The Conversation

Australia is world-famous as a swimming nation. We have a celebrated beach culture, not to mention more privately owned pools per person than any other country. Yet few urban Australians would consider swimming in their city’s river.

Almost every major Australian city sits on the banks of a large river. But judging by online reactions to the suggestion of a dip in the Brisbane River, most people are worried about everything from ear infections to a painful death from brain-eating amoebae.

Melbourne’s Yarra River has been the butt of many jokes, most famously when Norman Gunston extolled its virtues as the river where you could go fishing and land a catch pre-wrapped in newspaper. In Sydney and Perth people just prefer the beach.

MELBOURNE, VIC. 1943-11-17. Lieutenant A. M. Dennis and sergeant D. Lawson, members of the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS), do high dives during the AWAS swimming parade in the Yarra River. Australian War Memorial

It wasn’t always like this. Our modern distaste for river swimming is a stark constrast with a history where urban rivers provided a venue for sport, recreation and entertainment – all within easy distance of shops, offices and public transport.

There were clubs such as the North Adelaide District Swimming Club, formed in 1905, and open water swimming competitions such as those held on Perth’s Swan River from 1912. The Yarra River’s three-mile swim was held from 1917 to 1964, and at its peak was the largest open water swimming competition in the World.

There was spectacle as well as sport, with feats of aquatic derring-do that made swimming look like vaudeville theatre. In the Yarra, Annette Kellerman – one of the first women to reject pantaloons in favour of a one-piece bathing costume – swam her way to a world record between Church Street bridge and Princes Bridge in 1904. After leaving Australia she developed her own swimwear line and went on to become an author and renowned Hollywood actress. The Yarra was her unlikely springboard to global celebrity.

Sidney Nolan takes a dive into the Yarra, 1942.

Endurance was similarly tested by “Professor” Alec Lamb in 1907 who swam 7 miles (11km) and dove from eight bridges, stopping for sustaining glasses of milk and whisky from his trainer’s boat. As the Argus newspaper faithfully noted, the first of his bridge dives was so high that the force of the impact tore off his swimming costume. Harry Houdini also famously attracted a crowd of 20,000 to watch him emerge triumphant from chains, handcuffs and the Yarra mud in 1910.

Melbourne’s river even hosted innovative fund-raising events. In 1910 the Royal Life Saving Society used it to stage a fake near-drowning, with a society member throwing himself off Princes Bridge before being “rescued” by a “policeman”. A third member then produced a megaphone to request donations from the concerned crowd of onlookers.

An arguably less brazen charity appeal centred on Solomon Islands swimmer Alick Wickham’s record-breaking dive of 250 feet (76m) into the river in 1917, attracting 50,000 spectators with the proceeds going to the Soldiers Amelioration Fund.

Several lengths behind

Some projects are now aiming to recast Australia’s urban rivers as fun places to swim, including Our Living River in Sydney’s Parramatta River, and the Swim Thru Perth open water swimming event to be held in the Swan River. Meanwhile, the Yarra Swim Co. is planning to revive the three-mile race and build a river-fed swimming pool on the Yarra’s banks.

Fears about pollution are understandable, but can be managed by websites such as Yarra Bay Watch and the New South Wales Office of Environment Health . While important, the official advice inadvertently adds to the view that Australian urban rivers are little more than an extension of the stormwater system.

Compare that with the renaissance of river swimming internationally. British writer Caitlin Davies swam of the length of London’s Thames to uncover a multitude of present and historical swimming cultures. And municipal governments in Copenhagen, Portland, Berlin, New York and Boston have all embraced river swimming.

The Swiss must surely be the world leaders, even advocating for river swimming in international diplomacy. Every year, large Swiss cities host mass swimming events like the Rhineschwimmen in Basel.

As the Swiss have already realised, to swim in an urban river is to reclaim, one stroke at a time, a public space and a wilder romantic past. It is no coincidence that the same country that zealously promotes urban river and lake swimming can also lay claim to a distinguished environmental record. Our regular, primary contact with this most primal of elements can act in a way to force change in the way our rivers are managed, helping both people and the environment to be a bit healthier.

This article was coauthored by Sally McPhee, based on her honours thesis for RMIT’s Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning.

Marco Amati does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

A juvenile dingo on Fraser Island. Eloïse Déaux, CC BY-NC

As I visited a wildlife park in New South Wales in 2011, the keeper at the daily “dingo talk” confidently told us that “pure dingoes don’t bark”. After five years studying dingoes’ vocal behaviours, I can tell you that this is a myth. Dingoes do bark!

While travelling around Australia to study dingoes, I have had the opportunity to meet and talk with all sorts of people. One thing I realised is that the “dingoes don’t bark” belief is widespread – and it isn’t the only unproven dingo myth out there.

Lots of people in Australia take these three myths as hard facts:

1. “pure” dingoes don’t bark

2. “pure” dingoes are all ginger

3. dingoes are “just dogs”.

But none of these are actually true and here’s why.

Myth 1: dingoes don’t bark

Anyone who has been around dingoes for long enough will tell you that they do bark, but not like domestic dogs. Dingoes’ barks are generally harsher, and given in short bursts.

Domestic dogs will bark anytime, anywhere, for anything (often to their owners’ or neighbours’ chagrin). This is not the case with dingoes. They will generally bark only when alarmed – such as when researchers trap them to fit a radio tracking collar, or if you stumble across one in the bush.

Dingo barking sequence. Eloïse Déaux, CC BY-NC-ND133 KB (download)

Dingoes can also bark if they get very excited (about food, for example) but this is quite uncommon. The rarity of these events probably explains the prevalence of the “no barking” myth – wild dingo barking just doesn’t happen often enough for most people to witness it.

Another associated misconception is that captive dingoes will learn to bark from listening to domestic dogs. Although humans are very good at learning new sounds – indeed, that’s how we acquire our language – most other species (including canines) can make only a limited range of vocal sounds, and can’t learn new ones.

So the fact that captive dingoes bark actually confirms that they have barking abilities right from the start. It is, however, possible that by listening to nearby domestic dogs, captive dingoes learn to bark more often and in more situations than they otherwise might.

It is easy to see how this myth might harm efforts to protect dingoes. Imagine a well-meaning pastoralist shooting or baiting anything that barks, in the mistaken belief that it’s not a dingo.

Myth 2: all pure dingoes are ginger

The “typical” dingo that people picture in their minds – think Fraser Island – will be ginger (or tan) with white feet and a white-tipped tail. But dingoes, like people, come in a variety of shapes and colours.

Importantly, although ginger dingoes make up about three-quarters of the population, there is genetic evidence that their coats can also be black, black and tan, black and white, or plain white.

A black and tan dingo… Tim Pearson …and a white one. Tim Pearson

There is also a lot of variation in the size and shape of white patches and these may even be absent altogether. It’s often thought that dingoes that lack ginger fur or white patches are dingo-dog hybrids, but this is not necessarily true.

Like the no-barking myth, misconceptions about coat colour can potentially harm dingo conservation. If we were to protect only ginger dingoes, we would unwittingly reduce the natural genetic variation of the population, making it more vulnerable to extinction.

Myth 3: dingoes are just dogs

This is perhaps the hardest belief to address, because it can vary depending on whether we look at their behaviours, ecology or origins. But this concept is arguably even more relevant to their conservation and management.

So is a dingo a dog? Although dogs’ evolutionary origins are still unclear, we know that dingoes are descendants of animals domesticated long ago somewhere in Asia and then brought to Australia. Dingoes are thus an ancient dog breed and so, yes, dingoes are dogs.

However, we also know that dingoes arrived in mainland Australia roughly 5,000 years ago and have since been isolated from all other canines right up until European settlement. Some experts argue that this makes them distinct enough to warrant protection from hybridisation with domestic dogs.

As dingo researcher Ben Allen puts it, “pure ones need to be distinguished from hybrid ones somehow, and it is the pure ones that have conservation value as a species”.

But as fellow dingo expert Guy Ballard points out, dingoes are undeniably a type of dog, so arguably all that really matters is that their function as top predators in the ecosystem is preserved.

But there’s a catch (as Ballard has acknowledged): we do not know whether dingoes, feral dogs and hybrids behave similarly – or in other words, whether all three can perform the same ecological role.

We do know that India’s free-ranging dogs behave very differently from Australian dingoes: they are inefficient predators, do not form packs and do not breed cooperatively. This suggests that, in terms of their behaviours, dingoes may be very different from other types of dogs after all.

Until we know more, the best approach to safeguarding dingoes and their role in the ecosystems might be to view and treat them as completely separate and distinct from other free-ranging dogs in Australia.

Far from being “just dogs”, dingoes really are unique dogs.

Eloïse Déaux received funding from the Hermon Slade Foundation.

If 2015 ended on a note of hope, with the successful conclusion of the Paris climate talks, the overriding impression of 2016 is that last year’s optimism has been answered with a large reality check.

The Paris Agreement was meant to herald a year in which politicians would finally cut through the stalemate and start saving the planet. Instead we watched aghast as swathes of the Great Barrier Reef were killed by climate change, while the political uncertainty only grew. Donald Trump completed his improbable climb to the US political summit, and Australian climate politics stayed mired in the trenches.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the unseemly blame game over the statewide blackout that plunged South Australia into darkness on a stormy night in September.

With fingers being pointed at the state’s reliance on wind power, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull used the incident to call for an end to Labor states setting their own agendas on renewable energy. That was despite analysis showing that the blackout was due to 22 transmission towers being knocked over.

The planned closure of Victoria’s Hazelwood power station prompted more argument over cheap brown coal versus expensive electricity. The debate culminated in the Turnbull government’s 24-hour dalliance with the idea of an emissions intensity scheme for power stations (a policy that Labor took to July’s federal election).

The episode was seen as a slapdown for minister Josh Frydenberg, who in July had been handed the “superportfolio” of energy and environment in an overdue acknowledgement that these issues are now one and the same.

One of Frydenberg’s biggest tasks for 2017 will be handling the planned review of climate policy. Figures released quietly before Christmas underline the fact that Australia is on course to miss the government’s 2030 emissions target of 26-28% below 2005 levels. This year’s events proved that the electricity sector, the biggest source of emissions, is in serious need of reform.

In the states, Queensland continued to navigate a legal course for the controversial Carmichael coal mine, while SA Premier Jay Weatherill suggested a plebiscite to decide whether the state should build an international nuclear waste dump.

In fact, one of the year’s quietest periods for environmental policy was during the federal election campaign itself – neither climate nor conservation rated more than the briefest of mentions.

Death comes to the reef

The year’s biggest single environmental story was the unprecedented coral bleaching that hit the Great Barrier Reef in March and April. The bleaching affected more than 1,000km of the reef and prompted a storm of media reports – some more accurate than others.

Months later, the damage is clear: two-thirds of corals on the reef’s northern stretches are dead. Researchers are watching anxiously to see how much will bounce back.

Elsewhere on the high seas, there was better news for environmentalists. Oil giant BP cancelled plans to drill in the Great Australian Bight, and Australia’s Macquarie Island research station earned a reprieve after being slated for closure by the government.

In October, nations signed off on creating the world’s biggest marine park in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Meanwhile, Australia had a win (of sorts) in its battle with Japan’s whaling program, successfully sponsoring a resolution to provide greater oversight of “scientific” whaling.

In reality, however, the voluntary measure will have little effect on Japan’s activities. Perhaps it’s time to admit that whaling cannot be stopped altogether, and maybe even try some “whale poo diplomacy” instead.

Talking Trump

Speaking of diplomacy, when delegates arrived at November’s UN climate summit in Marrakech, they were expecting to begin putting flesh on the bones of the previous year’s Paris Agreement. This came into force with record speed just 11 months after it was signed.

But on its third day the summit was hit by a “Trump tsunami” as the surprise US election result dawned. Perhaps understandably, the conference morphed into a show of defiance towards the new president-elect.

It is still unclear whether Trump will follow through on his threat to withdraw from the Paris deal. For those keen to see global climate action continue, perhaps the most optimistic view is that Trump will be unable to revive the coal economy singlehanded, and that if the United States does relinquish the climate leadership it has belatedly shown under President Barack Obama, China will be more than willing to step up.

Heat and ice

While the political hot air flowed, the climate records kept tumbling. 2016 is set to be confirmed as the hottest year ever recorded, although September did bring an end to the streak of 16 consecutive record-setting months.

In May, the southern hemisphere joined the north in passing the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the good news is that global emissions seem, at long last, to have plateaued – although the picture is less rosy when it comes to methane emissions.

The El Niño came to an end, after helping to push Australia’s summer sea temperatures to record levels. We learned that rising seas have claimed five entire Pacific islands, while the Arctic ice is at record low levels, driven by a freak bout of human-induced warm weather.

Meanwhile, Earth’s last remaining wild places are being crisscrossed by roads, although there was some rare good news in the only place on Earth where tigers, rhinos, orangutans and elephants all live together – a treasured Indonesian forest now saved from logging.

If all that wasn’t enough, we were told that we are officially living in the Anthropocene Epoch, courtesy of nuclear weapons testing – which came to Australia 60 years ago this year.

A more nature-loving 2017?

Having polished off your ethically raised Christmas ham, perhaps now is the time to resolve to engage a bit more with the natural world in 2017.

While you might not be able to sail a scientific voyage around Antarctica, climb trees to save orange-bellied parrots, or discover previously unknown wild gatherings of animals, there are things you can do at home.

You might decide to join in a citizen science program, tend your garden, or get to know some of the fascinating critters who share your home.

You could even get closer to nature while doing the most 2016 thing possible: playing Pokémon GO.

So if the past year in environmental news has left you feeling despondent, look on the bright side – at least you don’t have a ball of 150 huntsman spiders living in your house … or do you?

It's all fun and games until someone cops a fine. Dmitry Kalinovsky/shutterstock.com

Whether a beginner, a serious aviation enthusiast, or just a fan of gadgets, many of you will have received drones as Christmas gifts. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have surged in popularity and affordability in recent years, and there’s no doubt that recreational drone use is on the rise as a result.

But not all recreational drone users know the law – or if they do, they don’t appear to be following it. There has been a string of near misses between drones and other aircraft, and other cases of irresponsible use.

Only last month, a recreational drone user was investigated by Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) after evidently flying a drone over a crowded Bunnings carpark to pick up a sausage at a sausage sizzle.

In the runup to Christmas, UN aviation officials this month warned anyone getting a drone to make sure they learn how to operate it safely. So if Santa has brought you one, here’s what you need to know.

Get on board

In Australia, if you want to fly your drone for fun, you don’t need CASA’s approval – as long as you follow the authority’s simple safety rules. Recreational drone operators must comply with CASA’s rules (known as its standard operating conditions).

You must only fly your drone within visual line of sight – that is, where you are able to see the drone with your own eyes, rather than with the help of binoculars or a telescope, for example. What’s more, you can only fly in visual meteorological conditions, which generally means no night flights.

In most Australian cities, you can only fly your drone up to a maximum altitude of 120 metres – most of this airspace is considered controlled airspace. To fly a recreational drone any higher, you must seek approval from CASA and adhere to any associated conditions.

During flight, you must keep your drone at least 30 metres from anyone who is not directly associated with its operation. The drone must also not be flown over populated areas (that is, areas that are sufficiently crowded that the drone would pose an unreasonable risk to the life, safety or property of someone present). This includes crowded beaches or parks, or sports ovals where a game is in progress.

Better check the rules before going for shots like this. Gustavo Frazao/shutterstock.com

There is a general prohibition on flying a drone in a way that creates a hazard to another aircraft, person or property. A “hazard” may be interpreted fairly broadly. To be safe, CASA recommends keeping your drone at least 5.5km away from any airfield. Operations within 5.5km of an airfield are allowed in some instances, as long as they are not on the approach and departure path, and would not otherwise get in the way of aircraft using the airfield.

Recreational drone users are also advised to respect personal privacy by not recording or taking photos of people without their consent. While privacy concerns are not within CASA’s purview, operators may find themselves in breach of state and territory privacy or trespass laws, depending on how and where the drone is flown, and whether audio, video or photographic footage is recorded.

High flyers

As a general rule, drones cannot be flown for money or economic reward without a specific licence. There are, however, two new instances where such a certificate is not required: for commercial-like operations over your own land, and for commercial flights with very small drones (under 2kg) provided that the pilot notifies CASA at least five business days beforehand, and adheres to all the existing rules for recreational drone use.

Having considered all the rules, the Bunnings sausage sizzle incident starts to look less like a harmless jape and more like a multiple breach of the rules (although the video’s author has claimed that the video was an edited composite rather than all shot during a single flight).

The video appears to show several breaches of the rules, including: flying a drone out of visual line of sight (assuming that it is being piloted from the backyard hot tub depicted in the video); flying within 30m of people; and flying over a populated area. The operator is potentially facing a fine of up to A$9,000.

If you’re worried your new drone might get you into similar hot water, CASA provides significant guidance to help operators avoid infringing the rules. That way, you can make sure your high-flying gift doesn’t end up ruining your Christmas cheer.

Rebecca Johnston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

We’re currently having a national conversation about climate and energy, with reviews of climate policy and the National Electricity Market underway. Up for debate is how the states and federal government will share these responsibilities.

Following the recent statewide blackout in South Australia, the federal government pointed the finger at Labor states’ “aggressive”, “unrealistic” and “ideological” renewable energy targets.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews returned: “Rather than peddle mistruths, Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce should start providing some national leadership and focus on developing a renewable vision beyond 2020.”

It might seem to be yet another partisan, ideological stoush between a Liberal federal government and three Labor state governments.

However, the Liberal-led New South Wales government has now also entered the fray, with a 2050 emissions target that will almost certainly require complete decarbonisation of the electricity sector within the next 25 years.

And to achieve this, renewables will have a key, many would argue overwhelming, role to play.

What are the states already doing?

NSW released its climate policy framework in November, joining Victoria, South Australia and the ACT with an aspirational target to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

While NSW didn’t announce a renewable target, the majority of states now have one. Queensland is seeking 50% renewable generation by 2030, Victoria 40% by 2025 and South Australia 50% by 2025.

Tasmania’s generation is already mostly renewable (albeit mostly conventional hydro generation). The Australian Capital Territory looks set to achieve 100% renewables by 2020 and the Northern Territory has announced a 50% target for 2030.

At present, the federal government has a renewable energy target of around 23.5% renewable electricity by 2020 and a 2030 target of 26-28% greenhouse emission reductions from 2005 levels. These ambitions fall way below those of the states.

And way below the almost complete electricity sector decarbonisation by 2040 that the International Energy Agency says is required globally to avoid dangerous global warming.

What does the law say?

Constitutionally, energy policy in Australia is a matter for state governments. The development and implementation of the National Electricity Market over the past two decades has been achieved through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), with harmonised legislation in each state.

State governments therefore have the constitutional scope to act both independently and in consort to achieve clean energy related goals.

Whether they should choose to do this, however, is another question. There is an obvious national context including Australia’s participation in international climate change processes such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

National policy coherence also has value in avoiding uncoordinated policies that can adversely impact investment incentives, increase compliance costs, and generally lead to less efficient outcomes.

While suitably ambitious, nationally consistent, legislation under federal government leadership may be ideal, it hardly seems realistic at present. The apparent divisions within the federal government seem likely to prevent useful progress, even with the two reviews.

It might well be a choice between state leadership or very little leadership over the next few years. And these years will be key to setting Australia on a clean energy path fit for the future.

New South Wales’ climate plan

The NSW climate change policy framework proposes to meet the net zero target through a number of policy “directions” to reduce emissions. It also proposes adaptation measures to cope with the warming that is already underway.

The emission reduction directions include: enhancing investment certainty for renewables; boosting energy productivity (energy efficiency); capturing other benefits of reducing emissions (such as improved health from reduced air pollution) and managing the risks; and growing new industries in NSW.

These are to be advanced through government policy, government operations, and advocacy. Specific initiatives are to be outlined in a set of action plans, including a climate change fund and an energy efficiency plan, which are currently under consultation.

A further advanced energy plan will be developed in 2017. This will include provisions for the future role of renewable energy. Clearly the government will not be able to achieve its aspirational emissions target in the absence of a transformation of the energy system, so how will renewable energy figure in the absence of a state target?

While we can’t preempt the plan, the policy framework defines advanced energy to not only cover renewable generation itself but also how it is integrated into industry structures and adopted by end users.

Given the importance of integration in transitioning the energy system, such a broad focus could usefully complement the activities of other states as well as NSW.

The policy also emphasises collaborating with the commonwealth and other states through COAG.

NSW: a climate advocate?

Combined state action has historically played a key role in federal climate policy. It was bottom up pressure from states that resulted in the Howard government’s initial emissions trading scheme (ETS) proposal in 2007.

The Garnaut review that formed the basis of Kevin Rudd’s ETS was originally commissioned by Labor state governments.

On this point SA Premier Jay Wetherill has taken the lead in calling for a national emissions trading scheme to be implemented through harmonised legislation at a state level.

While this seems unlikely to be a feature of NSW’s advocacy in 2017, continued failure by the federal government to advance climate and energy policy might require such types of coordinated state efforts.

In this light, state government efforts do not appear “ideological”. That would seem to better describe the federal government’s present opposition to even exploring promising emission reduction options.

And while it is too soon to know if NSW’s climate policy is fit for the future, it certainly represents welcome progress, and provides a basis that can be built upon.

Anna Bruce receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), Energy Consumers Australia and the Australian Research Council Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living (CRC-LCL), and leads the Australian PV Institute's solar mapping work.

Graham Mills receives funding from the CRC for Low Carbon Living

Iain MacGill is a Joint Director of UNSW Australia's Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets. The Centre has received funding from a range of government sources including the Australian Research Council, Energy Consumers Australia and ARENA. He has also undertaken consultancies for a number of Australian State Governments and the Federal Government on clean energy regulation, markets and policy. He also contributes unpaid expert advice to a number of government organisations, industry associations and not-for-profit groups in the clean energy area within Australia and internationally. Iain's share portfolio includes AGL which owns a range of coal, gas and renewable generation in Australia.

This week, the Australian government announced plans that will ultimately require cars sold in Australia to match international fuel efficiency standards.

The resulting savings over the life of a typical vehicle would more than offset higher initial costs. The saving on fuel costs is estimated at up to A$28 billion a year by 2040.

Not coincidentally, this measure would also help to cut carbon dioxide emissions, which are currently growing at a rate that makes achievement of the government’s commitments for 2030 virtually impossible.

Up to speed

Putting Australia’s vehicle standards on a par with other developed nations sounds like such an obvious idea that we might ask why it hasn’t been done already. There are several reasons, although none of them can justify the years of inaction to date.

First, until quite recently, politicians were overridingly concerned with the fate of Australia’s domestic car manufacturing industry, which focused primarily on the production of large cars like the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon. While fuel efficiency standards are designed to take account of a vehicle’s “footprint”, the domestic industry naturally saw the idea as an extra burden.

With the end of domestic production in sight, this issue becomes irrelevant. Indeed, you might think, given that Australia is now set to rely solely on imported cars, that we would automatically gain the benefits of international standards without needing to upgrade our own. But it turns out that imported cars sold in Australia are generally less fuel-efficient than cars of the same make and model sold in markets with more demanding standards.

There are several reasons for this. The most immediate is that it’s cheaper to make a less efficient car. New car buyers, particularly fleet buyers, are sensitive to the sticker price of the car but much less so to the running costs, most of which will be paid by others, including subsequent owners. So even though fuel savings outweigh the increased purchase price over the life of the car, it’s easier to sell a cheaper, less efficient version.

Another problem is that Australia also has lower standards for fuel quality, particularly sulfur content, which creates problems for more efficient vehicles. These standards will have to be revised soon for public health reasons, but until now the task of coordinating fuel efficiency and fuel quality standards has proved too difficult.

The government is now proposing to address both issues at the same time. The options are to reduce sulfur content for all kinds of petrol, or to phase out “regular” 91-octane fuel in favour of the more efficient, but more expensive, 95-octane.

Unsurprisingly, this measure is facing resistance from the Australian Institute of Petroleum, which is warning of the costs to Australian refineries. The institute can at least claim consistency here: it fought the removal of lead from petrol in the 1980s. More disappointing is the negative response of the Australian Automobile Association, which purports to champion sustainability but evidently thinks cheap petrol is more important than clean air or a stable climate.

The final problem is that there is a trade-off between fuel efficiency and perceived performance. This has led some manufacturers to “game” the regulations by producing vehicles that are fuel-efficient in lab testing but less efficient and more responsive on the road.

The most notorious case was that of Volkswagen, which installed special software to detect, and cheat, lab testing equipment. The resulting scandal cost chief executive Martin Winterkorn his job and has left the company flirting with bankruptcy.

Play by the rules

Of course, regulations of all kinds can be evaded. But the catastrophic consequences of being caught, as shown by the Volkswagen case, mean that manufacturers who want to stay in business will be more cautious in future.

Any policy to tackle climate change has costs as well as benefits. But there are few cases in which the balance is so clearly weighted to benefits. And with its 2030 climate targets in serious doubt, Australia needs to pick every piece of low-hanging fruit it can.

The only remaining issue is politics. The influential right wing of the Coalition government is dogmatically committed to climate science denial, and will oppose any measure to address the problem. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has already collapsed spectacularly on the issue of an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector. That policy, like the fuel standards upgrade, came recommended by the Climate Change Authority (of which I am a member).

If Turnbull is to salvage any credibility, he needs to face down the opposition of ideologues and vested interests on this question. Whether he will do so remains to be seen.

John Quiggin is a Member of the Climate Change Authority. This article represents his personal views.

Giant clam shells seized by authorities in waters off Australia's north. NT government

High-value marine species in waters off northern Australia are at increasing risk of poaching by foreign fishing crews, according to figures from the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. The number of foreign fishing boats caught in Australian waters increased from six in 2014–15 to 20 in 2015–16.

These fishers have evidently come to poach species that fetch high prices and have been overfished elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region. They seek “lootable resources” – species that are attractive to the black market because they are expensive, easy to catch and weakly regulated.

Among the species being targeted are sea cucumbers, giant clams, turtles and sharks (specifically their fins).

Many of these species are listed as vulnerable or endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Some are even protected from trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

A long history of poaching

The apprehended vessels have been primarily from Vietnam and Indonesia. Last month, a Vietnamese fishing vessel stopped inside the Conservation Park Zone of the Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve was found to be carrying 3 tonnes of partially processed sea cucumbers. Dried sea cucumber, called bêche-de-mer, can fetch more than A$300 per kg when sold in China.

The Timor and Arafura Seas have long histories of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing due to regional fishery expansion and displacement. Some scientists believe the tensions in the South China Sea are pushing Southeast Asian fishermen into Australian waters. It is also possible that Indonesia’s stricter fisheries policy is shifting fishing patterns in the region.

But apart from economic loss as resources are poached from Australian waters, what are the impacts? A new review shows that species such as sea cucumber can play crucial roles in boosting the health of coral reef systems. This is important at a time when reefs are facing intense stress from climate change and coastal development.

Nine species of sea cucumbers from Australian waters were recently declared threatened with extinction globally by the IUCN. Removal of some marine fauna might degrade the resilience of coral reef ecosystems to broad-scale stressors.

What can be done?

In June, Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton said: “Preventing illegal fishers from plundering Australia’s well-managed fisheries is every bit as important as stopping the people smugglers and illegal arrivals.”

Although the Australian Border Force has the capacity to apprehend illegal fishing boats, much of the poaching happens on distant coral reefs. One problem is that illegal fishing boats can plunder lootable resources and get out of Australian waters before Border Force can reach them. So while regulation might be well enforced on reefs within the Great Barrier Reef, for instance, offshore reefs are comparably weakly regulated.

But stronger monitoring and enforcement might not be the only solution anyway. My team’s research, which involved interviewing sea cucumber fishers from Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga and New Caledonia, suggests that they see themselves as having few other livelihood options besides fishing. This means that even if their fishery collapsed or was closed down by authorities, they would simply move elsewhere or fish a different species.

Many fishers from Southeast Asia have doubtless been lured to poaching in Australian waters by similar issues. Curbing the rise in poaching therefore requires not only continued enforcement but also, crucially, foreign aid investment that can help these fishers to diversify their livelihoods.

Australia recently reshaped its foreign aid policy to focus predominantly on delivering “economic growth and poverty reduction”. Organisations such as the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) are investing in overseas research and development projects to provide more income-generating opportunities in fisheries and aquaculture. Support to Southeast Asian countries makes up 49% of the budget for fisheries and aquaculture projects.

Australia’s approach to reducing poaching of threatened resources should therefore be multifaceted. Helping foreign fishers deal with their own problems of overfishing by giving them more options to earn a living will ultimately help to tackle the root cause of marine poaching.

Steven Purcell receives funding from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

Hampus Eriksson participates in projects funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

An Arctic iceberg, pictured in 2015. This year, ice coverage has reached record lows for the early northern winter. AWeith/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

For the Arctic, like the globe as a whole, 2016 has been exceptionally warm. For much of the year, Arctic temperatures have been much higher than normal, and sea ice concentrations have been at record low levels.

The Arctic’s seasonal cycle means that the lowest sea ice concentrations occur in September each year. But while September 2012 had less ice than September 2016, this year the ice coverage has not increased as expected as we moved into the northern winter. As a result, since late October, Arctic sea ice extent has been at record low levels for the time of year.

These record low sea ice levels have been associated with exceptionally high temperatures for the Arctic region. November and December (so far) have seen record warm temperatures. At the same time Siberia, and very recently North America, have experienced conditions that are slightly cooler than normal.

Extreme Arctic warmth and low ice coverage affect the migration patterns of marine mammals and have been linked with mass starvation and deaths among reindeer, as well as affecting polar bear habitats.

Given these severe ecological impacts and the potential influence of the Arctic on the climates of North America and Europe, it is important that we try to understand whether and how human-induced climate change has played a role in this event.

Arctic attribution

Our World Weather Attribution group, led by Climate Central and including researchers at the University of Melbourne, the University of Oxford and the Dutch Meteorological Service (KNMI), used three different methods to assess the role of the human climate influence on record Arctic warmth over November and December.

We used forecast temperatures and heat persistence models to predict what will happen for the rest of December. But even with 10 days still to go, it is clear that November-December 2016 will certainly be record-breakingly warm for the Arctic.

Next, I investigated whether human-caused climate change has altered the likelihood of extremely warm Arctic temperatures, using state-of-the-art climate models. By comparing climate model simulations that include human influences, such as increased greenhouse gas concentrations, with ones without these human effects, we can estimate the role of climate change in this event.

This technique is similar to that used in previous analyses of Australian record heat and the sea temperatures associated with the Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching event.

To put it simply, the record November-December temperatures in the Arctic do not happen in the simulations that leave out human-driven climate factors. In fact, even with human effects included, the models suggest that this Arctic hot spell is a 1-in-200-year event. So this is a freak event even by the standards of today’s world, which humans have warmed by roughly 1℃ on average since pre-industrial times.

But in the future, as we continue to emit greenhouse gases and further warm the planet, events like this won’t be freaks any more. If we do not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we estimate that by the late 2040s this event will occur on average once every two years.

Watching the trend

The group at KNMI used observational data (not a straightforward task in an area where very few observations are taken) to examine whether the probability of extreme warmth in the Arctic has changed over the past 100 years. To do this, temperatures slightly further south of the North Pole were incorporated into the analysis (to make up for the lack of data around the North Pole), and these indicated that the current Arctic heat is unprecedented in more than a century.

The observational analysis reached a similar conclusion to the model study: that a century ago this event would be extremely unlikely to occur, and now it is somewhat more likely (the observational analysis puts it at about a 1-in-50-year event).

The Oxford group used the very large ensemble of Weather@Home climate model simulations to compare Arctic heat like 2016 in the world of today with a year like 2016 without human influences. They also found a substantial human influence in this event.

Santa struggles with the heat. Climate change is warming the North Pole and increasing the chance of extreme warm events. Climate Central

All of our analysis points the finger at human-induced climate change for this event. Without it, Arctic warmth like this is extremely unlikely to occur. And while it’s still an extreme event in today’s climate, in the future it won’t be that unusual, unless we drastically curtail our greenhouse gas emissions.

As we have already seen, the consequences of more frequent extreme warmth in the future could be devastating for the animals and other species that call the Arctic home.

Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Marc Macias-Fauria, Peter Uhe, Sjoukje Philip, Sarah Kew, David Karoly, Friederike Otto, Myles Allen and Heidi Cullen all contributed to the research on which this article is based.

You can find more details on all the analysis techniques here. Each of the methods used has been peer-reviewed, although as with the Great Barrier Reef bleaching study, we will submit a research manuscript for peer review and publication in 2017.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

How do people feel about coal seam gas (CSG) in the regions where the industry is active? In 2014 we surveyed residents in Queensland’s Western Downs region, at the end of a major construction phase.

According to our new survey, now that the industry has started operating, Western Downs residents have maintained their moderate or lukewarm views on CSG. And even though overall community wellbeing has remained similar, some aspects declined and some improved.

There was no single community view on CSG, with 68% saying they either “tolerated” or “accepted” it. A minority (19%) “approved” or “embraced” CSG and a smaller minority (13%) “rejected” it. Even though most people have a moderate or lukewarm view on CSG development, the 2016 survey showed that on average there was a tendency towards more negative views than in 2014.

While around half of residents thought their communities were resisting or struggling to adapt to changes (51%), the other half (49%) thought their communities were “adapting to changes” or “changing into something different but better”. This is similar to how residents perceived their communities back in 2014.

However, there were pockets across the region where considerable proportions of residents indicated that their community was “resisting” or “only just coping”.

Nevertheless, residents’ perceptions of their overall community wellbeing in the Western Downs region were favourable and remained relatively unchanged between 2014 and 2016. This meant that residents still thought that their community was a good place to live overall.

Slightly more negative attitudes Towns surveyed in inland Queensland. Western Downs Regional Council

As in our 2014 survey, we conducted a telephone survey asking 400 people living in and around the towns of Chinchilla, Dalby, Miles and Tara about their attitudes to CSG, as well as their opinions on the wellbeing and resilience of their communities.

This time we surveyed 500 people as we also included 100 residents from the eastern Maranoa region for comparison, an area next to the Western Downs which has had CSG wells since the mid-1990s and has less intensively cropped farmland. It includes the towns of Roma, Injune, Surat and surrounding areas.

In both the 2014 and 2016 surveys people had mixed feelings about CSG development. However, attitudes tended to be slightly more negative in 2016 than in 2014 (see figure below).

Attitude toward CSG development. Note: There was a tendency for attitudes towards CSG development to shift to the left between 2014 and 2016. %s are rounded to nearest whole figure. CSIRO

Residents’ overall feelings about CSG development in the region – such as being angry, worried, pleased or optimistic – also became more negative in 2016. They declined from 3.0 out of 5 in 2014, which reflected a neutral feeling on average, to 2.8 (slightly negative on average) in 2016. However, more than 10% of residents had extremely negative feelings about CSG in both 2014 and 2016.

These differences probably reflect people’s previous experiences and current situations, individual needs and wants, and personal world views and beliefs about gas development. They include perceptions of community functioning, environmental management, trust and fairness.

When asked about how they saw their communities responding to change, only half (49%) thought their communities were “adapting to changes” or “changing into something different but better”, which is similar to how residents viewed their communities back in 2014.

Community perceptions of adapting to CSG development. Note: Differences between 2014 and 2016 were not significantly different. CSIRO

Perceptions of community adaptation to CSG development in different subregions: 2016. CSIRO Creating a positive future

Overall community wellbeing in the Western Downs was favourable. But wellbeing in the neighbouring eastern Maranoa was higher than in the Western Downs. This suggests that while overall community wellbeing in the Western Downs is robust, it can be improved.

The biggest change in wellbeing from 2014 was the decrease in satisfaction in relation to jobs and employment opportunities. The biggest improvements were in roads and the quality of the environment (such as dust and noise levels).

Perceived management of the environment for the future also improved. However, residents were still dissatisfied on average with the management of groundwater in the region.

Community wellbeing dimensions. Note: Scores: 1 = lowest and 5 = highest; scores below 3 indicate dissatisfaction and scores above 3 indicate satisfaction. * indicates a significant difference between 2014 and 2016. CSIRO

This report offers a valuable snapshot of the range of views that exist in a CSG community and how these have changed over time.

It highlights four key drivers for people to view their community as a great place to live: the level of services and facilities; the social aspects of community life; feelings of personal safety; and employment and business opportunities.

How can we help people cope with and adapt to CSG development? We identified several factors, including good planning and leadership, access to relevant information, trust, being listened to, and employment and business opportunities.

Other key drivers include good environmental management for the future, community commitment, and working together with government and industry to resolve problems and make the most of opportunities.

Making sure key aspects of community wellbeing remain strong, as well as improving processes for responding to changes associated with CSG development, will drive a sense of optimism and confidence about the future of these communities and others.

This research received funding from National GISERA (National Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance). This is a collaborative vehicle established to undertake publicly-reported independent research addressing the social, economic and environmental impacts of Australia's onshore gas industry. GISERA receives funding from the Federal and NSW Governments, Australia Pacific LNG, QGC, Origin, Santos and AGL. Research is reviewed and approved by Regional Research Advisory Committees and overseen by a National Research Management Committee. These committees are comprised of CSIRO, independent, industry and government representatives. The governance structure for National GISERA is designed to provide for and protect research independence, integrity and transparency of funded research. Visit http://www.gisera.org.au/governance.html for more information.

This research received funding from National GISERA (National Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance). This is a collaborative vehicle established to undertake publicly-reported independent research addressing the social, economic and environmental impacts of Australia's onshore gas industry. GISERA receives funding from the Federal and NSW Governments, Australia Pacific LNG, QGC, Origin, Santos and AGL. Research is reviewed and approved by Regional Research Advisory Committees and overseen by a National Research Management Committee. These committees are comprised of CSIRO, independent, industry and government representatives. The governance structure for National GISERA is designed to provide for and protect research independence, integrity and transparency of funded research. Visit http://www.gisera.org.au/governance.html for more information.

This research received funding from National GISERA (National Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance). This is a collaborative vehicle established to undertake publicly-reported independent research addressing the social, economic and environmental impacts of Australia's onshore gas industry. GISERA receives funding from the Federal and NSW Governments, Australia Pacific LNG, QGC, Origin, Santos and AGL. Research is reviewed and approved by Regional Research Advisory Committees and overseen by a National Research Management Committee. These committees are comprised of CSIRO, independent, industry and government representatives. The governance structure for National GISERA is designed to provide for and protect research independence, integrity and transparency of funded research. Visit http://www.gisera.org.au/governance.html for more information.

If you can't taste the difference, why the backlash against recycled water? Water image from www.shutterstock.com

In light of climate change and a growing population, water authorities around the world are looking at the treatment of recycled water to achieve water security and sustainability.

Recent authors on The Conversation have raised the possibility of expanding the use of water recycling in Australia, noting the potential benefits for domestic, agricultural and industrial water supply.

Some contributors have noted that the major roadblocks to water recycling, in places where it could be beneficial, are not technical issues, but public reluctance to use recycled water.

Emotional Responses

In the past, our aversion to recycled water has been explained by the “yuck factor”. Some people have an emotional response of disgust to using recycled water, even when they know it has been highly treated and is safe. There are large individual differences in the strength and type of different people’s disgust responses.

Psychologists have tried to understand why our thought processes can lead some people to think of recycled water as unclean. One explanation is contagion thinking, the idea that once water has been defiled it will always remain unclean, regardless of treatment, at least according to the mental models that underlie our emotional responses. What such approaches often neglect is that cognition does not occur in a cultural vacuum, but is affected by the associations and stigmas of society.

It is important to note that these emotional responses are often in conflict with our rational thinking. Some theorists, such as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, have argued that we make judgements using two contrasting systems. One of these systems is slow and operates according to a formal risk calculus. The other is fast, based on positive or negative emotional responses.

Because of this, how we feel about someone or something (positively or negatively) is often as important as what they are being judged on. In other words, the fact that a person understands that a highly treated sample of recycled water is safe to drink may not be enough to stop the emotional response, as we often tend to think intuitively, drawing on our social and cultural values.

The most important question, however, is whether the emotional responses some people have to recycled water can be changed. And what role do stigmas associated with cultural norms play in shaping these?

Sustainable communities and water recycling

In places where water recycling has been introduced, it has simply become a fact of life. In Singapore, citizens of the island nation have widely accepted NEWater (as the Public Utilities Board has branded it). It’s even celebrated at a visitors’ centre that has become a minor tourist attraction.

In Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, various forms of drinkable recycled water have been in use for almost 50 years, with no significant impact.

If these communities can accept recycled water, perhaps our aversion is simply a passing phase, which will disappear when people get used to it? If so, then cultural norms must also play a role, with acceptance building with increased familiarity.

Culture change and recycled water

Cultural cognition is an approach that suggests that our beliefs and judgements about risk and cleanliness are determined by social norms, as well as more innate processes of cognition. As cultural norms, peer pressure, stigmas and the public scientific consensus all affect our beliefs and judgements, then emotional responses to recycled water are strongly linked to our cultural classifications.

The anthropologist Mary Douglas coined the term “matter out of place” to refer to things that do not easily fit into our known systems of classification, and thus often come to be thought of as dangerous. Recycled water fits into this category, as it straddles our conceptions of both clean and polluted. As water recycling is a fairly new concept and most people have no direct experience with it, they revert to inferring from the categories that they do know about.

Thus our emotional responses to water recycling are associated with uncertainty, even though our rational scientific understanding tells us it is no different to any other treated water.

It is our cultural beliefs that determine whether we see recycled water as clean or dirty, and these categories are not fixed but are a reflection of our society at that point.

Looking to the future

If we are to understand how to use new water technologies effectively for social and environmental benefit, we need not only to understand the scientific case for these technologies, but also to change the social and cultural values that inform our attitudes to them.

Culture is dynamic. Our acceptance of any particular new technology is based on norms that are current at a particular time. The “yuck factor”, which has been the focus of so much research over the years, may well change with increasing exposure to recycled water.

Daniel Ooi has received research grants from the Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence (AWRCoE) and the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination Australia (NCEDA). Both the AWRCoE and NCEDA were funded by the Federal Government as part of the Water for the Future program.

Acoustic monitoring of the calls of marine animals, such as whales and seals, could be the key to identifying new species, finding new population groups and mapping migration routes.

We recently used custom-designed detection algorithms to run through 57,000 hours of underwater ocean noise to find the songs of endangered blue whales, rather than listening for each whale call. This detection program saved us an enormous amount of processing time and will be critical in future acoustic monitoring research.

Some endangered marine animals, including several whale and seal species, are “cryptic species”: they’re genetically different but look alike. This means that they are often mistaken for one another when identified visually, making conservation plans difficult to implement.

However, most animals produce species-specific calls. Eavesdropping on their calls therefore provides a unique way to monitor them. This is completely rewriting our understanding of their population recovery.

Recovery of the blue whale

We recently discovered two new blue whale populations migrating off the east coast of Australia using this technology. This is important news as the blue whale has been slow to recover after being hunted to the brink of extinction. How can the largest animal that has ever lived, the Antarctic blue whale, swim undetected just off the coast of Sydney?

It is remarkable that we have only now discovered them there. It is possible that they only started using this route recently, or perhaps they have been there all along and we have missed them.

Fortunately for us, blue whales sing, allowing us to detect them using arrays of listening devices spanning sites across the Indian and Pacific oceans. However, the frequency of their song is so low that humans can’t hear it.

Blue whales produce different calls and these calls possibly reflect different subspecies. Their different songs help the International Whaling Commission manage the recovery of these subspecies.

Blue whales speak with different dialects

Globally, there are at least nine separate blue whale acoustic populations, and Australia’s waters are home to at least three.

The west coast of Australia is a well-known blue whale feeding ground and both the Australian pygmy and Antarctic blue whales are common there.

Another popular blue whale feeding ground is in Southern Australia. Until recently the blue whales there were thought to be all pygmy blue whales, but it was discovered that the Antarctic blue whale is also found there.

We were further surprised to find that the Antarctic blue whales remained all year off southern Australia. In some years, they did not return to their krill-rich Antarctic feeding grounds in the summer, as we’d expect.

The east coast of Australia is not known as a blue whale site, so we were delighted to find two different acoustic populations in the Tasman Sea, all the way up to Samoa. We found the critically endangered Antarctic blue whale and, to the delight of our New Zealand colleagues, pygmy blue whales with a New Zealand accent.

Tasmania now looks like the boundary point separating the Kiwi and Aussie speaking pygmy blue whales.

What about seals?

Similar to whales, seals are also returning to our shoreline. Fur seals are an example of a marine cryptic species, and while some species are thriving, others are not.

The different fur seal species look similar. In fact, unless you are a seal expert, or a seal, it can be difficult to tell them apart. But we can easily recognise the different species because they have very different calls.

The seals can recognise further subtle differences in calls between one another. To maintain their breeding territories the male seals fight and bark incessantly. Each male has a distinctly different call.

A male can recognise and respond differently to the voices of his neighbours, whose territory boundary lines have been established by weeks of confrontations, from the voices of unknown males that are potentially a threat to his territory.

Fur seal mum and pup. Pixabay

The female fur seals and their pups also have individually unique voices. When a female returns from sea after days of hunting, she needs to find her pup from the hundreds of other pups on the island. The mum and pup call to find one another in the busy, noisy colony. The female recognises her pup’s unique call and scent as part of the reunion.

Spying on animal songs gives new insights into undiscovered populations and new migratory routes, completely rewriting our understanding of these marine giants. Accurately evaluating the population status and trends of cryptic marine species is critical in developing conservation management strategies.

Joy Tripovich receives funding from the Winifred Violet Scott Trust and is affiliated with the E&ERC at UNSW Australia.

Tracey Rogers receives funding from ARC. She is affiliated with the E&ERC at UNSW Australia

A rare glimpse of a river dolphin in Cambodia. Erwan Deverre/Flickr, CC BY-NC

It’s hot, and you’re sitting sweating in a small wooden boat. Your cold bottle of water is dripping, and the pink polyester roof does nothing to shade the glare of the setting sun. The young man at the back of the boat smiles and points at the water, and there you see it: one of Cambodia’s most magnificent spectacles.

Angkor Wat? No, it’s a critically endangered dolphin rising from the brown waters of the Mekong River, breathing, looking at you, and then disappearing below.

Our recent research suggests that while dolphin and whale tourism in Southeast Asia can be great for communities, it can also come at a cost to the environment.

So what should you look for if you’re going on tour?

Tourism boom

Dolphin- and whale-watching tourism is a booming industry worldwide, and it’s growing apace in developing parts of Asia. Many tourists flock to see spinner dolphins in Bali or Bohol; blue whales off Sri Lanka; Chinese white dolphins in Hong Kong; or Irrawaddy dolphins in great rivers like the Mekong and Ayeyarwaddy (as the Irrawaddy is now known).

Tourist boats looking for dolphins in the Mekong River, Cambodia. G E Ryan

This interest in seeing wildlife is a boon: it provides jobs for local people driving boats, selling souvenirs, or staffing restaurants and hotels. It also gives a growing Asian middle class the chance to get close to wildlife that many people are increasingly separated from in day-to-day life.

By providing jobs and building compassion for the species it targets, dolphin-watching tourism can thus provide an incentive to protect threatened species such as critically endangered river dolphins. But it has a cost.

Boat traffic can stress dolphins. What can seem like insignificant short-term stresses are known to have long-term costs on whole populations if they are repeated over a long time.

Tourist boats visiting dolphins several times a day can cause exactly this sort of problem, especially if they harass and chase animals. This happens in many places where regulation is absent or poorly enforced. We have seen large numbers of boats swarming groups of dolphins in many places.

Often such tourism is limited only by the numbers of boats and crews willing to conduct it. Understanding the long-term ecological effects of tourism activities on dolphin populations is difficult; it needs long-term data, which can be expensive and slow to collect.

This kind of work is rarely done, especially in developing Asia. So we don’t really know how tourism affects dolphins and whales in this area.

With colleagues, we recently developed a rapid risk-assessment method to understand the risk tourism poses to wildlife. We applied it to seven sites in six countries in developing Asia, including sites on the Mekong River in Cambodia, on the coasts of Bohol in the Philippines, Bali, Malaysian Borneo and Thailand, and in India’s Chilika Lagoon.

We found the highest risk from tourism was to Irrawaddy dolphins at Chilika Lagoon, and to spinner and other dolphins at Lovina Beach in Bali. Both of these sites have no regulation of the number of boats visiting dolphins, or how boats are operated around the animals. This leaves large numbers of boats free to chase dolphins around – hardly ideal.

Spinner dolphins and tourist boats in Indonesia. Putu L Mustika How to travel lightly

The sites we assessed are just a drop in a sea full of opportunities to view wild whales and dolphins. So next time you’re heading out on holiday and considering going to see some of the water’s most charismatic inhabitants, how do you know if you should go?

Here’s a few things to consider:

• Is there a land-based alternative to see the animals without disturbing them?

• Is there a code of practice for boat operators to prevent stressing animals? This may not be obvious. Talk to other tourists about how boat drivers operate around animals. Avoid operators who chase, cut off, or otherwise harass animals.

• Ask your driver not to chase animals, and reward them with thanks or tips for driving carefully around the animals.

• Ask yourself how you can meaningfully contribute to the protection of these species in other ways.

Watching wild animals in their natural environment is one of life’s great experiences. Few things in this world are as uplifting as the sight of a dolphin breaking the water’s surface, and it’s a sight we hope everyone can enjoy for countless generations.

We’re sure we will be able to if we encourage responsible dolphin-watching tourism. And that can start with you on your next getaway into the wild!

Putu Liza Mustika is also affiliated with Cetacean Sirenian Indonesia, an environmental NGO in Indonesia.

Gerry Ryan and Riccardo Welters do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

In Darwin the wet season usually arrives around Christmas Day. Storm image from www.shutterstock.com

Christmas in Darwin often means one thing: rain. The north is famous for its wet season, which runs from November to April, when the vast majority of the region’s rain falls.

The flora, fauna and people of the north have adapted to the Australian monsoon and now depend on the arrival of the rain for their survival. Living as we do on an arid continent, it is natural to eye this seasonal source of water as an important resource for agriculture and other economic activity.

But the summer monsoon is also notoriously fickle. Last year’s wet season was the driest since 1992, although there is some evidence that this year will be better. So what drives this important weather phenomenon, and how might it change in the future?

Northern Australia’s wildlife is adapted to the wild swings between wet and dry. Crocodile image from www.shutterstock.com What is the Australian monsoon?

The Australian monsoon actually alternates between two seasonal phases linked to wind direction. In the winter phase, easterly trade winds bring dry conditions. In the summer, westerly winds bring sustained rainy conditions. In fact, the word “monsoon” comes from the Arabic word for season.

Global rainfall daily averages (1979-2008) for the months of January (left) and July (right). The monsoon trough is positioned over northern Australia in the southern summer, and moves northward during the southern winter. NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/)

As the summer approaches, the sun heats the Australian land area faster than the surrounding ocean in much the same way as the pavement next to an outdoor swimming pool is heated faster than the pool water.

This difference in heating also produces a difference in pressure, which is lower over the land than the ocean. As a result, warm, moist air from the tropical ocean is drawn towards the lower pressure over the hot and dry north of Australia. It is this increase in humidity in the month or so prior to the sustained rains (known also as the “build-up”) that makes life so uncomfortable for many, driving some people “troppo”.

With increasing humidity, conditions become progressively better for the development of deep clouds and storms.

Eventually, sustained rain, low pressure (the “monsoon trough”) and deep westerly winds become established over land. This transition can be relatively abrupt, and at Darwin usually occurs around Christmas Day, although there is a great deal of variability from year to year.

Satellite image from December 27 2015, showing a tropical low in the Australian monsoon. This weather system contributed to the first big rainfall burst of the 2015/2016 summer monsoon. NASA Worldview (https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/) Why so variable?

Unsurprisingly, El Niño (and its counterpart, La Niña) is partly responsible for the monsoon’s variability.

In El Niño years, the summer monsoon tends to be drier than average, and last year was no exception.

However, El Niño (or La Niña) usually influences only the early part of the season. Once the summer monsoon becomes established, the relationship with El Niño (or La Niña) becomes weaker.

The tropical oceans just to the north of Australia also play a role in the variability. Warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures and greater evaporation have contributed to an early onset of summer monsoon this year by increasing the moisture early in the season.

Rainfall in the Australian summer monsoon occurs in a series of bursts, each of which may last for a few days or weeks. The relatively dry periods between the bursts are referred to as breaks, which can last for lengths similar to bursts. The total amount of rain that falls in a season depends on the intensity of the bursts, their number and their duration.

Daily rainfall averaged over land areas in the north of Australia for the period 1979-2010 (red), and the 2015/16 daily rainfall (blue). Although on average the rainfall over northern Australia is largest between January and February, in any given season the rainfall will occur in sporadic bursts as seen for the 2015/2016 summer monsoon. Bureau of Meteorology (http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp) The science of bursts

One ingredient in rainfall bursts is the envelope of deep clouds known as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). This eastward-moving atmospheric wave organises deep clouds in the tropics and is often linked to widespread rainfall as it passes over the north of Australia.

This wave has a period (the length of time between rises and falls) of 30 to 60 days, and is closely monitored by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Recent research has shown that a second important ingredient is the mid-latitude troughs (zones of low pressure) that periodically move towards the equator into the tropics. Such troughs rapidly increase the moisture in the monsoon trough and are associated with two-thirds of all bursts.

These influences also work together to produce rainfall bursts in the Australian monsoon.

What about climate change?

The jury is still out on this one, although there are hints as to what might be ahead.

State-of-the-art climate models furiously disagree on whether there will be more or less rainfall and how much more or less in the north of Australia. Although there are reasons to believe that the monsoon regions may become wetter in a warmer world, monsoons pose a challenge for climate models as they depend very strongly on the relationship between the atmosphere, the land and the ocean.

However, recent advances in understanding the role of the mid-latitudes in producing rainfall bursts may help us to untangle some of the uncertainties in the models.

The continuing research into understanding and predicting the Australian summer monsoon will help in planning for the future in this important region.

Sugata Narsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science.

Michael Reeder receives funding from Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Timber stockpiled along a logging road. Day Edryshov/Shutterstock

If you asked a friend to name the worst human threat to nature, what would they say? Global warming? Overhunting? Habitat fragmentation?

A new study suggests it is in fact road-building.

“Road-building” might sound innocuous, like “house maintenance” – or even positive, conjuring images of promoting economic growth. Many of us have been trained to think so.

But an unprecedented spate of road building is happening now, with around 25 million kilometres of new paved roads expected by 2050. And that’s causing many environmental researchers to perceive roads about as positively as a butterfly might see a spider web that’s just fatally trapped it.

A Malayan tapir killed along a road in Peninsular Malaysia. WWF-Malaysia/Lau Ching Fong Shattered

The new study, led by Pierre Ibisch at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Germany, ambitiously attempted to map all of the roads and remaining ecosystems across Earth’s entire land surface.

Its headline conclusion is that roads have already sliced and diced Earth’s ecosystems into some 600,000 pieces. More than half of these are less than 1 square kilometre in size. Only 7% of the fragments are more than 100 square km.

Remaining roadless areas across the Earth. P. Ibisch et al. Science (2016)

That’s not good news. Roads often open a Pandora’s box of ills for wilderness areas, promoting illegal deforestation, fires, mining and hunting.

In the Brazilian Amazon, for instance, our existing research shows that 95% of all forest destruction occurs within 5.5km of roads. The razing of the Amazon and other tropical forests produces more greenhouse gases than all motorised vehicles on Earth.

Animals are being imperilled too, by vehicle roadkill, habitat loss and hunting. In just the past decade, poachers invading the Congo Basin along the expanding network of logging roads have snared or gunned down two-thirds of all forest elephants for their valuable ivory tusks.

Deforestation along roads in the Brazilian Amazon. Google Earth Worse than it looks

As alarming as the study by Ibisch and colleagues sounds, it still probably underestimates the problem, because it is likely that the researchers missed half or more of all the roads on the planet.

That might sound incompetent on their part, but in fact keeping track of roads is a nightmarishly difficult task. Particularly in developing nations, illegal roads can appear overnight, and many countries lack the capacity to govern, much less map, their unruly frontier regions.

One might think that satellites and computers can keep track of roads, and that’s partly right. Most roads can be detected from space, if it’s not too cloudy, but it turns out that the maddening variety of road types, habitats, topographies, sun angles and linear features such as canals can fool even the smartest computers, none of which can map roads consistently.

The only solution is to use human eyes to map roads. That’s what Ibisch and his colleagues relied upon – a global crowdsourcing platform known as OpenStreetMap, which uses thousands of volunteers to map Earth’s roads.

Therein lies the problem. As the authors acknowledge, human mappers have worked far more prolifically in some areas than others. For instance, wealthier nations like Switzerland and Australia have quite accurate road maps. But in Indonesia, Peru or Cameroon, great swathes of land have been poorly studied.

A quick look at OpenStreetmap also shows that cities are far better mapped than hinterlands. For instance, in the Brazilian Amazon, my colleagues and I recently found 3km of illegal, unmapped roads for every 1km of legal, mapped road.

A logging truck blazes along a road in Malaysian Borneo. Rhett Butler/Mongabay

What this implies is that the environmental toll of roads in developing nations – which sustain most of the planet’s critical tropical and subtropical forests – is considerably worse than estimated by the new study.

This is reflected in statistics like this: Earth’s wilderness areas have shrunk by a tenth in just the past two decades, as my colleagues and I reported earlier this year. Lush forests such as the Amazon, Congo Basin and Borneo are shrinking the fastest.

Road rage

The modern road tsunami is both necessary and scary. On one hand, nobody disputes that developing nations in particular need more and better roads. That’s the chief reason that around 90% of all new roads are being built in developing countries.

On the other hand, much of this ongoing road development is poorly planned or chaotic, leading to severe environmental damage.

For instance, the more than 53,000km of “development corridors” being planned or constructed in Africa to access minerals and open up remote lands for farming will have enormous environmental costs, our research suggests.

Orangutans in the wilds of northern Sumatra. Suprayudi

This year, both the Ibisch study and our research have underscored how muddled the UN Sustainable Development Goals are with respect to vanishing wilderness areas across the planet.

For instance, the loss of roadless wilderness conflicts deeply with goals to combat harmful climate change and biodiversity loss, but could improve our capacity to feed people. These are tough trade-offs.

One way we’ve tried to promote a win-win approach is via a global road-mapping strategy that attempts to tell us where we should and shouldn’t build roads. The idea is to promote roads where we can most improve food production, while restricting them in places that cause environmental calamities.

Part of a global road-mapping strategy. Green areas have high environmental values where roads should be avoided. Red areas are where roads could improve agricultural production. And black areas are ‘conflict zones’ where both environmental values and potential road benefits are high. W. F. Laurance et al. Nature (2014)

The bottom line is that if we’re smart and plan carefully, we can still increase food production and human equity across much of the world.

But if we don’t quickly change our careless road-building ways, we could end up opening up the world’s last wild places like a flayed fish – and that would be a catastrophe for nature and people too.

Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic organisations. He is the director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University, and founder and director of ALERT--the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers.

Business here and households here, already we’re paying twice the cost of the US for electricity. – Craig Kelly MP, chair of the backbench environment and energy committee, ABC Radio National Breakfast interview, December 6, 2016. (Listen from 7.38)

Environment and energy minister Josh Frydenberg recently left open the possibility of some form of carbon trading in the electricity sector. He later ruled out that option, saying he wanted to keep electricity prices down.

Following Frydenberg’s initial comments, Liberal MP Craig Kelly said businesses and households in Australia are already paying twice as much as Americans for their electricity.

Is that true?

Checking the source

When asked for sources to support his statement, Craig Kelly referred The Conversation to a range of sources, saying that:

… a report titled 2015 Residential Electricity Price Trends lists [on page 212] the average Australian price at 28.72 cents per kilowatt hour for 2014/2015.

In comparison, the US Energy Information Administration lists the average price for residential electricity [in the US] at 10.44 cents for 2014.

Converting 10.44 US cents at A$1/US$0.74 – is the equivalent of 14.11 cents Australia.

So using these sources (in Australian cents) we have 14.11 cents in the USA and 28.72 cents in Australia. Therefore I think to say that “we’re paying twice the cost of the US for electricity” (on average) is pretty much right on the money.

You can read Craig Kelly’s full response here.

Do Australians pay more?

It’s definitely true that Australians pay much more for their electricity than US citizens do (and Australian prices are set to rise even further, according to the Australian Energy Market Commission.

Using OECD data, there’s one measure that says it is twice as much – or at least it was twice as much as recently as 2014. Another measure – a better measure, in my view – shows Australians pay about 50% more than US citizens do for their electricity.

As Craig Kelly notes in his full response, there is significant variation in electricity prices across states and territories in Australia and in the United States, so comparing the two is not a simple matter. The Australian Energy Market Commission’s annual Electricity Price Trends report shows that retail prices in Australia vary from 18.44 c/kWh in the Australian Capital Territory to 29.75 c/KWh in South Australia.

But we can use Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data on wholesale and retail indices energy prices to check Craig Kelly’s statement.

The wholesale price is the cost of generating the energy that is sent to the grid. Retail prices are what householders are more used to talking about. Retail prices factor in extra costs like transmission and distribution (“poles and wires”), retailer margins and other levies (such as Feed-in Tariff and Renewable Energy Target costs). In other words, it’s what we’re paying on our power bill.

Let’s examine the data.

A tale of two measures

The two measures I have used to compare prices in the US and Australia are called “market exchange rates” and “purchasing power parities”. Craig Kelly’s calculations rely on market exchange rates, so we will start with that one.

Market exchange rates simply means converting the price in one country’s currency to that of another country’s currency, as Kelly did. This measure of comparison is more volatile than purchasing power parity exchange rates.

Using market exchange rates, OECD data show that Australian electricity prices have, in recent years, been approximately twice as high as electricity prices in the US. Recently, the gap has narrowed. In 2015, using market exchange rates, electricity prices in Australia were about 70.3% higher than in the US.

The Australian Energy Market Commission projects that Australian prices will rise even further in coming years.

By converting Australian electricity prices into US dollars (market exchange rates), we can see Australian electricity prices have been an average of twice as high as in the US over the past four years – though the gap narrowed in 2015, down to a 70% difference. Chart provided by author, using data from the OECD.

That broadly supports what Kelly said. But if we use purchasing power parity exchange rates, the data show that Australia’s prices are approximately 50% higher than the US.

Purchasing power parity exchange rates, or PPP, factor in inflation and the cost of living in a particular country, and eliminate differences in price levels between countries. This measure allows a cleaner, less volatile comparison between the US and Australia.

The chart below compares the retail prices of electricity in Australia and the United States when adjusted for cost of living differences using purchasing power parity.

Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, OECD data shows household prices of electricity are approximately 50% higher in Australia than in the US. Chart by author, using data from the OECD.

As the above chart of the OECD data shows, household prices of electricity are about 50% higher in Australia than in the US when you use purchasing power parity data.

Why are the prices so different?

As this chart shows, data from OECD indicate there has been a substantial divergence between Australian and American electricity prices since about 2008.

Retail price index: average power prices for householders in the US and Australia. The year 2000 is indexed to 100 (that is, 2000 = 100) Author provided, using data from the OECD Wholesale price index: the average price the generators charge to the retailers (or distributors) for the power they put into the grid. The year 2000 is indexed to 100 (that is, 2000 = 100) Author provided, using data from the OECD.

As noted in the preliminary report of the Australian chief scientist Alan Finkel’s review of the National Electricity Market, household energy bills in Australia increased 61% on average between 2008 and 2014.

The main reason for this is the cost of maintaining the electricity network – essentially, the poles and wires that deliver the power. Network costs represent between 45% and 55% of a typical electricity bill. This has been the largest contributor to Australia’s increasing prices over the past six years.

Some observers have said that the “gold-plating” of the network came about because of a regulatory regime that encouraged over-investment in poles and wires. This was been partly driven by an effort to shore up electricity supply and an overestimation of demand.

The US shale gas revolution has also helped keep energy more affordable there than in Australia.

The Productivity Commission reported that, in New South Wales, network costs accounted for 80% of price rises in 2010-11 and 50% of price rises in 2011-12.

Is it really that simple?

Not really. Energy economics is far more complicated than can come across in Kelly’s quick quote or this short FactCheck.

While the Australian price is higher, this doesn’t necessarily mean the cost is higher: Australians use much less energy than Americans. This is because as prices increase, energy productivity and energy efficiency also tend to increase. In total, most countries actually spend a similar proportion of GDP on energy costs.

This holds surprisingly consistent across a range of countries. For example, Japan has high energy prices, but also has high energy efficiency and productivity. Consequently, it spends practically the same amount of GDP on energy cost as the US.

So prices may be higher for individuals, but that doesn’t mean the economy-wide costs are higher. All that said, Kelly was talking about the prices for individuals and business, so that’s what this FactCheck is focused on.

Verdict

If we compare Australian and American electricity prices using market exchange rates, Craig Kelly’s comment is correct: Australia’s electricity prices were essentially double those of the United States as recently as 2014. In 2015, using market exchange rates, the US prices were about 70.3% higher.

If we compare the prices using purchasing parity power exchange rates – which I’d argue is the more accurate reflection of the costs of living in each of the countries – Australia’s prices are about 50% higher than the US.

Overall, Craig Kelly’s broader point is correct: Australians pay a much higher price for their electricity than Americans do. – Dylan McConnell.

Review

I agree with the author’s position that purchasing power parity comparisons are less volatile and more representative of the relativity based on actual living costs. It is true Australian households pay a much higher electricity price than Americans.

There’s one important point I’d add. There is a baseline cost of having a house or business connected to electrical supply, regardless of how much electricity is used. This is called the fixed supply cost. The more electricity a household or business uses, the more the fixed supply cost is diluted in the overall electricity bill. This brings down the cost per kilowatt-hours (kWh).

American households use about twice as much electricity as Australian households. According to the US EIA, average US household electricity consumption in 2015 was 10,812 kWh. 2014 data for Australia shows average Australian household electricity consumption was 5,772 kWh (down from 6,819 kWh in 2008. At 25 cents/kWh that is a saving of $307 for Australians for using less electricity over time).

So we would expect Australian household electricity prices to be higher, because an average Australian household uses less electricity and the large fixed supply costs must be spread across a smaller amount of consumption. This raises the cost per kWh. But because Australians use less, their annual bill may be lower.

Further, in recent years, Australian energy retailers have been raising their fixed supply (or baseline) charges. So small users pay much more overall per unit of electricity they use.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that larger businesses often negotiate much better deals on their electricity prices than householders can. – Alan Pears.

Have you ever seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.

Dylan McConnell has received funding from the AEMC's Consumer Advocacy Panel and Energy Consumers Australia.

Alan Pears has worked for government, business, industry associations public interest groups and at universities on energy efficiency, climate response and sustainability issues since the late 1970s. He is now an honorary Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT University and a consultant, as well as an adviser to a range of industry associations and public interest groups. His investments in managed funds include firms that benefit from growth in clean energy.

Ideas to enhance the liveability and sustainability of our cities have attracted a lot of interest recently. Examples include establishing or enhancing “urban forests”, or “bringing back nature” into cities to support animals and ecosystems displaced by human activity.

While these projects focus on creating space for nature and enhancing biodiversity within cities, they rarely consider the impact on nature of the artificial lighting used across the urban landscape.

Public lighting is often thought to be essential for improving safety and preventing crime. Most commercial and public structures are lit up at night, although often for purely aesthetic reasons.

A network of street lighting links these “islands of illumination”. The effects of this can, in some large cities, result in “sky glow” that interferes with star visibility at distances of more than 300 kilometres.

A cascade of harmful impacts

While modern life makes some artificial lighting essential, when it’s overused or poorly designed it creates light pollution. It is not widely appreciated that this can have significant adverse effects, which go beyond interference with stargazing. These include serious impacts on humans, plants and animals.

Effects on humans reportedly include (but are not limited to) an increased risk of breast cancer, sleep disruptions and possible links to metabolic disorders, including diabetes and obesity. Furthermore, artificial lighting uses large amounts of energy associated with CO2 emissions.

Adverse effects on animals include interference with reproduction, predator and prey interactions, and orientation and migration. These effects are potentially damaging for entire ecosystems, as well as particular species.

Ecosystems involve a complex balance of interactions between species. Disrupting this can trigger a cascade of harmful effects.

The attraction of moths to lights offers an illustration of this. In becoming disoriented and infinitely attracted to the artificial light, the local moths of a given species become an easy meal for bats and other predators, and the moth population declines. Other species that depend on the moths for their survival are now themselves at risk.

If this particular species of moth pollinates plants, then local pollination may be reduced. And if this moth is the only pollinator of a plant species, then that species’ rate of reproduction will fall. This can be devastating for insect and animal communities that rely on these plants for habitat and food.

A whole ecosystem can be harmed by something as apparently harmless as public lighting.

A need to rethink lighting standards

Despite awareness of adverse effects, the collective ecological impact of artificial light is not well recognised beyond the sphere of ecological research.

Planning regulations and practices tend not to consider artificial lighting as a source of pollution. Rather, the focus is on minimum lighting standards, reflecting perceptions of safety and community expectations.

Questions of unwanted light are more often considered in terms of nuisance or energy wastage. The focus of light reduction tends to be on cost savings, or even CO2 savings, and not wider environmental effects. Ironically, the introduction of energy-saving lighting, such as LED, may lead to even greater impacts on some species.

Being diurnal creatures, we humans tend to have little awareness of night-time ecosystems. Given that light emissions disappear once the source is turned off, it is unsurprising that artificial light has not been identified as an important pollutant.

Global concerns about climate change and energy consumption, and the resulting trend towards greater efficiency and sustainability, create an opportunity to challenge the underlying assumptions about public lighting. For example, the notion that more lighting equates to greater safety and discourages crime may be questionable.

Reconsidering our association of artificial lighting with progress and modernity allows us to reframe the “minimum lighting standards” model to one that seeks to minimise harm in all respects. The key question then is what lighting is needed for human safety while minimising unwanted or harmful light as well as energy consumption?

Possible solutions go beyond a debate of more versus less lighting. We could, for instance, use lights with wavelengths that cause less disruption to key species, as well as “adaptive street lighting” that responds to pedestrian movement. There are doubtless many possible innovations that balance human and ecological needs.

Urban greening programs could play a leading role here in developing smarter lighting solutions that benefit both humans and ecosystems. Such initiatives would be natural inclusions in the emerging protocols to guide biodiversity-sensitive urban design.

Alex Kusmanoff receives funding from the Australian Research Council and through the National Environment Science Programme's Threatened Species and Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hubs.

Georgia Garrard receives funding from the National Environmental Science Programme's Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

Luis Mata receives funding from the National Environmental Science Programme - Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub.

Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council and through the National Environment Science Programme's, Threatened Species and Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hubs.

Wildfires in Tasmania in 2016 were in part the result of an extended dry period beginning in 2015. Rob Blakers, CC BY-SA

Climate change made some of Australia’s 2015 extreme weather events more likely, according to research published today in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

As part of an annual review of global weather extremes, these studies focused on October 2015, which was the hottest on record for that month across Australia. It was also the hottest by the biggest margin for any month.

October 2015 was also the driest for that month on record in Tasmania, which contributed to the state’s dry spring and summer, and its bad fire season.

El Niño events usually drive global temperatures higher, and 2015 had one of the strongest on record. So were these records due to El Niño, or climate change? The research shows that while El Niño had some influence on Australia’s weather, it was not the only culprit.

El Niño packed a punch – or did it?

In 2015, a strong El Niño developed, with record high temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean contributing to 2015 being the hottest year on record globally (although 2016 will smash it). The Indian Ocean was also very warm.

El Niño is often associated with warm and dry conditions across eastern Australia, particularly in spring and summer. The new studies found that for Australia as a whole, while El Niño did make the continent warmer, its direct contribution to record temperatures was small.

Only in the Murray Darling Basin did El Niño make it more likely that the October 2015 heat would be a record. El Niño also played a small but notable role in the dry October in Tasmania.

Temperatures were at a record high across the south of the country. Bureau of Meteorology The hottest October

Although record-high spring temperatures might not make you sweat as much as a summer heatwave, ecosystems and agriculture can be susceptible. October 2015 was 2.89℃ warmer than the previous hottest October in 2014, beating the margin set by September 2013, which was 2.75℃ warmer than the previous hottest September.

Even before October 2015 was over, Mitchell Black and David Karoly at the University of Melbourne reported that human-induced climate change played a strong role in the excessive October heat.

The first paper (chapter 23 in the annual review) explains this further. Using the citizen science Weather@home ANZ system, the researchers analysed thousands of simulations of the world’s climate of 2015, generated on home computers (you can donate your computer power here).

To find out whether climate change played a role, some of those simulations included the observed ocean temperatures of 2015, while some included ocean temperatures as if human-caused climate change had never occurred.

According to this method, climate change made breaking the October record four times more likely compared to a world without climate change.

The second paper (chapter 24 in the review) backed this up. This study used the Bureau of Meteorology’s seasonal forecast system to compare the real world to a world with less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The researchers came to exactly the same conclusion: rising carbon dioxide levels made a record October four times more likely.

This second study also found that the atmospheric conditions – the series of high and low pressure systems that shift heat from inland Australia towards the south – were more important in driving the extra heat than the extreme global ocean temperatures.

If these weather systems had occurred in a low-CO₂ world, it would still have been an extremely warm month. But for October 2015, climate change increased the temperature by an extra 1 degree.

Driest October for Tasmania

In October 2015, Tasmania received only 21mm of rainfall, just 17% of its normal amount. It was much drier than the previous driest October in 1965 (in the era with reliable record, when the state received 56mm). This was part of the driest spring on record, and a dry and warm run of months through spring and summer.

This run of warm and dry months had major impacts on agriculture and hydroelectricity, and helped to set up a catastrophic fire season.

Rainfall extremes can be complex, and it is generally much harder to figure out what caused them than temperature extremes. So the third Australian study (ch. 25 in the review) used two different methods to compare October 2015 to the previous record.

The results showed that El Niño did affect the October climate, but human-caused climate change also played a small but significant role. Climate change probably increased the chances of Tasmania having its driest October by 25-50%.

The record-dry October appears to be linked to higher atmospheric pressure in a band around the whole southern hemisphere, which is consistent with trends over recent time.

Rainfall across Tasmania was the lowest on record across nearly the whole state. Bureau of Meteorology Climate change is altering our extremes

More extreme events and more broken climate records are causing many people to ask whether climate variability or climate change is to blame. But of course it is never just one of these; it is always a combination of both.

For the extreme October of 2015, while short-term weather patterns and the El Niño contributed to the extremes, breaking these climate records would have been substantially less likely without human-induced climate change.

Climate change has already altered the extreme weather we experience in Australia and will continue to do so over the coming years.

David Karoly, Mitchell Black, EunPa Lim and Harry Hendon all contributed to the research on which this article is based.

Pandora Hope receives funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme, as part of the Earth Systems and Climate Change hub.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Guomin Wang receives funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme, as part of the Earth Systems and Climate Change hub.

Julie Arblaster previously received funding from the Australian Climate Change Science Programme

Michael Grose receives funding from Australian Government's National Environmental Science Programme, as part of the Earth System and Climate Change hub.

The annual review of extreme weather and climate events published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society today highlights how climate change is influencing the events that affect us the most. This table summarises each event and whether climate change played a role.

Across the globe, extreme heat events are linked with climate change, although El Niño provided a boost in 2015 leading to more records being broken. The human influence on rainfall and drought is less strong but we can see it in many events that were studied.

Our influence on the climate extends beyond temperature and rainfall. In the UK, the chance of very sunny winters (which sounds like an oxymoron!) has increased due to climate change. The record low sea ice extents, which have continued into 2016, are strongly associated with human influences.

While the majority of studies have been done on the developed world, more analyses of developing countries are included this year than in the past. Through collaborations between local experts and teams in the United States and Europe, a greater emphasis on extreme events in the developing world was possible.

This is important because the impacts of extreme events are often more severe in these areas than in wealthier regions.

The effects of climate change on extremes spread far and wide as human activities have radically altered our climate. We can expect to see more extreme events with a clear fingerprint of human-caused climate change in the coming years and decades.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

There is a great opportunity and imperative for Australia and Indonesia to join forces to solve critical challenges facing the ocean and coastal regions. Lkzz/www.shutterstock.com

In many ways, Australia and Indonesia represent ocean superpowers. The two neighbouring countries share huge marine resources and opportunities. At the same time both face increasing challenges to their oceans and coastal regions brought about by climate change and over-exploitation.

Recently, marine scientists from Australia and Indonesia identified possible areas of collaboration for their countries to solve these challenges.

The scientists came together at the inaugural Australia Indonesia Science Symposium organised by the Australian and Indonesian scientific academies. We were conveners for the two-day discussion between the Australian and Indonesian marine experts.

The scientists highlighted at least eight potential areas of collaboration on marine science and climate change:

1. Scientists from both countries believe it’s important for Australia and Indonesia to work together to understand the impact of climate change on marine resources, and to create solutions. Climate change is causing rising sea levels and surface temperatures as well as ocean acidification. These have resulted in the bleaching of corals and mortality that affect livelihoods in both countries. Both scientific communities urge their governments to do more to rapidly reduce greenhouse gases.

2. They pointed out that Australia and Indonesia should look into developing a strategy to reduce CO₂ and other emissions by maximising their coastal ecosystems and oceans as carbon sinks.

3. The scientists recommended the two countries explore ways to increase cooperation and knowledge sharing in new technologies for the rapid monitoring of key marine resources. Many breakthroughs in technologies, such as image recognition, neural networks and machine learning, are set to rapidly reduce the time and costs of detailed reef monitoring.

4. The two scientific communities also suggested the countries work together to advance the sciences to better manage migratory species such as turtles, sharks and other megafauna.

5. They recommended a holistic approach to developing coastal fisheries. These fisheries require the development of whole-of-system thinking, with integrated management/governance that recognises the multiple uses and activities across space and time.

6. They noted that development of national parks has been successful to a substantial extent in both countries. But more work must be done in both countries. Baseline datasets need to be developed in order to detect and respond to present and future impacts.

7. The scientists see a need for Indonesia and Australia to develop greater cooperation on research, innovation and business development. The links between science and innovation and the blue economy need to be strengthened and reinforced.

8. They identified a need and interest to develop a regional partnership to collaborate on problem solving in the ocean space and to develop databases that readily available to multiple cultural and language groups.

Why is this important?

Both Australia and Indonesia are heavily dependent on their extensive coastal regions and oceans for their food, income and well-being. The ocean holds enormous economic potential, which runs into billions of dollars each year.

Australia’s ocean spans over 13 million square kilometres – an area twice that of Australia’s landmass. Indonesia’s ocean stretches across almost 2 million square kilometres and the country is endowed with one of the longest coastlines of the world – almost 100,000km long!

An estimated 70% of Indonesia’s population, or around 180 million people, lives on this coastline. Similarly, 85% of Australia’s population lives within 50km of the coast.

But marine ecosystems of both countries are facing threats of over-exploitation and destruction.

Pollution from chemicals and plastics has begun to choke entire coastlines, destroying ecosystems and opportunity. At the same time, ocean ecosystems such as coral reefs, kelp forests and mangroves are disappearing at rates up to 2% per year from many coastal areas.

Most fisheries are under-performing. According to the FAO, 80% of the fish stocks are fully exploited or are collapsing. That is, we are getting much less than the sustainable yield should give us.

On top of this, ocean ecosystems and fisheries are severely threatened by climate change – through ocean warming and acidification. These impacts – from the deepest sea to our coasts – are threatening to foreclose on our future ocean wealth and opportunity.

The blue economy

The World Wildlife Fund recently estimated the asset value of the ocean to be US$24 trillion – which if it were a country would be the seventh-largest economy on the planet. This oceanic “wealth” fund delivers US$2.5 trillion in benefits to humanity each year – an economic activity associated with the marine economy that is growing three times faster than Australia’s GDP.

Increasingly, countries and businesses are turning to the ocean to generate novel industries and opportunities for food and income. Termed the “blue economy”, there is increasing focus on better using ocean resources to feed our hungry world.

By 2050 the world’s population will have added 3 billion people and will reach 9 billion. To feed those extra 3 billion people the Food and Agriculture Organisation has indicated that food production must increase by 70%.

The FAO has said that 80% of the required production increases will have to come from increases in crop yields, with only 20% coming from new farmlands.

But the stark reality is that the rate of growth in yields of the major cereal crops has been steadily declining – from about 3.2% per year in 1960 to 1.5% today. Consequently, we must find another alternative or risk ecological disaster as we turn more and more parts of the world’s crucial ecosystems into food production systems.

And it is much more than a matter of simply finding more food.

For industries, such as tourism, new fisheries, energy production and the development of new pharmaceuticals, the blue economy represents an enormous untapped potential.

Tackling the future as Marine Team Indonesia and Australia

It is critical to strike a balance between harvesting the economic potential of our ocean and safeguarding its longer-term health and well-being.

Unfortunately, despite the economic value of these opportunities, the marine resources of Australia and Indonesia are at serious risk of being degraded before we develop these opportunities.

There is a great opportunity and imperative for Australia and Indonesia to join forces to solve these critical challenges.

But to solve the problems, we need greater knowledge about our ocean wealth. We also need to build the capacity to understand and sensibly exploit these ocean resources.

All this means more people and infrastructure. We also need to promote greater regional knowledge and regional information exchange. We need to come together much more regularly to swap ideas and develop new solutions and approaches.

And if we do, then the power of our respective oceans will be unleashed for the greater good.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg undertakes research on coral reef ecosystems and their response to rapid environmental change, which is supported primarily by the Australian Research Council (Canberra), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Washington, D.C.), Catlin Group (London), and Great Barrier Reef Foundation (Brisbane). He works at the University of Queensland and did not receive salary for writing this article.

Jamaluddin Jompa receives research funding from the Government of Indonesia and USAID. He is affiliated with Hasanuddin University and Indonesian Young Academy of Science.

Increasing interest in animal welfare means that there are a range of options for where your ham comes from this Christmas. What should you look for if you want to tuck into a ham from an ethically raised pig?

You’ll find hams from four main production systems on supermarket shelves this year: conventional hams, sow stall free, free range and “outdoor bred, raised indoor on straw”. So what do these labels mean?

Conventional hams

Conventional hams come from pigs farmed in intensive systems, where both sows (mother pigs) and piglets (the pigs that your Christmas ham comes from) are housed indoors.

Piglets are weaned at around three to four weeks of age. They are then housed in group pens on slatted or concrete floors (sometimes with straw or litter) until they are turned into ham and other pork products at around four months.

Some of the main animal welfare issues in intensive pig farming relate to the confinement of mother pigs. During their pregnancy, mother pigs are housed in “sow stalls”. These metal stalls are about the length and width of a fully grown sow and allow little movement.

Pigs are intelligent and social animals, and this confinement can cause stress and injury. There is evidence that other types of pig housing can also lead to stress and injury.

Before giving birth, sows are moved to a farrowing crate, where they remain until their piglets are weaned. Farrowing crates are designed to prevent mother pigs crushing the piglets. The mother pig has just enough room to lie down, meaning that her movement is severely restricted.

Sow stall free

Around 75% of pig production in Australia is now “sow stall free”, after the pork industry introduced a voluntary phase-out of sow stalls. Coles brand pork products are sow stall free, and Woolworths has committed to using stalls for less than 10% of the sow’s pregnancy (of around 115 days).

In some countries, including New Zealand, sow stalls have been totally or partially banned by law. They are also banned in the ACT.

Confusingly, “sow stall free” doesn’t mean that sows are free of all systems of confinement. Sows can spend up to five days in “mating stalls” after they have been mated (for Coles’ own brand products, it’s less than 24 hours). Sows are still housed in farrowing crates until their piglets are weaned.

Free-range

There are some free-range Christmas hams in the major supermarkets this year. However, just 5% of the Australian pig herd is free range.

In free-range systems, such as the RSPCA-approved outdoor system and Australian Pork Certified Free Range, both sows and piglets live outside in paddocks. They have access to shelters, wallows and shade.

Sows in these free-range systems aren’t confined in sow stalls or farrowing crates, and have the opportunity to express natural behaviours.

Most large-scale free-range pig production takes place in the south of Western Australia, which has ideal soil, water and climate conditions. Free-range pig farming is challenging in many parts of Australia, because of the hot climate.

Pig farming can also have environmental impacts. These include the degradation of soil and water systems through nutrient overload from manure.

You can buy free-range hams from farmers’ markets, specialist butchers and small-scale pig producers. When you buy at a farmers’ market, ask about how the pigs are raised and whether they are free-range.

Outdoor bred

There are a few hams around labelled “outdoor bred, raised indoors on straw”. These used to be labelled “bred free range”, until the ACCC took action against some producers using this label for misleading and deceptive conduct.

Hams with this label come from production systems where the sows live outside. They live under free-range conditions and are not confined to sow stalls or farrowing crates.

Piglets are born outside, but are moved inside after weaning and raised in group pens on straw or other litter, before being butchered for products including Christmas hams.

So what ham should I buy?

You can vote for better animal welfare by buying the most ethical ham you can afford, whether that’s a sow stall free ham from one of the major supermarkets or a free-range one from a small-scale producer at a farmers’ market.

Supermarkets are setting higher animal welfare standards for their own-brand pork products in response to increasing customer interest. These higher standards have the potential to influence new Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for pigs, which are likely to be developed in the next few years.

Up to two-thirds of processed pork (including ham and bacon) is imported as boneless frozen pork. If you want to buy an Australian ham, look for ham on the bone, a label such as “Made from 100% Australian pork”, or the square pink “Australian Pork” label.

If you’re looking for an ethical ham that also scores on taste, check out the Good Food Christmas Ham Taste Test. Seven of the top ten hams were from free-range pigs.

Rachel Carey is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne on the project 'Regulating Food Labels: The case of free range food products in Australia', which is funded by the Australian Research Council. She is also a Research Fellow on the project Foodprint Melbourne, which is funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation.

Christine Parker's research is funded by the Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant, Regulating Food Labels: The Case of Free Range Food Products in Australia (DP150102168).

Gyorgy Scrinis' research is funded by the Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant, Regulating Food Labels: The Case of Free Range Food Products in Australia (DP150102168).