2019 was Australia’s warmest year on record. It was also our driest year on record.
The country is on fire and water is running out.
Our annual national mean maximum temperature was 2.09 °C above average, smashing the previous record of +1.59 °C in 2013. The annual national mean temperature was 1.52 °C above average. Not looking good for us to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Record low rainfall of 277.6 mm also smashed the previous record of 314.5 mm set in 1902. It’s been much drier than both the Federation and Millenium droughts, except for parts of Queensland who got enormous amounts of rain in a very short period early in the year causing catastrophic devastation.
Whilst Scotty may admonish us that it would be “absurd” to link any one fire to climate change (does he actually know how many fires are burning?), it would be criminally absurd to ignore the fact that all the years since 2013 have been amongst the ten warmest on record for Australia. Of the ten warmest years, only one (1998) occurred before 2005.
Stop saying we can’t make a difference and bloody well work out how we can both through our own actions and through global leadership.
If I hear any more crap about meeting our emission reduction targets “in a canter”, when everyone knows that it is only being achieved by fiddling with land use change figures and carry over credits, I will scream.
Your own report says that, since 1990, transport emissions have increased by 63.5%, fugitive emissions by 51.4%, stationary energy excluding electricity by 53.1%, electricity by 38.8%, and industrial processes and product use by 33.3%.
The only way we can even pretend we have reduced emissions is by claiming that Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) emissions have reduced by 110.4% – a figure that is notoriously difficult to verify and that conveniently ignores bushfires. We may not be cutting down as many trees but we have just burnt down millions of hectares.
80,000 people packed out the Domain for the School Climate Strike last September. Another 30,000 marched this evening in Sydney.
Lies and promotional videos won’t cut it any longer, Scotty.
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