Five adjoining buildings on an industrial estate have collapsed after large areas of Sydney were hit by a hail storm this afternoon.

Hailstones measuring between 1-2cm were reported from Newtown to Mt Druitt, with State Emergency Services responding to 145 calls for assistance since 4pm on Saturday.

The storm blanketed five warehouses at an industrial estate in Huntingwood with half a metre of hail, causing the roofs to fall in and smoke and gas to leak out, sparking fears of an explosion.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-weather-hail-storms-batter-sydney-20150425-1mt1rk.html

Swarms of plague locusts are devastating pastures at Banana in central Queensland.

Beef producer Wallace Gunthorpe said he had not seen anything like it in 20 years.

"I'm 60 and I've only seen swarms like this twice in my life," he said.

"There's at least 10 acres of them. They cover the trees and yesterday they almost blocked out the sun.

"They sound like helicopters and you can't believe it until you see it with your own eyes. It's eerie.

"A photo doesn't do it justice, that is why I filmed them so people can see what I'm talking about."

The locusts are eating Mr Gunthorpe's pasture and the leaves off the trees, and what grass they do not eat is left fouled by faeces and flattened, inedible for his Red Brahman cattle.

Known by those in the bush as "drovers prawns", the locusts are proving a good food source for birds.

"The crows are sitting on the fences as full as googs just looking at them, as they just can't eat any more," Mr Gunthorpe said.

As the day cools the locusts stop flying and lie on the ground, taking to the skies in the morning after the sun warms up the soil and air.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-26/plague-locusts-devastate-pastures-in-central-queensland/6422840

There is little to do about protecting from hail... But we can estimate what we're going to get from the angry skies... 

Gus has studied meteorology for a long time, with manuals from World War Two. Though there is often no single cloud resembling another exactly, one could draw some conclusions.

Depending on the size of cloud and the power of updraft and downdraft in clouds, one can estimate a couple of things:

A) should you be under a high "storm" cloud, the updraft is drawing warm air up wards at high speed (up to 50 metes per seconds). This warm air is often loaded with water vapour that saturates quickly, but still goes up in the cloud. At the top of the cloud, the temperature is around minus 50. By then the water vapour has turned into ice particles. The ice can be sustained at the higher levels should the updraft be strong, but eventually, the ice will accumulate in larger clumps. As the clumps of ice start to descend against the updraft, they meet more ice that adds to the clumps and by then the ice reach the size of golf balls, oranges and cricket balls. The updraft cannot sustain the weight of these and they fall like stones from the skies. They do untold damage. Often there is not much wind around.

B) Should the ice particles be "shifted" to the downdraft side of the cloud by an horizontal draft, depending on the strength of the downdraft, up to 50 metes per seconds, The ice particles do not accumulate as much ice as they would in the updraft. The hail particles fall with quite more speed due to the downdraft that flows right to ground level. The hail particles are the size of olives at most, but their weight would not be enough to do most of the damage. What does damage is these are "accelerated" by the down draft. In such conditions it appears a if the hail stones are coming from all directions at once, but in fact it's likely that they are pushed down at high velocity by the downdraft. At groundlevel, the downdraft becomes erratic and disperses in various directions...

This was the type of hail in Sydney a couple of days ago. The first type of hail was the one that destroyed 20,000 roofs in Sydney in 1997. 

Note: the second type of hail (B — the downdraft hail) is likely to come with strong COLD winds (downdraft coming fast from the top of the cloud and not warming up as fast as normal ground level air)...

By Mungo MacCallum

The first results of the so-called auctions for polluters were announced last week, and despite what the Minister claims there is no guarantee it will produce any results whatsoever, writes Mungo MacCallum.

In one version, Anzac was a glorious exploit, in another a disastrous blunder. And given that politics has been described as war without blood, the analogy is hard to resist, especially for the present beleaguered Abbott Government.

Anzac began as an act of gallant, perhaps reckless, bravado but it never achieved its intended objectives and ended in retreat. And so it may well be for the latest adventure - the direct action scheme for curbing carbon emissions.

The first results of the so-called auctions for polluters were announced by an exuberant Environment Minister Greg Hunt on the eve of Anzac Day, which of course meant that it was swamped by the commemoration; the mainstream media had neither the time nor the inclination to give it even the most minimal critical appraisal.

Instead, Hunt's initial spin ruled, and as a result the assertion that just this first round had already producedfour times the result achieved by the whole of the previous Government's carbon tax was allowed to sit unchallenged. Indeed, it was parroted on the front page of The Australian by Greg Sheridan, who whatever his dubious talents as a foreign affairs guru, has neither expertise nor scepticism as either a scientist nor an economist.

Even the most cursory inspection would have shown that the comparison claimed by Hunt was one of apples and oranges - or more appropriately strawberries and broccoli, so patently absurd was it.

For starters, the carbon tax was not a cost to revenue but a profit; the money came into Treasury coffers, not out of it. True, there was a price to be paid in compensation measures for some of the less wealthy consumers, but this has been maintained anyway by the current Government. In other words, it is all red ink.

But perhaps more importantly, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will produce any results whatsoever, let alone the promised bonanza. The profits garnered by the carbon tax were banked and audited over the brief two years of its existence, and the extent of emission reduction monitored.

They were considerable; of course not all the cuts came directly from the tax, but the simultaneous falls in demand obviously had at least an indirect influence on their successes as well as deliberate economies from the various suppliers. The promises from the polluters who have trousered Hunt's handouts are just that - promises. Some are projected to cut in before the putative five-year deadline of 2020, but others are longer term - a decade if we're lucky.

Thus the target trumpeted by Hunt, reducing Australia's overall emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, remains at best a blue sky scenario, and the predictions of failure by the climatologists and economists are still a lot more credible than the Minister's triumphalism. Hunt brags that he is on track to "breeze past" the 5 per cent, but the Climate Institute, for one, calculates that while the $660 million already represents a quarter of the total $2.55 billion allocated by the Government, it will only achieve about 15 per cent of the 2020 promise.

Not for the first time, the Government's arithmetic just doesn't add up.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-28/maccallum-hunts-climate-claims-will-go-up-in-smoke/6427122

One in six of the planet’s species will be lost forever to extinction if world leaders fail to take action on climate change, according to a new analysis.

The stark warning on the scale of global warming’s impact on animals and plants comes just months before nearly 200 governments meet for UN climate talks in Paris in an attempt to forge a global deal on cutting carbon emissions.

Conservationists said such a large loss would be a tragedy with serious ramifications for people as well as ecosystems.

Creatures in Australia, New Zealand and South America will be hit much harder than North American and Europe, due to a high number of species not found anywhere else, such as Australia’s white lemuroid ringtail possums, which can die within hours in higher temperatures.

Relatively small land masses in Australia and New Zealand mean that many species there will be unable to migrate to cope with rising temperatures, found the study, published in the journal Science on Thursday.

The study is the most comprehensive look yet at the impact of climate change on biodiversity loss, analysing 131 existing studies on the subject. The stresses on wildlife and their habitats from global warming is in addition to pressures such as deforestation, pollution and overfishing that have already seen the world lose half its animals in the past 40 years.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/30/one-in-six-of-worlds-species-faces-extinction-due-to-climate-change-study

Australia's premier scientific institution has urged the Abbott government to embrace an  acceleration in cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, with an ultimate eye to reducing national carbon pollution to zero by mid-century.

In a submission to the federal government, the Australian Academy of Science said the country should adopt an interim goal of cutting emissions by 30 to 40 per cent below 2000 levels for 2030 as part of the long-term struggle to bring emissions under control.

That target would be consistent with Australia's emissions approaching zero by 2050, the academy wrote, and also with halting warming before a global temperature rise of more than two degrees, a benchmark regarded as staving off the worst impacts of climate change.

The submission – prepared by a team of senior climate scientists on behalf of the academy – is a contribution to the Abbott government's review of what Australia's emissions reduction targets should be post-2020. Australia's current target is to cut emissions by 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020.

One of the submission authors, Professor Matthew England from the University of NSW and a fellow of the academy, said cutting Australian emissions to zero by 2050 was the most crucial target, and the interim goal was about finding a pathway to that point.

He said it was important that the academy was involved in the debate about Australia's next targets as it could bring the scientific knowledge to the table that was ultimately driving the need to act on greenhouse gas emissions.

"It would be like shutting out all the medical sector if there was a government call for submissions on Ebola," Professor England said.

The academy's submission warns that on current emissions trends the planet was  on track for global warming of four degrees by the end of the century. 

The consequences of unmitigated global emissions for Australia included more frequent and severe hot weather, worsening fire conditions, increased flooding and storm inundation from sea levels rise and harm to the Great Barrier Reef, the academy said.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/academy-of-science-urges-australia-to-cut-emissions-to-zero-by-2050-20150430-1mx5ru.html

One of the world's wealthiest religious institutions, the Church of England, says it has divested about $18 million in investments in thermal coal tar sands companies to promote a transition to a low-carbon economy.

The Church Commissioners, which manages the church's investment portfolio, announced this week it would adopt the new climate change policy recommended by the Church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG).

Under the policy, no direct investments will be made in companies where over 10 per cent of revenue is derived from thermal coal extraction or oil production from tar sands.

In addition, the church's three national investing bodies said it would increase their low-carbon investments.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-01/church-of-england-divests-investments-to-curb-climate-change/6437174

Tens of thousands of hectares of crops in the South East coastal district of Western Australia have been wiped out by a hail storm just days before harvest.

The storm brought strong winds and hail up to three centimetres in diameter when it swept through Newdegate, 250 kilometres west of Esperance, on Saturday night and early Sunday morning.

Grain grower Bryce Sinclair, who farms 35 kilometres east of Newdegate, said he had lost 1,300 hectares of barley, oats, canola, lupin and wheat.

"We were pretty happy with [the crops], we were really looking forward to harvest and to get into them because some of those crops were some of the best we've grown out this way nearly ... well, dad reckons nearly ever," he said.

"It's really disappointing to see something that you've worked really hard on all year and put a lot of effort into and then have it wiped out."

Mr Sinclair said although he had hail insurance, it was a devastating blow.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-19/south-east-farmers-left-reeling-after-hail-storm-wipes-out-crops/6866170

The insurance companies should sue the government for inaction on climate change...