climate change is at work and it is increasing at a pace of knots."

Mr Rudd and Senator Wong visited the Great Barrier Reef off Port Douglas to see evidence of coral bleaching under global warming, where the Prime Minister declared: "We have a real problem on our hands.

"If you go back into ancient corals, up to 1000 years old, it is only in the last 20 to 25 years that you can see coral bleaching."

Under pressure over his carbon emissions scheme, Mr Rudd warned climate change sceptics against "digging a hole and burying their heads in the sand".

"We need Australia to act locally and globally because, if we fail, assets like the Great Barrier Reef will be fatally in peril," he said.

The Australian Government's Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility report prepared for Mr Rudd's visit found north Queensland's $6 billion economy was "highly vulnerable to climate change".

The latest climate change projections predict that by 2030: Average annual temperature will increase by between 0.6C and 1.2C, and that after 2030, the rate of increase will be highly dependent on emission levels.

Also, cyclones will be stronger, more frequent and last longer, and the region of cyclone activity will shift southwards, affecting areas 300km further south by 2070.

Local sea levels will be 13 to 20cm above 1990 levels, and 49 to 89cm above 1990 levels by 2070.

The report said global warming could also possibly lead to the extinction of vulnerable rainforest vertebrates, while low-lying islands in Torres Strait could become uninhabitable.

It also painted a picture of coral disease and turtles, dugongs and seabirds struggling to survive.

It comes as new research shows the Daintree, the world's oldest rainforest, may disappear because of global warming.

It revealed some parts of the 135-million-year-old forest, two hours' drive north of Cairns, already is showing signs of decline under human-triggered climate change.

Deep in the heart of the Daintree, ecologist Cassandra Nichols has spent two years working high above the forest floor studying the canopy of the lush tropical rainforest.

"This is the lungs of the earth," Ms Nichols, 29, said.

"You can taste the oxygen in the air.

"The water that flows out of these mountains is pure, clean and sweet.

"But the scariest part is to think the rainforest may change from this to eucalypt scrub, simply because of man-made global warming."

Using a crane, scientists from across the world have been studying sentinel plants for signs of climate change.

Lead researcher Dr Michael Liddell, of James Cook University, said latest studies of a hectare of Daintree forest showed the whole ecosystem was at risk of irreversible change.

CSIRO research showed much of the lowland rainforest could disappear and revert to eucalypt, leading to the end of species such as the cassowary, he said.

Added to this was the possibility the "stressed" forest could shift from being the "ultimate carbon sink" and reverse its role to become a carbon emitter.

Mr Rudd and Senator Wong met with some of the region's top scientists yesterday to discuss the dire warnings.

One new study of a palm, the normanbya normanbyi, observed alarming differences in fruiting under drought and flooding rains of climate change.

"At the moment we need some basic data on how the forest performs under normal conditions," Dr Liddell said.