Climate Catastrophe
I am one of a growing number of people who accept the science that tells us that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid the extreme effects of the mankind-generated climate emergency.
I am normally optimistic, but the re-election of the climate-change-denying Coalition government sees me feeling less positive.
I keep in touch with news from around the world, I see that – despite POTUS’ intransigence on the need for action – there are growing efforts in many US states to reduce emissions and increase the use of renewable energy.
I see European countries also achieving significantly reduced reliance on fossil fuels. Even China is making moves to reduce its dependence on coal.
My 18-year-old granddaughter, who is a high functioning autistic, was recently charged, I assume under some form of civil disobedience legislation, for gluing herself to the road at the Extinction Climate protest in Edinburgh. I would have gladly joined her were I not so far away!
I have solar panels on my roof. I cannot afford an electric car but I have a very fuel-efficient hatchback. I minimise waste and recycle all I can.
I am appalled at the Coalition’s refusal to even begin effective action. The states and territories are mostly increasing support for renewable energy but the electricity supply network needs central control to take the action necessary to adapt to increasing fluctuations arising from feeding power back into the grid.
The 3-D printed solar film, which the CEO of CSIRO showed the Q&A audience a few weeks back, is already in use in Japan, to generate electricity and reduce evaporation of water – a necessity for life which Australia does not husband well enough!
I seriously wonder whether the weird brand of religion followed by some in government, particularly the PM, has led them to believe that, as ordained by their god, the end of the world is nigh, and they are accepting that as a given, and refusing to try to prevent it!
Certainly, without effective and rapid action, the end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching! Heat waves in Europe are likely to reap deaths from heat exhaustion. Polar ice in the Arctic is rapidly melting with clear implications for rising sea levels and adverse effects on marine life as well as the survival of species like the polar bears.
THE TIME FOR TALKING SHOULD BE OVER!
When governments think in 3-year bites (except when it comes to tax cuts, when they are happy to deny future funds to essential services in order to please voters in several years’ time!) they appear to refuse to consider cause and effect.
In fact, it appears that an alarmingly high proportion of our elected politicians are totally ignorant when it comes to scientific understanding.
We have government subsidies going to those who mine the coal and drill or frack for gas. We have trees being mown down so corporations can increase their profits, and greed and graft are rampant.
Most people reading this on the AIM Network could rightly accuse me of preaching to the converted. But I shall also post it on social media where it just might cause a stranger to think again about priorities and politics.
Where is our Extinction Climate action in Australia?
Our children have already led the way with their Strike 4 Climate rallies.
Are we adults all wimps or what? Do we ignore the truths spoken by Greta Thunberg because she is just a teenager, so what would she know about life and science? She has done the research which governments continue to ignore.
Please, can we set a date, when all who support the need for immediate action to fight global warming can down tools and get out in the middle of our nearest town and outside our government offices and make it clear that we need action and we need it NOW!
And we need to repeat this effort, monthly and then – if no changes are made – weekly!
Our world and the future of our children is in our hands. If we fail to take action, we will pay an appalling price in lives.
THE TIME FOR EFFECTIVE ACTION IS NOW!
LATER WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE TOO LATE!
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29 comments
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Kaye Lee -
wam -
johno -
Ill fares the land -
johno -
RosemaryJ36 -
Kath Sugars -
corvus boreus -
Ken Fabian -
RosemaryJ36 -
johno -
wam -
corvus boreus -
wam -
Ken Fabian -
corvus boreus -
wam -
corvus boreus -
Kaye Lee -
Terence Mills -
David Bruce -
corvus boreus -
Michael Taylor -
Kaye Lee -
David Evans -
Terence Mills -
johno -
johno -
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Return to home pageA UN representative has warned of a possible future “climate apartheid”, where wealthy communities will be “able to buy their way out” of the impacts of climate change while the poorest suffer most. The world’s poorest could “be hardest hit by rising temperatures – and the potential food shortages and conflict that could accompany such a change”, BBC News says. “Developing nations are expected to suffer at least 75% of the costs of climate change – despite the fact that the poorer half of the world’s population generate just 10% of emissions…. the richest 10 per cent are responsible for around half of greenhouse gases. ”
Alston’s comments, contained within a report to the UN human rights council, conclude: “Human rights might not survive the coming upheaval.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-crisis-rich-poor-wealth-apartheid-environment-un-report-a8974231.html?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
beauty kaye some inkling of the way to ruin the deniers.
Clearly 100% of the educated Australians can accept that climate change is a natural process and has been for billions of years. So the less educate can believe the deniers.
Climate is complex and difficult to understand but a greenhouse is understandable. It is absolutely compatible with the picture at the start of this post.
But who cares let us rely on osmosis:
‘Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 as a response to the rising concern over conservation and pollution. The agency oversaw the passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the Mammal Marine Protection Act.’
this hit an impervious layer will climate change move across the cdenierphragm???
Just get rid of ALL the worlds military. That would make a great start.
New research published in our journal Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, has revealed that the US military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than most medium-sized countries.
https://www.rgs.org/geography/news/us-military%E2%80%99s-carbon-footprint-larger-than-most-co/
We could keep the UN for fair peacekeeping.
Climate change is, unhappily, at the tail end of a massive conundrum. One of the key factors in generating wealth over the last 2 or 3 centuries has been the exploitation of fossil fuel resources, both the mining of those resources and the burning of those resources to generate power. This has been facilitated by a massive reduction in the per unit cost of all forms of energy – yes our enbergy costs seem high, but in comparative terms, energy is still cheap.
But William Jevons recognised 200 years ago that increases in the efficiency with which we can generate power from fossil fuels (i.e., extracting more energy from the same mass of fuel source and finding more efficeint ways to mine fossil fuels), results in an increase in the use of fossil fuels, not a decrease – this is Jevon’s Paradox.
Essentially, as energy gets cheaper, we find more ways to consume it.
So many Australians did vote for a government that will take some climate change action. Great, but many of those people went home from the voting booth in their gas guzzling SUV’s or dual cabs, stopping to get takeaway lattes in non-recyclable cups, and when they get to their energy inefficient homes (most new homes now don’t have eaves and we don’t even think about the environmental damage that concrete does) they turn on their 75″ widescreen TV, turn on the heating or air-conditioning that often runs 24/7 on the hottest or coldest parts of the year and is trying to heat or cool very large open living spaces; get a drink from their $4,000 fridge that is connected to the internet, each member of the family then retreating to their private space to turn on their computers to plan the next exotic holiday on a massively-polluting cruise ship or flying to South America so we can go to the Galapagos to trash the environment even further (so we can boast to our friends about our latest wondrous holiday – yes, we ARE that competitive with our affluence and even more so with our friends and acquaintances) or then watch big screen TV’s in their own rooms. Then when all of those appliance fail, or are simply out of date and we want a bigger TV, the old stuff goes into landfill. The list goes on – we SAY we are aware of climate change and want stuff done about it, but what we ACTUALLY DO in terms of behaviours to reduce our energy footprint is very different.
What we should be doing is changing our behaviours, but marketers (yes, like Morrison, Grand Poobah of the Quiet Australian Club) have us wanting more and more stuff in the never-ending quest for visible affluence and it is the environment that suffers, because our individual environmental footprint is growing not shrinking. We expect governments to save us from ourselves, not by making us change our behaviours, but by making sure energy is cheap so we can use even more of it.
At least Amsterdam has not been struck down by suv-itis. The humble bike is still equal on the road.
I’ll fares the land: you are right in what you say, but if a National (better an international) Emergency were to be declared and, as in WWII, we had across the board restrictions, we could achieve a massive reduction in fossil fuel energy use.
It would, of course, require guts on the part of government and that is a really big ask!
We are forcing our children to put their lives in danger because we lack the collective will to force government to act!
Cowards and criminals describes us perfectly if we do not force action.
What use will money and appliances be when homes are on fire or under water?
Hi Rosemary – check out Extinction Rebellion in Australia – there is a day of action planned, in September I think.
Wam,
Thank you for once again sharing you dictates on diction (your sole contribution to any discussions on climate change).
Were you yourself able to construct coherent sentences I might give more credence to your opinions on communication, particularly with regard to convincing anti-scientific ignoramuses and anti-environmentalist morons.
However, since your own posts are mostly garbled nonsense (often including lies) I will disregard your linguistic suggestion.
Ill Fares the Land – the idea that for someone to have the right to advocate society and economy wide responses to the climate problem and be taken seriously they must be pure and non-emitting on a personal basis is quite false – just as doing neither advocacy or personal action on the basis of turning aside from and ignoring decades of top level expert advice is not free of hypocrisy or moral failing. Not caring is not morally superior to being a climate advocate who drive cars – who refuses to withdraw from the society and economy they are part of to prove they care. I think those in positions of trust and responsibility who, in the face of that expert advice, choose not to care – and go on encouraging complacency or worse, opposing climate action and promoting and supporting the very activities that make the problem worse – are hands down winners in any ‘knowing better but doing it anyway stakes’.
Whilst doing what we can personally, because we care, is admirable as well as worthwhile – and if we engage in advocacy, an important component of establishing credibility – I think it is a problem more analogous to a nation facing an invasion, which does not require us to be fighting personally on the front line with our own equipment and resources before we can call on our government to respond in a co-ordinated, nation-wide approach.
This problem is not solvable by the actions of those who care most making personal lifestyle and consumer choices – it requires everyone’s lifestyle and consumer choices to be low emissions ones. Adopting the very stereotype of the stone age lifestyle the opponents of climate action so often claim is what ‘Environmentalists’ want for us all – in some misguided attempt to gain credibility with such detractors – is absolutely the worst kind of messaging on this I can imagine; I for one want prosperity using other energy technologies, not the end of technology and prosperity.
Ken Fabian: I lived through rationing of food, clothing, fuel – none for civilians for several years – and shortages of everything during WWII in the UK. We had no choice and we accepted because we were at war.
We are again at war, but this time with powerful corporations and corrupt politicians,
The Extinction Revolution must involve everyone who cares about having a future for life on earth.
And that means ALL life, and to achieve this we need massive increases in renewable power sources and reductions in emissions.
We need human population reduction by lower birth numbers rather than premature deaths.
We need EVs in massive numbers but reduced effort in producing defence materiel.
We need to all accept a less materialistic lifestyle and a drastic decrease in waste and pollution.
This is all achievable but we need to displace the current leaders who condone all the actions which are exacerbating global warming.
Many houses now are built with no eaves and black roofs,…duh, not good for hot weather.
Sorry, crow for being a simpleton but It seems obvious that to put back into the air in a 200 years what nature took billions of years for nature to remove is going to affect the natural climate change cycles. So I don’t need science to believe the deniers are wrong.
Regardless of my connection climate change is natural and has been going since the earth was formed.(as an atheist I have a problem with the range of god’s involvement which seems more convoluted than my prose)
Although my explaining the difference between weather and climate may have ruined its effectiveness, I will try Kaye’s weather link with the other simpletons.
ps ice melting and sea rising is real and now? Hot houses are real and now. Global warming and global disasters are real and now. Climate change is slow and natural, so It would seem expedient to make the substitution and remove the complexity?
Troll,
You reckon we should all say ‘global warming’ rather than ‘climate change’.
Similarly I (and others) reckon you should say ‘Greens’ rather than ‘loonies’.
The main difference is that ‘climate change’ is a scientific term accepted by most qualified researchers within relevant fields, whereas ‘loonies’ is nothing but a puerile sledge gratuitously slung by a senile bigot.
wow, crow,
Are you allergic to the lord’s ifea of truth telling??
50% of us are below average and you, a highIQed antideluvian smartarse, loves putting us down but perhaps you could explain how queensland voted 23 lnp and 6 labor or how the greens and loonies increased their votes and gained extra cash in queensland and about $9m overall?
Then you might declare the timing of the exercise was to shore up southern loonies who were agreeing with shorten’s policy(alright this is an example of my disgust with narrow nose and his boys can’t add and girls’ because they are silent)
Tell me your version of why labor got flogged and show the greens are not pragmatic, greedy, loonies.
The examples of global warming can be seen, heard and smelt. Climate change is natural is that too obscure for you?
I like to make the point whenever that ‘climate is always changing’ line gets used that is that very susceptibility of Earth’s climate system to change that makes adding huge quantities of CO2 such a serious issue; it would take a climate system that doesn’t change for it to not matter. As an analogy, it is like the vehicle with dodgy steering, that won’t stay on a straight line, that is more likely to veer dangerously off the road, not less.
Don’t be fooled, it is almost always opponents of climate action that have a deliberate preference for calling it climate change rather than global warming – and nothing to do with any being ‘technically correct’; initially because opponents found it made the climate issue sound less alarming (US Republican communications advisor Frank Luntz suggested it) but mostly it is preferred now in order to be the straight line that allows that ‘always changing’ comeback.
And I think those opponents would like nothing more than for climate activism to get ugly; they have already done extremely well shifting the focus from the top level expert advice to political extremism, so that a great many people see only the extremists and do not even see the expert advice. To the point of believing the expert advice itself is a product of extremists – and much easier to mobilise political opposition to political extremists than to the considered advice of CSIRO, BoM, Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, etc…
I truly think it is because effective action is entirely compatible with (responsible, non-corrupt) free enterprise, democracy and the rule of law that makes the obstructors and deniers so desperate that their supporters believe it is not.
Troll,
If I choose to engage with your garbled take on Qld politics, it won’t be on the thread of this author’s article on climate change.
Climate change, or more precisely observed drastically accelerating shifts in global climate, with an overall warming trend, and the obvious (and less) human influences exerted thereupon, is the primary focus of this article.
Scientists put a lot of it down to the way increased gas-carbon traps radiant heat, but there are other climate influencing factors contained and involved in the world-wide human trend of cutting shit down, digging stuff up and making lots of fires and explosions.
If you want to talk to an idiot about potential effects of human activities on weather and climate at a micro-scale, make it a long talk on a hot day, with you standing in the shade of a tree (which are composed of around 50% water) and them standing in the sun.
So you understand, the general trend of global warming is the primary symptom of recently observed climatic destabilisations, but others include things like freak localised cold snaps as ocean and air currents are increasingly altered and disrupted.
This is why scientists, governments and international bodies refer to the increasingly pressing issue of ‘climate change’.
If you wish to stick to saying ‘global warming’ to better influence the minds of mouth-breathers, go for it.
But for you to, each and every time the topic is raised here, automatically jump on to demand that we should do like wise (usually with another repeat-vomit of your ‘100% of scientists believe climate change is natural, yes???’ crap) is an irritating intrusion that adds nothing to serious discussion.
True crow it is irrelevant that climate change is natural for everyone except the intelligent who would have it man made?
If it wasn’t for you loonies and queensland, Rosemary wouldn’t be writing ‘I am appalled at the Coalition’s refusal to even begin effective action’ because shorten would be pm.
wam,
You don’t seem to do the reading-comprehending thing, do you?
I am not a member nor an unreserved supporter of the Greens.
My objection to your moronic ‘loonie’ sledgetag is that it is pointless, inane, non-productive and disruptive to general conversation for you to routinely insult over 10% of the population, as well as a fair slice of the AIMN readership.
It is nothing but self-indulgent malicious trolling on your part.
With your mindless sledging, you are like a stupid disruptive child lat the back of the class, loudly and constantly bawling for attention, and your obsessive anti-greenism is akin to the bitter old wanker whose only contribution to any discussion is a froth-lipped diatribe on what a bitch his ex-wife is.
Others have left off visiting this site due to annoyance over your constant idiotic intrusions, and you can add me to their ranks.
I come to this site for reasonable discussion and informational exchange, not demented bigotry and bullshit
I don’t understand why people being passionate about protecting the environment gets them labelled as loonies. Someone has to amplify what the scientists are telling us.
It is also worth pointing out that the Greens vote in Queensland actually went up this election.
Yesterday the temperature in Anchorage Alaska reached 32c !
Alaska has an unusual amount of extremely hot air, stationary over the whole State. To me that looks like man-made warming! Elmendorf Air Force Base is home to a few U2 Dragon Lady aircraft and DEW installations to protect US against incoming missiles.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/07/03/giant-heat-dome-over-alaska-is-set-threaten-all-time-temperature-records/?noredirect=on
I am in the south pacific for the next 12 months keeping a record of rising sea levels similar to what I was doing in 2016-2017.
When I have evidence of permanent rising in sea levels I will happily share my data.
Good onya Dave.
Some less reputable scientific authorities, such as the CSIRO, NOAA, NASA and the Royal Society, in fact pretty much every reputable scientific organisation on the planet, have long since jumped the gun and conclusively stated that the world’s oceans are definitely rising, and at an increasingly accelerating rate.
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Browse_by_Topic/ClimateChangeold/theClimate/seaLevels
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/new-study-finds-sea-level-rise-accelerating.
https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/question-14/
However, knowing of your immaculate scientific credentials and impeccable research skills, I will await your findings before believing the official statistics and conclusions offered by some of the world’s most credible scientific bodies, and accepted by most of the world’s governments and international agencies.
Meanwhile, just when Anchorage was sweltering under record temperatures of 90F, Trump goes and slaps a tariff on solar panels.
His idiocy, and ignorance, is breathtaking.
An important lesson from Trump – when we design our republic, we must NOT have a popularly elected supreme commander who has the right to personally and individually make executive decisions.
Any fool (like craig kelly M.P.) can come out and deny catastrophic climate disruption is happening NOW. But wiser heads actually make the effort to learn something of the subject. I suggest it’s not difficult to see the effects of the increasing disaster, perhaps ‘google’ “Melting Glaciers” would be a start? Willfully ignorant jack asses like kelly, who continually post and anti science articles and photos etc. should, and will be, facing charges. There is no place for “kellys” in the 21st. century, There Is No Planet B.
Interestingly, when the USA formulated their Constitution it was supposed to have adequate safeguards to ensure that ultimate power vests with the people through the Congress to avoid the imperial power previously exercised by George III.
But something went wrong : as you say, Kaye it is a lesson we should take on board lest we give too much power to an emperor with no clothes.
Why isn’t Slowmo in Dubbo praying for rain ??
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-14/day-zero-approaching-as-towns-run-out-of-water/11271430
We are in a megadrought and Scomo rekons its unaustralian to not eat meat. 1 kg beef needs about 15,000 litres of water, 1 kg potatoes needs about 287 litres of water, 1kg of cabbage needs 237 litres and so on. Do the maths Scomo.
I do not understand why wam believes that climate change/global warming/ anthropogenic warming is “slow and natural”.
Wam, you have not been paying attention. The really frightening thing is how rapidly the planet is warming. Previous warmings have not been so rapid – over more like hundreds of years or millennia rather than decades as the current warming is.
Arguing about terms to call the warming is a waste of time.
Meanwhile, as posters have pointed out, we seem to be unsure about what to do about this warming caused by human action – especially the burning of fossil fuels.
One of those fossil fuels is coal which our present government values because they thing they can continue to burn it in Oz or sell it to someone else to burn.
And oil and gas. Pulling it out rapidly and we are burning it with gusto! On the road there are thousands of people driving diesel vehicles. They fill up at roadhouses which might be burning as much as 70,000 litres of fuel per year to run generators – and there are cattle stations doing the same – and there are thousands of these. And transport trucks, and industry, etc.
So what is going to happen to these people? What are they going to do if they cannot burn coal, petroleum fuels or gas.
We hear about “renewables’ and alternative technologies such as electric cars – but what is the plan?
The present government does not have one. They have not even been unable to reduce energy prices.
What are the plans arising from the Paris Agreements? What is private industry doing to cash in on avoiding the problems of AGW which we know are happening now?
Who could possibly coordinate some kind of binding agreement instead of allowing governments to squib on the whole deal?
Or is it too late already?