So why do we need a Swede to tell us? Well actually we have been doing a bit of work on that subject ourselves. The CRC on Sustainable Tourism’s project on The Impact of Climate Change on Australian Tourism Destinations is focused on five destinations:
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• Cairns region, including the Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics Rainforests, QLD.
• Kakadu National Park, including Darwin as the major gateway community, NT.
• The Victorian Alps and ski-fields, VIC.
• The Barossa region, SA.
• The Blue Mountains, NSW.
The project was due for completion in December 2008 and the publication has been catalogued by the National Library but not yet published. The CRC will report next month and there will be a national Tourism Futures conference on the Gold Coast in August, 2009.
Meanwhile Principal Research Scientist Kevin Hennessy of the CSIRO tells us that there will be 20-40% less snow cover in the alpine ski fields by 2020. By 2030 there will be a 10-50% increase in 35C-plus days.
“There will be less rain in the south but an increase in rain events, storms and stronger cyclones in the north.
“Cairns has been lucky not to have been hit directly by a cyclone, but the odds are that it will be hit at some time in the future.
“By 2050, with expected rises in sea levels, that could see the CBD and airport flooded.
“The area flooded could be double what you’d expect in a one-in-100-year event.”
That could add up to a Katrina style mess.
It will be interesting to see what the report says about the Great Barrier Reef, under threat from warming seas, acidification and indeed sea level rise. In the longer term (second half of the century, if not before) the Gold Coast is in the front line also of sea level rise.
Also the Barossa Valley and Blue Mountains.
Last year Queensland Premier Bligh in one press release announced three projects to export 75 million additional tonnes of coal each year, the latest being Waratah Coal’s Galilee mine.
With the budget mugged by the GFC and natural disasters Queensland has been forced to consider selling some of the government trading corporations. Those coal mining royalties are like rivers of gold.
Vision and leadership is what we need.
In preparing the Alpine resorts strategy 2020, the Vic Government commissioned CSIRO to research snow cover for 2020 and for 2050. Grim enough news for 2020, but Buller, Falls and Hotham should all hold on – Falls will do best because of plenty of water for snowmaking. But for the 2050 projections, the industry applied heavy pressure and won to have these findings suppressed. No skiing at all in Victoria.
Of course, since the ski industry is basically a real-estate scam, this does not inspire confidence in their sheep/investors.
Mind you Dinner Plain is still a very nice place in summer.
wilful, as I understand it there has been a 50-year trend of diminishing snowfalls. So we’ve had plenty of warning and the future forecasts should come as no surprise.
“Vision and leadership is what we need”… instead we got Springborg and Palmer.
BTW: I loved the comment on last night’s Catalyst report on scientific research into the Indian Ocean’s effect of Oz climate, esp droughts, and the status of SOI:
(I was waiting for “computer models”, but I guess that would have been too sarcatic!)
AS farmers (west of the G Divide, and in Oz’s “mediterranean climate areas”) say, “Our normal rain comes from the west” and, if you regularly watch weather charts, you’ll know what the speaker means. “Main dam fillers” are cyclones & “SE Bombs” – small intense lows. The rest originates in the Indian Ocean.
“physics [and other "hard" sciences], not statistics” Amen to that!
Not sure I can go with ‘Katrina style’ mess, since I hold poor human management reponsible for making things way worse than they needed to be, but Cairns really is stuffed if a cyclone ever hits properly during high tide, and that was true long before CC reared its ugly head. The whole centre of town is built on an alluvial fan (so, low relief and a nice funnel shape to the local landscape), and there’s only one road out (to the south) if the water rises much. Oh, and all the emergency services, power infrastructure etc are on the lowest bits. That said, the slopes surrounding the town are nowhere near stable enough to build on.
Also, Cairns is in a much safer location than the original settlement of Smithfield, which was a bit further north on the Barron River plain. The river shifted course after a cyclone and wiped it out completely, back in the day.
Ironically, a drop in tourism there may simplify disaster management protocols. One doesn’t have to worry so much about rapidly evacuating or sheltering a large number of temporary visitors, many of whom have significant language and cultural differences.
wilful @ 1, do you mean this report which found that
Josh, yes, which translated in the strategy into:
The higher altitude resorts of Mount Hotham, Falls Creek, Mount Buller and Mount Stirling have low vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Mount Hotham, Falls Creek and Mount Buller will retain strong investment in winter visitation.
That’s quite an impressive achievement!
The only thing keeping a coherent “ski season” now in Victoria is snow making. Twenty years ago there was none. Now, it is absolutely essential for compensating for greatly reduced snowfall and warmer weather which melts snow more rapidly.
And note that snow making activity is responsible for significant GHG emissions too – lots of electricity and fossil fuel involved in pumping water around and running the equipment. And millions of tiny plastic condensation nuclei too.
You only have to look at resorts or mountains where they don’t make snow to see that the climate has changed enough to kill the natural snow season, apart from the higher summits of places like Mt Bogong.
When the temperature rises a bit more, they won’t be able to make enough snow, as they can only do it on below freezing nights.
josh:
I hope you read the disclaimer at the bottom of the second page:
The projections in this report are based on the results of computer models that involve simplifications of real physical processes that are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted by CSIRO for the accuracy of the projections inferred from this report or for any person’s interpretations, conclusions or actions based on this information.
So here we have a doomsday prophesy for the tourism industry which is designed to stimulate a government response that will cost the Australian community a huge undisclosed cost and the writers run away from its consequences admitting that their models cannot be viewed with any confidence because of their limitations.
Everything is couched in predictions 20-50 years hence. Why don’t they have predictions of what it will be like 5 years hence so that we can see whether their predictions match actual real world observations?
If a company offering a prospectus which was seeking investments from the public which were but a fraction of what is being asked of the community to commit to for climate mitigation and they put such a disclaimer ASIC would be down on them like a ton of bricks.
It’s this sort of analysis that the proponents of AGW claims as “settled science”. They should blush with embarrassment and wilful has the hide to refer to the ski industry as a real estate scam.
Amortiser, over short periods like 5 years, the effects of climate change are indiscernable from natural noise, except perhaps in terms of global aggregates. It’s only over decades that you can see the effects, particularly on hyper-local scales like a few weather stations on isolated mountain tops in Victoria’s north-east.
amortiser: that would be the same disclaimer the credit ratings agencies use on financial products. Financial services providers say the same thing about stock market products. It’s pretty standard, and all about legal liability.
The 2020 and 2050 dates are normal for climate change, and no doubt part of the project scope given to CSIRO.
The issue here is DSE’s conversion of an expert report that it commissioned, from pretty significant impacts into “low vulnerability”. You might not accept AGW is happening, but the DSE does, so they don’t have your excuse.
I don’t think the finger should be pointed at the DSE there, I think the white shoe brigade operate at a slightly more rarified level.
But hey as I said, if you don’t care about the naturally rare alpine flora and fauna that will go extinct, the Australian Alps will still be a mighty nice place to visit in 2050.
“if you don’t care about the naturally rare alpine flora and fauna ”
Yep, that’s the point. People just don’t…
Yeah – and because they won’t have skiers to support them, the resorts will be sucking up to cyclists like nobody’s business
We should encourage the global growth of nuclear energy that’ll potentially mitigate some of the affects of climate change on our fragile alpine regions, and fragile reef systems. Oh yes.
We have plenty of Uranium, you know, the stuff in our fragile desert ecosystems, that require that we build desalination plants adjacent to our fragile marine systems. Even low-grade Uranium could be mined, because it will eventually become economically viable to mine the low-grade stuff – and that stuff is everywhere!! woot!.
We can always find ways to intellectualise the loss of these ecosystems because they are remote and less pretty than the others.
Although I have some sympathy with the snow field operators, I reckon the state of the tourist industry is the least of our worries. I’m much more concerned about agriculture and horticulture.
David, hospitality employs 512,000 people, which is more than just tourism, of course, but although I wouldn’t use the tern “least” I share your concern for agriculture and horticulture.
I understand that the article attempts to raise awareness about the cost of inaction on climate change, for that reason an industry by industry analysis makes sense, but it’s obvious when you list the Barossa Valley that job losses in the tourism industry will be as a consequence of an agricultural failure.
I live in a wine region that sees itself [perhaps naively] as having an advantage in this regard, because McLaren Vale, being very close to a large population centre has greater access to recycled effluent, and therefore more water security. In that sense, they seem to be hoping that the Barossa’s loss will result in their gain.
I thnk the tendency to want to look at things in black and white economic terms is really flawed. Economics and ecology both involve the study of interactions, but when when we assess economic data we seem content to oversimplify it. If we are looking at the winners and losers in climate change based on only economics wouldn’t we have to acknowledge that every loss making situation for one group, is a potential gain for another? I think it’s an ugly, rationalist way to view the situation..but if you follow this type of discourse to it’s natural conclusion, that’s where you get. Dont you?
I guess I’m taking a longer view, Brian.
Although I (hopefully) won’t live to see it, I reckon climate change could easily finish off our civilisation, mostly because agriculture is likely to collapse.
Furious balancing: Clearly, you’re having a crack at me. I take your point about desert ecosystems being important. But, gimme a break. If the trade-off is the damage of one mine in the middle of thousands of square kilometres of near-identical desert compared to the complete obliteration of Australia’s alpine ecosystem and the Great Barrier Reef, I’ll take the trade off.
Yeah, I’m having a crack at you. You should go visit the “near identical” mound springs some time Robert. Each one is unique. I also know that the folks at WMC were caught in the act of trying to relocate species from one mound springs to another, so that it may appear that those species weren’t quite so rare and unique and that some springs may therefore be ‘expendable’. That’s the kind of shit the people that care for that country have to deal with, and I think your posts on the subject reflect an insensitivity that is bordering on ignorance regarding the region. At least finally, you’re capable of saying you don’t give a shit, which is basically what I suggested, but you refuted in your “how green is the budget” thread. Again, I have no problem with what you say, I just wish you’d drop the ‘green’ from your rhetoric, I think your concern for biodiversity is selective.
http://www.austmus.gov.au/factsheets/mound_springs.htm
furious, there is much to worry about the Olympic Dam expansion and I’d still like to post on it if I get time.
It’s more than uranium, though, and of course largely if not completely for export.
David @ 20, we can take the longer view, but there are people working in the tourist industry and people who have expectations that tourist facilities will continue to be there for them to enjoy. So there is no crime in spending a bit of effort looking at those issues. It might prevent the facile comments made by the likes of John Howard about protecting coal miners jobs while ignoring the reef nearby.
But yes, agriculture and food production in particular is going to be a problem under business as usual, which will be anything but.
Furious: Lots of ecosystems get disturbed and destroyed every year around Australia. I’ll see your mound springs and raise you rare orchid habitats that were cleared by a local farmer to raise half a dozen sheep (pretty much all it would support).