Australia

jerrym wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

jerrym wrote:

In a poll released today, Scott Morrison has "suffered a massive hit to his personal approval rating and been overtaken as preferred prime minister by Anthony Albanese in the first published opinion poll of 2020." However, the margin between Labour and the Liberals is very close suggesting the the Liberals may be tempted to change leaders before an election. 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/13/scott-morrison-su...

The more shocking thing is that they are close even with all that is going on. The Liberal party ought to be in single digits and they are not. This is a sad reflection that even as the consequences of climate change become painfully clear the politics of denial is still extremly strong.

The following article provides an explanation of why, despite the catastrophic damange done by climate-change induced wildfires and drought many Australians remain in denial. 

Even as Australia burns, its voters may not take the plunge into meaningful collective action to fight climate change. And here’s why: out there be dragons. Thirty-six of them, by the count of Robert Gifford, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. These are the psychological hangups that haunt humans and stymie efforts to deal with the global climate crisis. “Dragons of inaction,” Gifford calls them, and they are formidable. ...

“The dragons of inaction are the reasons or justifications or excuses that people use between either having a good intention to do something and then not doing it or simply using that as an excuse to not be concerned or not take action,” he explained.

The most fearsome of these dragons include a perceived lack of control, the influence of social norms and the difficulty of habit-breaking, conflict with seemingly more pressing needs and wants as well as attachment to a conservative political ideology. Others include putting inordinate faith in technological salvation, growing numb to dire warnings, the perceived inequity of taking action when others might not and mistrust of government and other authority figures. Humans are also prone to discount risks that seem far off into the future or far away from one’s immediate surroundings, Gifford said, and seek to justify the way things are if they expect change to involve personal sacrifice. 

“We call that system justification,” Gifford said. (The full list of his dragons can be found here.) ...

But Australians have long battled dry conditions and seasonal fires, making it more difficult for the human brain to draw the complicated connection to global warming that is making such events more frequent and more intense.

“The challenge we have is it is an exaggeration of weather patterns for which people are already socially adapted,” said George Marshall, co-founder of Climate Outreach, which advises governments across the world on how to communicate their climate change strategies and also the author of the book Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change.

Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has played up this argument and downplayed the connection to the policies of his Liberal government (the main conservative party in Australian politics). His actions include cheering the expansion of the country’s coal industry and scrapping the previous Labor government’s short-lived carbon tax. Both of these measures encourage more pollution and increase global warming, in turn making Australia’s fires worse.

But people tend to gravitate toward simple explanations, Marshall said, which helps explain the spread of a discredited notion that hundreds of arsonists are to blame. (In fact, police in New South Wales said just 24 people had been charged with deliberately lighting fires since November, while there are more than 150 blazes currently raging in that state.) “The most compelling narratives for us are the ones that have clearly defined enemies and victims,” said Marshall, who is also the author of the book Carbon Detox.

He said the fires, which are most explicitly threatening rural, conservative parts of the country, could send the country down one of two paths. On the one hand, they could spark serious conversations within those communities about the need to deal with climate change, which would in turn force the Liberals to react and adapt. But they could also exacerbate social tensions in a country where voters have entrenched and polarized views.

“You might find a situation where left-wing people in Melbourne become very, very agitated, but someone like a sugar-cane grower in Queensland doesn’t shift at all,” he said. “If you're somebody whose house has burned down or whose farm has lost all its livestock, and you felt that you were really in the middle of it and traumatized by the experience, you're not going to welcome a bunch of cappuccino drinkers in Melbourne going on a march.”

Humans are adept at using motivated reasoning and other mind tricks to seek out information that confirms our own opinions while ignoring or downplaying those that challenge them, political scientists say. So even as some Australians had to plunge into the ocean to avoid the flames and smoke, human psychology offers those predisposed to ignoring climate change plenty of encouragement to look away.

“Many people would like to think that stronger climate signals are going to change people's perceptions and further engage them in climate change,” Erick Lachapelle said. The political scientist at Université de Montréal has polled Canadians extensively on the topic. “But the reality is that people interpret climate signals through their pre-existing beliefs and worldviews.”

That is, instead of extreme weather shaping opinions, opinions shape how extreme weather is interpreted. “If you're more individualist, materialist, conservative, then acknowledging climate change challenges your worldview because it requires you to rethink your assumptions about the role of the free market and government intervention,” he said.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/01/08/analysis/humans-wrestle-drag...

Very iunteresting -- thanks. Much applies to the issue glabally and generally rather than just Australia

Biologists have estimated that between 500,000,000 and one billion mammals, birds, and reptiles have been killed during the Australian wildfire. If Australian animals had the vote the first law they would pass is one on animalcide, modelled on genocide legislation. Their first indictment, although certainly far from the only one, would be against Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Dust storms and massive hail balls associated with global warming are the latest torment to hit Australia.

Golf ball-sized hail at Parliament House on January 20, 2020 in Canberra, Australia.

Parts of southeastern Australia are being pelted by hailstones the size of golf balls, big enough to smash car windows and injure birds, less than 24 hours after the region was hit by massive dust storms.

The hailstorms arrived in the national capital Canberra on Monday afternoon, covering the ground with white balls of ice and leaves that have been stripped from trees. People ran for cover, and drivers pulled off the road to try and find underground parking for fear of hailstone damage. ...

The hailstorm comes less than 24 hours after massive dust storms swept through New South Wales late Sunday afternoon, blanketing entire towns and blacking out the sun.

Images from the ground showed huge, rolling clouds of dust, at least ten stories high. The dust storm moved fast, engulfing neighborhoods in minutes and obscuring what previously was a blue sky.

The dust storms first hit the town of Narromine, in the center of the state, before moving east to the town of Dubbo and then south to the town of Parkes, according to CNN affiliate Nine News.

The storm wasn't just tall, it was long -- videos show a dust storm that appears to stretch for miles, surrounding the perimeter of Narromine.

A dust storm descending on the New South Wales town of Parkes in Australia. ...

The dust storms were likely kicked up by ferocious winds in the area -- wind gusts measured up to 95 kilometers per hour (59 miles per hour) in Parkes and 107 kph (66.5 mph) in Dubbo, according to the Australia Bureau of Meteorology. The state has been suffering from drought for several years, meaning the land is parched and the soil loose -- making it easier for dust to be whipped up into the air. ...

The wildfires and dust storms have been exacerbated by extreme heat and drought -- which experts say are symptoms of Australia's climate crisis.

Australia's bush has been drying out since January 2017 -- the worst drought on record. New South Wales has received less than 5 inches (25 millimeters) of rain each year for the past three years, which has never happened before. ...

The drought has hit rural towns hard. The town of Murrurundi, northwest of Sydney, has not seen significant rain in three years. Water is supplied to towns by trucks that make 10 to 20 trips a day; if the trucks stopped, the town would be completely dry in three days.

The drought has worsened natural phenomena like Sunday's dust storm -- and has also devastated livelihoods. Cattle and sheep farmers have seen their lands turn cracked and bone-dry in recent years, and many are struggling to keep their livestock alive. ...

Many have pointed to this disastrous weather as a sign that Australia urgently needs climate action. Tens of thousands of people participated in protests around the country earlier this month, calling on the government to do more to combat the climate crisis.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/19/australia/australia-hail-dust-storm-intl-...

iyraste1313 wrote:

Many have pointed to this disastrous weather as a sign that Australia urgently needs climate action. Tens of thousands of people participated in protests around the country earlier this month, calling on the government to do more to combat the climate crisis.......

Notsurprising coming froma fakenewssource.......

I live in a firezone,so go to great extents to understand the threats .......

firstly mismanagement of the forests...climate change is not a factor as weather if anything has been getting cooler and wetter...

Chemtrails! They whoever they may be (military!) are spraying coal ash...known to increase the severity of fires......why?

So your still pumping out the climate change denials, like Trump. Unfortunately, for you, the evidence does not back you up.

There is a climate change consensus that climate change is made primarily through the use of fossil fuels. Many of those scientists 

Do scientists agree on climate change?

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world. A list of these organizations is provided here.

READ MORE

• Scientific consensus: Earth's climate is warming​
• “The scientific consensus on climate change,” N. Oreskes, Science, Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686, doi: 10.1126/science.1103618 (2004).
• “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” J. Cook et al., Environ. Res. Lett., 8 024024, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024 (2013).

ADDITIONAL CITATIONS

• "Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming Environ," J. Cook et al., Res. Lett. 11 (2016) 048002, pp 1–7, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002 (2016).

• "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," P. Doran et al., EOS, Vol. 90, Issue 3, Pages 22–23, doi: 10.1029/2009EO030002 (2009).

• "Expert credibility in climate change," W. Anderegg et al., PNAS, Vol. 107 no. 27, 12107–12109, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107 (2010).

• "Meteorologists' Views About Global Warming: A Survey of American Meteorological Society Professional Members," N. Stenhouse et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 95 No. 7, pp 1029–1040, doi: 10.1175/ BAMS-D-13-00091.1 (2014).

• "Scientists’ Views about Attribution of Global Warming," B. Verheggen et al., Environ. Sci. Technol., 48 (16), pp 8963–8971, doi: 10.1021/es501998e (2014).

• "The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists," J.S. Carlton et al., Environ. Res. Lett. 10 (2015) 094025, pp 1–12, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094025 (2015).

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/

Many of the climate change deniers have been funded by the fossil fuel companies who have used the same researchers to promote climate change denial. 

Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public

Documents housed at the University of California, San Francisco, and analyzed in recent months by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, show that the oil and tobacco industries have been linked for decades. The files CIEL drew its research from have been public for years. ...

“From the 1950s onward, the oil and tobacco firms were using not only the same PR firms and same research institutes, but many of the same researchers,” CIEL President Carroll Muffett said in a statement.

“Again and again we found both the PR firms and the researchers worked first for oil, then for tobacco,” he said. “It was a pedigree the tobacco companies recognized and sought out.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tobacco-and-oil-industries-us...

Willie Soon is the most famous of the climate change denier 'researchers' who hid his funding from the fossil fuel industry . 

Soon is a climate change denier, disputing the scientific understanding of climate change, and contends that most global warming is caused by solar variation rather than by human activity. He co-wrote a paper whose methodology was widely criticised by the scientific community. Climate scientists such as Gavin Schmidtof the Goddard Institute for Space Studies have refuted Soon's arguments, and the Smithsonian does not support his conclusions. He is nonetheless frequently cited by politicians opposed to climate-change legislation. ...

From 2005 to 2015, Soon had received over $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry, while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon

Sandy Harrison shoots down an Australian MP climate change denier below. 

 Craig Kelly has used Prof Sandy Harrison’s study to claim in a Facebook post that rising CO2 can’t be linked to Australia’s bushfire crisis. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

A leading UK climate scientist has used the Facebook page of the MP Craig Kelly to correct his “blatant misrepresentation” of a study she co-authored on a 70,000-year history of bushfires in Australia.

Kelly, a serial denier of climate change, has been using the 2011 study to claim rising CO2 in the atmosphere can’t be linked to Australia’s bushfire crisis, because the study had shown total area being burned was going down while CO2 is rising.

But Prof Sandy Harrison told Guardian Australia: “I am a working scientist and I do not routinely engage in arguments on social media, but I do not think that the misuse of scientific analyses should be allowed to go unchallenged.”

Kelly picked a sentence in the study that said all regions of Australia had shown reduced fires “during the last 50 years”.

 I tried to warn Scott Morrison about the bushfire disaster. Adapting to climate change isn’t enough

Kelly wrote: “Yet again, the truth is the exact opposite of the Alarmist narrative peddled in the media and swallowed, hook line & sinker by the naive and gullible.”

But Harrison, of the University of Exeter, told Guardian Australia the study was about historical changes, and “not about the modern situation”.

She said: “The paper explicitly shows that climate warming intervals in the geologic record are characterised by more fire, all other things being equal, and thus demonstrates exactly the opposite to Mr Kelly’s claim.”

She said while it was correct that there had been a reduction in area burned, the scientists “provide an explanation for this in the very next sentence after the one [Kelly] quotes”.

“Specifically, in many regions of the world, including Australia, human transformation of the landscape through the introduction of agriculture and infrastructure results in reduced fire spread and a reduced burnt area.”

She said a reduction in burnt area over the last 50 years “does not negate the fact that climate warming is going to lead to increases”.

She said that “landscape fragmentation” had been countering the impact of global warming on the spread of fires, but added “the number of large and intense fires has gone up”. ...

In her comment on Kelly’s Facebook post, she addresses Kelly directly, telling him his “reading of the science is partial”. 

Her comment reads: “The controls on fire are complex, but two things we know for certain are that other things being equal increased temperature lead to increased fires. Hence, since increasing atmospheric CO2 leads (amongst other things) to increased temperature, the ongoing climate changes we are experiencing will lead to increased fire.

“It is, alas, not difficult to predict what will happen if politicians continue to take a partial and prejudiced view of the science. They will continue to ignore the fact that the evidence shows that, even if there has been a reduction in area burnt in the recent historical periods, there has been an increase in fire frequency and severity associated with human-induced climate change. And that the risk of catastrophic fires will continue to increase.”

She added: “As a scientist, my job is to tell you the facts. Your job is to act on them.”

Kelly has been prolific in his Facebook attacks on the “climate alarmist cult” and the “prophets of doom” in the past few weeks.

In the past 24 hours, Kelly has posted six times, attacking climate campaigners at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland as “prophets of doom”, promoting Donald Trump’s attack on alarmists, attacking environment activist group Greenpeace, and other posts claiming “fake climate news”.

Senior government MPs have tried to distance themselves from Kelly’s views, after he gave an interview earlier this month on the UK’s Good Morning Britain show in which he was described as a “denier”.

While Australia continues to be devastated by bushfires, Kelly has launched angry attacks on climate scientists, often in all caps.

On 3 January, Kelly linked to a blog by a UK group known as Principia Scientific International, which has previously claimed that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/22/uk-climate-scientist...

So your still pumping out the climate change denials....please try to be accurate in your statements. I do not deny climate change, rather what is causing it...CO2 increases are the effect of climate change not a cause....And in spìte of your so called statistics, I know that at least South and Western canada over the past 2 years has gone through extreme cold, historic! No doubt up til at least 2015, the world was warming...but why?

The 2 theories that stand out are the activities of the sun and the effects of weakening magnetic force fields of the planet, permitting increases of micro waves from the sun and the galaxy due to depleting heliosphere.

These are recorded facts! No denials!

In fact if the accurate predictor Valentina Zharkova is correct, we may be entering a Maunder Minimum. Yes this indeed is climate change, and I suggest you stock up on your firewood supply!

re: #53

Thanks so much for the 'dragons of inaction' introduction jerrym. They may indeed be visting Australia but by description one clearly recognizes their natural, congenial home and preferred nesting grounds must be Canada.

 of the people who do not know anything and the people who are paid to protect capital interests....

A right wing website would not be talking about the evils of the 1 trillion dollar carbon futures market...

perhaps our facts have to be investigated. Valentina Zharkova just had a piece in Nature Magazine...I believe she is considered the highest authority on solar activity and its effects on the Earth. I also believe she has had a highest predictability percentage for her theories....

I am not convinced that CO2 changes inthe parts per billion has but limited influence on climate...
What I am convinced about is that especially in our Territory, it is not climate change affecting wild fires.

If you would care to explain to me how greenhouse gases effect some climates and not others respecting heat and cold, I´d appreciate it. I work in Calgary where they have now experienced the 2 coldest winters in their history of recorded temperatures.

I work in Central America, where there has not been high temperatures for several years now...and I have lost my tomato crops in Central BC now 2 years in a row, for our cool summers......

iyraste1313 wrote:

 of the people who do not know anything and the people who are paid to protect capital interests....

A right wing website would not be talking about the evils of the 1 trillion dollar carbon futures market...

perhaps our facts have to be investigated. Valentina Zharkova just had a piece in Nature Magazine...I believe she is considered the highest authority on solar activity and its effects on the Earth. I also believe she has had a highest predictability percentage for her theories....

I am not convinced that CO2 changes inthe parts per billion has but limited influence on climate...
What I am convinced about is that especially in our Territory, it is not climate change affecting wild fires.

If you would care to explain to me how greenhouse gases effect some climates and not others respecting heat and cold, I´d appreciate it. I work in Calgary where they have now experienced the 2 coldest winters in their history of recorded temperatures.

I work in Central America, where there has not been high temperatures for several years now...and I have lost my tomato crops in Central BC now 2 years in a row, for our cool summers......

 

No these are not facts to be investigated. They are denial of what has been proven again and again. They are crackpot theories that have been debunked by scientists over and over and raised by people who think that if you have scientific expertise in one thing that your unrealted suppositions carry weight over the people who actually studied in the area being talked about. Too often we have scientists (some washed up, some perhaps who may like the fame and money) in one field opining about another despite being no more qualified than you or I on that topic. These people get paid (directly or through interviews) to contradict the people who actually know about the topic selling their lab coats for a few bucks. Her area of expertise does not include climate: 

https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/z/professor-valentina-zharkova/

Now you can choose to believe whatever you like about CO2 just like someone else can pray to a Garden gnome if they choose. I can choose to believe that you do not exist. But that does not change your existential status. It is a personal belief. Your right to believe anything you want is not proof that believing it is valid -- just that it is permitted to hold beliefs that are not valid.

I will do a new post to explain as you requested.

iyraste1313 wrote:

What I forgot to mention and what really pisses me off! I included a study recently done on temperature rise during WWII, the fact that there had been no increase in CO2, but high increases in particulate matter caused by the WAR!

Why are the ongoing wars and armaments testing not to mention munitions fabrications, not being considered in all! In these climate change protests. Trashing armaments industry is not right wing propaganda! 

Good questions but they also have answers. Bear with me as you are raising more than one issue.

First, there are patterns of warming and cooling through history. You could of these as shorter term variations on longer term larger trends. An example I gave was vulcanism but there are others. The periods different causes of global warming vary both interms of how long it take to build up and how long the effect lasts. Vulcanism, for example is almost instant. However the effects may be weeks or decades. CO2 takes much longer to build up but the effects can remain for thousands of years or in some cases practically irreversible (due to secondary effects that retrigger them). Think of our climate as a delicate balance that was all over the place and settled into a balance. It can take a long time before things balance out again.

With thescond world war the amount of CO2 in the air was much lower than now and the period was only a few years. This was a much longer trend. I wonder if you ahve heard of the hocky stick graph? This is the graph of mean global temperatures going back 1000 years. We can follow temperature back that far due to a number of observable factors including pre historic ice cores, and other factors. What you get is some variations along the line but generally a flat slightly dowward tilt to the 20th century (the shaft) and then this sudden rise in the 20th century in the shape of a blade. It was called this due to the proportions. Yes, we have had change, warming and cooling but not like this.

By 1940 we were in a much lower part of the shaft. The effects were not from each year though. Like today they were the cumulative effects of many years. Some have claimed that the war was low carbon producing. We do not know this for sure because there are carbon sinks and a number of processes that can cause variations in how carbon gets absorbed and released. As well, the war did not have just one effect on carbon -- it had many. These include: carbon from bombing and burning, carbon from military actifvity and equipment. the also include reduced carbon from the deaths of many poeple being buried, rationing, business reductions, animal farming reductions. Trends related to carbon need to be monitored over longer terms than a half decade to determine causes. I am with you on the military but nobody actually can argue that military is low carbon. It is in fact the highest carbon producing activity (yes google it). It is also the highest in waste as it doe not improve net wealth and wellbeing of people (even if some may be better off). The war did add to the hockey stick though following the war. The war is behind the baby boom and population increase, it is behind technologies that led to greater demand for carbon and luxury and it led to increased medical advances that kept people alive longer. It also led to a more equitable world through the breaking down of old empires and creation of more carbon in former colonies that previously were exploited but not developed. It lead to an arms race and testing that has produced immence amounts of carbon in the atmosphere. More people died due to the results of global warming from the cold war than died in all the proxy conflicts. And more died in those conflicts than most wars. The cold war was a very deadly war and it is still killing people.

Another issue of the war is not fully understood. You are correct the war threw up tons of materials into the atmosphere. Some of these would have led to warming and some to cooling as they interfered with solar radiation. Also the period is too short to be able to create controls for more common smaller cooling and warming events. !944 was a very cold year here and in Europe.

iyraste1313 wrote:

If you would care to explain to me how greenhouse gases effect some climates and not others respecting heat and cold, I´d appreciate it. I work in Calgary where they have now experienced the 2 coldest winters in their history of recorded temperatures.

I work in Central America, where there has not been high temperatures for several years now...and I have lost my tomato crops in Central BC now 2 years in a row, for our cool summers......

You want anecdotal evidence of warming? When I was a child, your Hallowe'en costume had to be designed to fit over a snowsuit. That hasn't been on people's minds since 2003 to last year. Or take the fact that in 2016, Winnipeg waited so long for snow on the ground in winter that it set a record for the longest amount of time we've ever waited from spring melt to snow build-up. Or take how in January 2017, we set a record for the longest amount of time the temperature stayed above freezing. That broke the previous record set in 2002, when these kinds of extreme events began to become more common and started making headlines and people started talking about them. Or take summer 2018, where we had three heatwaves of temperatures making it into the 30s for several days. When I was much younger, you got to 30 degrees maybe once or twice in the summer. Back to winter, we used to rely on snow covering the ground by the first week in November. If we don't get a major snow storm, we can wait quite a long time for that.

There is growing evidence that climate change is creating a rift in the Australian Liberal party as former PM Malcolm Turnbull attacks current PM Scott Morrison over his failure to acknowledge that climate change is central to the problems Australia faces because of wildfire. Turnbull is far from being a greenie, having continued Liberal fossil fuel policies ("the Turnbull government had followed prior Coalition government energy policies. This involved the wholesale dismissal of renewable energy targets and emissions intensity schemes. This only hardened when South Australia faced large blackouts which Turnbull had blamed on the state's 'ambitious' renewable energy target.") and no doubt is bitter over losing the Liberal leadership battle. However, he at least now admits climate change is now having a major impact on Australia. 

Australian PM Scott Morrison has been accused of lacking leadership during the bushfire crisis by the man he replaced after a party room coup.

Malcolm Turnbull, who was deposed in 2018, told the BBC that Morrison had misled the country by "downplaying" the influence of global warming. ...

"Rather than doing what a leader should do... [Morrison] downplayed it, and at times discounted the influence of climate change, which is just nonsense from a scientific point of view. So that's misleading people," Turnbull said. "Then of course [he] chose to go away on holiday in Hawaii at the peak of the crisis. So I can't explain any of that. It's just not consistent with the way in which a prime minister would or should act in a national crisis like this." ...

As the fires have raged, so has the debate about climate change and its part in Australia's destructive summer. Turnbull took aim at former colleagues in the governing Liberal Party, accusing another ex-prime minister Tony Abbott of being "probably the most prominent climate denier in Australian politics, but there are plenty of others" who were engaged in a "war against science".

"It is an extraordinarily irrational and self-destructive approach," Turnbull said.

Turnbull's prime ministership began in 2015 when he removed Abbott, a long-time rival. He was in power for three years before being ousted in similar fashion. It was a fevered period in Australian politics, and Turnbull was castigated by a senior minister as being spiteful and indecisive. He also faced criticism externally for not doing more while in power. Shortly before he was replaced, Turnbull abandoned his government's flagship energy policy in a last-ditch concession to his party's right wing. ...

The University of Oxford graduate, former barrister and banker told the BBC he was the victim of a ruthless political insurgency.

"The right [wing] in the Liberal Party essentially operate like terrorists," he said."Now I'm not suggesting that they use guns and bombs or anything like that, but their approach is one of intimidation. And they basically say to the rest of the party ... if you don't do what we want, we will blow the show up. Famously one of the coup leaders said to me, 'you have to give in to the terrorists'."

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/407929/australia-fires-malcolm-turnbull...

jerrym wrote:

Malcolm Turnbull is not the only Australian Liberal taking a different stance on climate change, leading to splits within the party.  However, Labour is still being vague in its commitment to deal with climate change.

Scott Morrison has issued an extraordinary rebuke of the (Liberal) New South Walesenvironment minister, Matt Kean, for suggesting federal Liberals are pushing the government to increase its ambition on emissions reduction.

Asked about Kean’s call for the federal government to abandon its use of Kyoto carryover credits to meet its 2030 emissions target, Morrison told ABC’s AM that “Matt Kean doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t know what’s going on in the federal cabinet [and] most of the federal cabinet wouldn’t even know who Matt Kean was”.

“We are dealing with our climate policies in the same way as we took them to the election …

The treasurer Josh Frydenberg backed Morrison’s position, by saying Kean was “wrong” to say cabinet ministers want the government to do more on climate change.

After an unprecedented summer season of bushfires which Kean and even Morrison himself have conceded is caused in part by climate change, the federal government is under pressure to do more to fight global heating. ...

Morrison has suggested the Coalition could go “even further” than the target of 26-28% emissions reduction by 2030, which was met with a chorus of approval from moderate Liberals but sparked warnings of negative consequences for Morrison by conservative Liberals and Nationals MPs. ...

On Sunday Anthony Albanese promised that Labor would “take climate change seriously” and have a “very strong” policy that aimed to be “as ambitious as possible” but did not commit to outbid the Coalition because he hoped the Morrison government would take action before the next election.

Albanese confirmed that a 45% reduction target by 2030 is no longer Labor policy and described it as a “mistake” that Labor automatically maintained that target from the 2016 to 2019 election without further shadow cabinet reconsideration.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/20/scott-morrison-ns...

And Labor wonders why it keeps losing elections? The only hope of the Coalition changing its mind is for Labor to come out with an ambitious policy proposal, sell it to the people, and have the Coalition change its approach as it sees its poll numbers begin to tank.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Tragic news about our local fire bomber crew.

The New South Wales Rural Fire Service confirms three people have died after a C-130 heavy air tanker owned by Coulson Aviation crashed in Australia this afternoon.

The aircraft was deployed to fires in the Snowy Mountains. They lost contact with the machine and the flight tracker stopped. “There’s no indication at this time what caused the accident,” NSW RFS commission Shane Fitzsimmons said in a press conference tonight.

There were approximately four other aircraft in the area fighting the fire at the time.

The weather has been hot, dry and windy with smoke and dust in the area. “It was another very difficult, aggressive fire day.”

“We are deeply saddened to confirm there were three fatalities,” Coulson Aviation confirmed in a post on its Coulson Aviation – Next Gen Firefighting Facebook page.

https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/breaking-news-coulson-aviation-c-...

...

I am very saddened to hear of the loss of three lives in the crash of Coulson Aviation’s heavy air tanker while fighting fires in the Snowy Mountains of Australia’s New South Wales. My deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the crew and to the Coulson family. [email protected]

 

"Your local"?

They are being reported as Americans. Where is there information that they are from BC?

I know from the company website the company began in 1960 in BC. In 1990 the US company was created. Was this plane not from the US company?

It is tragic nonetheless but I am trying to understand how they are a "local crew" when the media says otherwise.

Sean try reading the articles posted. When I say local I mean local to Vancouver Island. The Alberni Valley  piece I posted was very clear, if you had read to the bottom.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in a news conference that the crash “demonstrates the dangerous work being undertaken and demonstrates the conditions that our firefighters are working under. There were in excess of 70 aircraft being used today (Jan. 23 in Australia) alone.

“Today is a stark and horrible reminder of the dangerous conditions that our volunteers and emergency services personnel across a number of agencies undertake on a daily basis.”

Berejiklian said there were 1,700 volunteers and personnel working to control fires a number of fires across New South Wales on the day the plane crashed.

Coulson grounded their large air tankers this afternoon in NSW and Victoria pending a review and out of respect to the families of the crew members, a NSW spokesperson said. No names are being released pending notification of next of kin. All three crew members were U.S. residents, Fitzsimmons said.

Coulson Aviation representatives will be in Sydney, NSW within the next 24 hours.

https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/breaking-news-coulson-aviation-c-...

For anyone interested in the company and its amazing history on the global stage as an iconic Canadian wildfire fighting firm they can find out more here. They are well known around the world and us locals are justly proud.

Coulson Aircrane Ltd. is a privately owned family company based in Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada. The company has over 110,000 safe flight hours and has been in the aviation business for over 29 years; operating a diverse fleet of both fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft.

The company's operations include helicopter logging, forest fire suppression, power-line construction, airliner passenger transport and many other industrial heavy lift operations. The fleet is geared for mobility and self-sufficiency and is supported by mobile fuel tankers and aircraft maintenance service vehicles staffed with qualified engineers. These helicopter aviation services are provided to clients on a "turn key" basis.

Coulson Aviation (USA) Inc. was founded in 1990 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Coulson Aircrane Ltd. From 1990 to 1993 Coulson Aviation (USA) provided the personnel for extensive heli-logging operations in Alaska. In the succeeding years, Coulson Aviation (USA) purchased its first C-130 Hercules that currently holds contracts within the United States and Australia. A second C-130 Hercules was acquired for the program in 2015 to accommodate the growing need for large air tankers.

Coulson Aircrane Ltd.(Port Alberni, BC) operate a Business and Quality Management System certified to ISO 9001:2015 + AS9100D for the Manufacture of parts and assemblies, including post-delivery support.

Coulson Aviation (Australia) PTY Ltd was created in 2010 to support Coulson Aircrane's long term operations and commitment to its Australian Customers. It was setup as a wholly owned subsidiary of Coulson Aircrane Ltd. to provide aircraft personnel for Coulson’s rotary and fixed wing aircraft operating under contract in Australia for Firefighting and OffShore Oil applications.

https://www.coulsonaviationusa.com/about-us

Whatever Sean, I merely posted a piece from my local news media that showed up in my Facebook feed because it was being shared among the locals in my region. If you need to go to international imperial media sites to check on the veracity of the Alberni Valley News story I am glad that you found the same information I posted from my local news source. People in this part of the world think they have a connection so not only our MP Gord Johns (who I quoted above) but other local politicians have also weighted in because they see it as  local story.

For anyone interested in local news from Vancouver Island about this tragedy here is a piece from yesterday in my local paper.

Doug Donaldson, B.C. Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, passed on the provincial government’s condolences following the crash.

“Our thoughts are with the family and friends of everyone involved in this incident. On behalf of all British Columbians, I extend our deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the flight crew and to the staff of Coulson Aviation,” Donaldson said.

“The international firefighting community has rallied this year to help Australia during its catastrophic fire season. So far, 45 BC Wildfire Service staff have been deployed to Australia as part of the contingent of 172 Canadian firefighting personnel. We will continue to respond to requests for assistance from our Australian friends during their extremely challenging fire season.”

Port Alberni mayor Sharie Minions expressed the city’s condolences in a public statement. “It is with heavy hearts that we learn of the recent aerial water tanker crash in Australia that claimed the lives of three courageous American crew members on board,” she said. “The international firefighting community is a close knit one and the aerial firefighting sector even more so. Any loss of life is felt deeply among these men and women who have dedicated their lives to protecting our communities.

“The loss is also felt deeply by our local community, having a strong connection and sense of pride in the Coulson family and the work they conduct here. Our thoughts go out to the families and friends of those affected by this tragic loss. The C-130 Hercules crew were heroes putting ther lives on the line to save others, and their commitment to the job will never be forgotten.”

https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/australian-investigators-head-to-...

Keeping Australians Quiet (and vid)

http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/2020/01/keeping-australians-quiet.html

Clearly Canada is far ahead of Australia in advancing similar goals here...

Is this the point where someone should note that the main reason Morrison is in no particular danger of defeat over its handling of this situation is that the Australian Labor Party, it's only real competition for forming government, has spent decades blurring its differences with the Liberal-National coalition government(usually just called the Coalition in Australian parlance), which means that the voters have no reason to think that voting the Coalition out of power would make little meaningful difference at all on climate issues.

NDPP wrote:

Another No Difference Party alternative.

Essentially this is the same debate:

You can complain about a party that is not left enough but there is the issue that they have to be centre enough to get elected. It can be taken as a contradiction if a party is too left to be elected and therefore cannot make a difference.

You could argue that having a party as left as it can be and still have a chance at being elected is useful. In this sense it makes the most difference that a political party elected in a democracy can.

It should not be considered to be the only tool though. You have to have means of moving the public which eventually can be reflected in the party leaning the most left it politically can. This is where you turn to all the other things that you can to advocate and convince the public.

At the end of the day, the NDP and parties like it do influence the political sphere. They do so marginaly becuase they are on the margins but to be more left would only reduce their influence further -- if being left is the reason they are marginal.

The Aurtalian Labour party may be one of these. It has not been eelcted in part becuase Australia itself is not progressive. This means the work has to be done outside politics first.

I do nto accept that politics have to offer all or your best options to make change in order for parties to make a difference. Having parties lean as far left as they can while still being electable shows you what work you need to do. They do make a difference on some issues and they do make a difference in terms of awareness of where the political culture is.

Now we have in some countries real opportunities for a tilt to the left, where the left party can make greater strides. This is due to the work done outside of parties. This opportunity exists for the NDP and even for the Labour party in Australia, the UK and Democrats in the US. We should fault them for lack of courage when they can do more but do not but not for carrying the ball as far as they can down the field (to dare use a sports analogy). I find it difficult to fault the NDP -- most of the time -- when it is the third party in large part becuase it is leading as far as it can. I will fault them when they turn to the centre as they did under Mulcair but I would not claim that theya re a no difference party becuase they do represent a change. Fault the people for failing to understand that a political party is a test of the population but cannot make the population go where it is not. It represents the movement. It is not the movement. If it is not left enugh then the movement has not done enough to convince people.

This is the alternate argument. This is the reason to vote. When you vote NDP you show a desire to lean as left as you can. You encourage them to lean further. But you have to do the work on the ideas and not just complain when a political party cannot do it for you.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I complain that the NDP is not doing enough all the time. I have also elected NDP MP's by my hard work as an organizer. Walking and chewing gum is not that hard. I have helped elect the most "extreme" NDP politicians and am proud of it. Our campaign team consisted of people who called themselves socialist and anarchists because like me they chose to send a voice to Ottawa to speak truth to power not an MP to soft pedal change for votes. I would never work for a candidate that wasn't willing to stand up and spout "extremist" views. Bill Siksay and Sven Robinson proudly call themselves socialists and spoke truth to power. That is my real world contribution to politics. I come  here to chat like I do during campaigns with other like minded lefties who put in the effort to get their message heard.

Unfortunately the party under Jack was so determined to get to the center he demoted and censured his most left wing MP's. When the next Red Tory leader tried to go even further to the center the party collapsed as people chose the real liberal party not the fake one.

Besides we need not just want major societal change at all levels if we are to transition to an environmentally just society. No society has ever elected a government that enacted major changes top the status quo that did not have a mass movement at its back. If you water down the message to a left liberal one then you never educate the masses of workers who get fed pap all day on their devices. The party now is in a real dilemma since it is run by people afraid to talk about real change because the majority of voters are center to center right. No education means no change and the status quo remains.

 

Nothing here I disagree with or anything that contradicts what I just said. I think it is important to elect the best we can and locally we may be able to better or worse than nationally but we cannot expect a party to lead too far from those they ahve to represent. At imes the NDP is criticized for not leading but it is the most progressive force we can eelct and it does make a difference. It also needs to be supported in order to mvoe the political culture and that is somethign we do that a party can only reflect to a certain degree.

When the NDP shames itself in theways youa re speaking of it must be called out but walking away without an alternative diminishes progress.

More than 270 scientists have signed a letter to the Australian government demanding action on climate change, stating that the "The thick, choking smoke haze of this summer is nothing compared to the policy smokescreen that continues in Australia."

PHOTO: The letter comes amid a horrific bushfire season.

More than 270 scientists have signed an open letter to Australia's leaders calling on them to abandon partisan politics and take action on climate change.

The letter comes as Parliament sits for the first time this year and amid Australia's ongoing bushfire crisis.

The scientists, who have expertise in climate, fire and meteorology, are calling for urgent action to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions and for Canberra to engage constructively in international agreements.

"The thick, choking smoke haze of this summer is nothing compared to the policy smokescreen that continues in Australia," University of NSW climate scientist Katrin Meissner said in a statement on Monday. ...

The scientists warned an increase in bushfires was just one part of a deadly equation that suggested the impacts of climate change were coming faster, stronger and more regularly. Heatwaves on land and in the oceans were longer, hotter and more frequent, they said.

Australian National University climate scientist Nerilie Abram said the letter was the product of scientists' despair as they witnessed the deadly fire season unfold.

"Scientists have been warning policymakers for decades that climate change would worsen Australia's fire risk and yet these warnings have been ignored," Professor Abram said.

Separately, Oxfam said the Government must demonstrate it had fully grasped the lessons of this "horrific" bushfire season.

"In spite of the scientific evidence and the extreme weather we're living through — bushfires, hailstorms and drought — the Government still hasn't joined the dots and taken action to tackle the root causes of the crisis," Oxfam chief executive Lyn Morgain said in a statement.

She said Australia must dramatically strengthen emissions reduction targets and move beyond fossil fuels. "The Government's narrow-minded focus on adaptation and resilience simply does not go far enough," she said. She said Australia could wield great authority and leverage globally if it changed its policies.

"If we led by example and immediately strengthened our own emissions reduction commitments, and if we linked our own crisis with those escalating around the world, we could be a great catalyst for stronger international action," she said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-03/scientists-sign-letter-demanding-...

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Rain provides some relief

As this seems to have an immediate impact of suppressing some of the worst fires, will Australia soon be worried about flash flooding?

The combination of extensive wildfires aided by high temperatures and droughts in dry areas, cyclones given increased energy by higher temperatures and able to strike further away from the equator because of the high temperatures, and extreme flooding in tradionally wet areas, are exactly what the climate change models predicted for Australia. Meanwhile, the Liberal-National government continues to push forward with its expansion of coal production, in denial of the grim reality that the continent faces. 

Floods, fire and drought: Australia, a country in the grip of extreme weather bingo

Severe Tropical Cyclone Damien is expected to cause gales on the Pilbara coast this evening or overnight. Destructive winds expected on the coast during Saturday morning. #CycloneDamien http://bom.gov.au/cyclone

Flooding in Sydney from torrential downpour

The people of Townsville know about heavy rain, but this was new. Over the past fortnight, the northern Queensland city’s 180,000 residents have been hit by a monsoon strengthened by a low-pressure front that dragged moist air south from the equator to Australia’s top end.

It dumped an unprecedented 1.4 metres of rain in less than two weeks – roughly double what falls on London in a year.

The ensuing chaos has wrecked homes and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to property. Two men have drowned and videos posted to social media have shown crocodiles climbing trees and taking to elevated highways in search of shelter. ...

The north Queensland flooding is far from the only punishing event in what has been, even by the standards of the continent, a historically hostile summer. Internal polling for political parties and environment groups suggests Australians are increasingly concerned that this is linked to climate change and want to see action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a priority at this year’s federal election. It matches public polling that has found a comfortable majority accept it is a significant problem that needs to be addressed. ...

But after a decade of political fights and ideological warfare, discussion on the subject is often still a combat zone. The Coalition government would prefer not to talk about it at all. 

But after a decade of political fights and ideological warfare, discussion on the subject is often still a combat zone. The Coalition government would prefer not to talk about it at all.

More than 3000 kilometres to Townsville’s south, Tasmania is burning. For the second time in four years, dry lightning strikes sparked a series of blazes on the usually cool, temperate island, many of them in the vast world heritage wilderness area that covers nearly half its territory. In one 30-hour period in mid-January, an extended electrical storm danced across the summer sky, sending down more than 2400 lightning strikes without rain. About 200,000 hectares - 3% of the state’s surface - has been burned, including unique alpine heath landscapes that had not been touched by fire for centuries. The fires are expected to burn for another month at least. ...

Elsewhere, communities in the sparsely populated Australian outback continue to deal with the fallout from a long-term drought. On social media, a Greens MP in New South Wales, David Shoebridge, highlighted a constituent forced to pay $70 a week on drinking water for her and her son after the raw water supply in the town of Walgett was turned off.

A political battle is also raging over the use of water in the vast Murray-Darling river system that fans across the country’s eastern state agricultural districts, with drought-afflicted downstream communities arguing they are being denied water by a national river plan that did not factor in climate change and has been designed to keep dams full at water-hungry industrial agriculture sites in northern states. This claim has been backed by a royal commission convened by the state of South Australia, which lies at the end of the river system, and the continuing disaster of up to a million fish having perished in three mass kills in the west of New South Wales due to water deoxygenation, with more deaths predicted. ...

By Friday, it was clear that up to 300,000 cattle had been killed in the floods. With evidence mounting that authorities were unprepared for the extent of the rainfall, the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, announced an independent inquiry. ...

For most, the most obvious extreme weather shift has been the heat. January was Australia’s hottest month on record by a wide margin, with average national temperatures nearly a degree beyond the previous benchmark and 2.9 degrees warmer than the long-term mean. In New South Wales, the average temperature was nearly 6 degrees hotter than what has been considered normal for the past century. ...

Blair Trewin, senior climatologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, says: “Even taking into account the sustained long-term warming trend of a degree or so over a century, this is certainly at the far end of expectations.”

It is the heat that seems to be shifting public concern about climate change. Political polling suggests it is registering in the top two or three issues of concern for voters in a way it has not since the 2007 election, when the country was enduring a decade long drought, if not ever. The trend is headed in this direction even in some outer suburban electorates, which have traditionally been more driven by jobs and cost-of-living issues. But the shift is not universal. The government is hearing similar messages, but there has been no change in messaging from prime minister Scott Morrison. ...

He drew no link between the extreme weather and emissions in his public comments and he dismissed as a stunt a suggestion by the Greens that he should apologise for backing coal given there was evidence it was making natural disasters worse.

The Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, went a step further while visiting the site of the Menindee Lake mass fish kill, choosing language that suggested outright scepticism about climate science.

“We are looking at climate, of course, (but) climate has been changing since year dot,” he said, before adding: “We don’t want to go down a path of renewables, which is not going to solve anything apart from de-industrialising Australia and making sure we don’t do manufacturing here and pushing electricity bills into the unaffordable state.”

While concern about climate change is growing, there is evidence this position retains support – Essential Media polling late last year, for instance, suggested a slim majority of voters may back public financial support for a new coal power development than would oppose it, though more than quarter said they did not know what they thought. ...

“I don’t necessarily think people are addicted to coal, or think that coal’s great. We haven’t been offered different information or alternatives about different jobs that are available. At the moment that’s not there.”

Her observations underline the challenge in some parts of the country for the Labor party, which is favoured to win the election with a platform of taking climate change seriously, but beyond the electricity sector is yet to explain what meeting its more ambitious greenhouse targets would mean.

Part of the challenge of communicating climate change is explaining the science, particularly the extent to which any extreme event can be linked to increasing emissions.

Attribution science is a rapidly evolving field. Lesley Hughes, who helped launch a Climate Council report called Weather Gone Wild, says emissions are effectively loading the dice to increase the likelihood of an extreme weather event. “What we are now observing is consistent with the climate science – as the Earth warms up, more extreme weather is inevitable,” she says.

In the case of the floods, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which in the event of a storm can mean heavier rain in a shorter space of time.

In the case of the Tasmanian fires, not only has the state become warmer (2.5 degrees above average in January) but low-pressure weather patterns that used to produce rain over the state have also moved further south as the climate has warmed, and evaporation rates have increased. Both increase the risk of dry lightning strike causing a blaze. Hobart, the Tasmanian capital, recorded just 0.4 millimetres of rain in January, the lowest on record. Hughes says governments can obfuscate for only so long before publicly accepting that climate change is now both a mitigation and adaptation challenge. ...

“The prime minister is still pandering to the right-wing sceptics in his party by not talking about climate change. But arguing black is white doesn’t make it so,” she says. “The government has to accept these events are going to get worse over the next few decades and plan accordingly – both to adapt and to be part of the solution instead of the problem.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/10/floods-fire-and-d...

Escobar: Sinophobia meets prison labor in a think-tank down under

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56781.htm

"...So have fun with our little Five Eyes tale, where an Australian 'think-tank' focusing on demonizing China 24/7 gets some of its financial kicks from a Weapons Inc handsomely profiting from Western prison labor."