To Mr Abbott: Climate Change is real, just Jebi, Florence and Mangkhut

My wife and I were meant to have one more day in Hong Kong visiting relatives and friends. However, at the urging of our relatives and friends, we procured an earlier flight out Hong Kong. It was a good thing that we found an earlier flight for our original departure date of 16/9, will be remembered by the people of Hong Kong for decades to come. Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport normally servers more than 100 airlines operating flights to 180 countries but according to the South China Morning Post, most flights were cancelled affecting 96000 passengers. Hong-Kong based carriers – Cathay Pacific, Cathay Dragon and Hong Kong Airlines cancel at least 543 flights. I considered our 11pm departure on the 15/9 a major miracle. 

At Mangkhut’s closest approach to Hong Kong on the 16^th the Hong Kong Government raised the Typhoon threat level to 10 which is highest. The streets of Hong Kong are normally chocked by walls of shoppers on a Sunday but they were empty on the 16^th as most people took heed of government warnings. The damages were unprecedented. Modern Highrise offices and multistorey apartments were no match for Super typhon Mangkut. In earlier typhoons, the taping of windows was sufficient but not this time. In some cases, the complete windows were scattered causing glass to fall onto streets below. Some Highrise apartments lost power and with nothing to operate the water plumbs, some residents also found their water supply cut.  People in low lying areas suffered even worse. Many areas were flooded. The only people on the streets were emergency workers, news reporters and foolhardy idiots.

However, Mangkhut was not the only destructive typhoon in 2018. On the 4^th of September the tropic typhoon Jebi made landfall on main land Japan. The destruction to the all-important Kansai airport meant tens of thousands of travellers were unable to leave Japan and holidaying Japanese residents were unable to return to Japan. This was not the only destructive weather in Asia for the month of September.

On Wednesday 12^th of September, while on the famous Star Ferry crossing Hong Kong Harbour (from Kowloon to Hong Kong Islant), I noticed that the usually placid harbour was already rough but that was more to do with typhoon Barijat.  Yes, Hong Kong and Southern China was being threaten by not one but two typhoons!

The famous casinos of Macau the west of Hong Kong was forced to shut down for 33 hours. The South China Moring Post reported that two major casino operators lost as much as US$186 million because of the shutdown.

In 2017, the former conservative Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott suggested at a London conference that voters should beware of the science of climate change and that higher temperatures “might actually be beneficial” because “far more people die in cold snaps”. Even though another conservative, the National Farmers Federation president Fiona Simpson, has argued that climate change is leading to more frequent droughts in Australia. Overall the picture for decisive actions on climate change does not bode well when Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull was brutally replaced by Scott Morrison. Turnbull was dumped for wanting very modest action on climate change. The new conservative government mantra is best summed up by the new Agriculture minister who states that he doesn’t ‘give a rats’ whether climate change is man-made.

Just as climate scientists are warning of the danger of climate change to Australian farmers and the famous Great Barrier Reef. They are also pointing to the danger of more frequents destructive typhoons like Mangkhut. The Hong Kong Observatory (“The Year’s Weather – 2017 https://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/pastwx/2017/ywx2017.htm) stated that 32 tropical cyclones occurred over the Western North Pacific and South China Sea in 2017. The Observatory concluded that this number is more than the long-term (1961-2010) average.

Beside the drought the other hot button issue for the current Australian government is the cost of electricity. The conservative side want to show Australians that they are more concern for the high cost of electricity rather than the use of renewable energy to combat man-made climate change. Some in the conservative government wants to build more Coal-fired powerplants even though the world is trending away from coal to renewable. This is evident by GE Power, a coal-fired powerplant manufacturer who found their 2017 profit felt by 45% (Reuters “How General Electric gambled on fossil fuel power and lost” 22/2/2018).

For the conservative Morrison’s government turning away from decisive climate change action might look like a short-term fix to win the next election but it completely fails to address the reality of Mangkhut and Australia’s current sever drought.  The former represents a severe cost to our Asian trading partners and the latter a severe curtailment of Australia’s agriculture export. Both will affect Australia’s long-term economic outlook. More importantly, Australia abundant sunshine can one day be used by solar farms to generate hydrogen that can be exported to energy-hungry Asia. Mr Morrison renew energy is Australia future and not a political albatross.