Science & Technology Australia Media Release
Australia’s climate change legislation should be passed with an added commitment to ‘name and fame’ sectors leading the charge to reduce emissions, the peak body for Australia’s 90,000 scientists and technologists has urged.
In its submission to the Senate Inquiry on the Climate Change Bill, Science & Technology Australia strongly supports the passage of the legislation.
The peak body proposes the legislation be accompanied by a funding boost for climate science research to guide Australia’s emissions transition, climate adaptation and resilience building measures.
It also wants the annual climate change statement to Parliament to include updates on emissions reduction progress by each industry sector – and an update on key climate science developments since the last statement.
“Australia’s science and technology sector strongly urges Parliament to pass this climate legislation,” said Science & Technology CEO Misha Schubert.
“We welcome the commitment that the 43 per cent target by 2030 is a ‘floor’, not a ‘ceiling’, for emissions reductions – and we strongly support ambitions to bolster this target in coming years.”
“Climate change is an urgent threat. Australia must act concertedly in these crucial next few years to make our transition as smooth and successful as possible,” she said.
“A deeper investment in Australia’s outstanding climate scientists will ensure we continue to have the expertise we need to safeguard our economy, safety and prosperity.”
Under the proposed legislation, the Minister will deliver an annual climate change statement to Parliament on progress towards the target.
This statement should include an update sector-by-sector to identify those making significant progress – and speed the success of transition, Ms Schubert said.
“‘Naming and faming’ sectors making swift strides towards the target will highlight examples of industry leaders and spur momentum in Australia’s transition.”
“It will also send an important message that we are all working together to achieve a common goal, and making genuine progress.”
“The annual climate statement to Parliament should include an update on significant developments in climate science over the previous year, so Parliamentarians and the public can be assured policy decisions are informed by the latest science.”
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Science & Technology Australia is the nation’s peak body representing more than 90,000 scientists and technologists. We’re the leading policy voice on science and technology with flagship programs including Science meets Parliament, Superstars of STEM, and STA STEM Ambassadors.
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Heartening reading, excellent in thrust, must be supported.., but, today we hear endless sickening news of a former P M, a podpolishing political pervert and plodding poobrain who scorns knowledge, ignores fact, refutes evidence, is infested with the pox of faith and superstition and who must be horrified at the article here, so much disgusting essential common sense.
Hopefully not a red herring comment, but it’d be an interesting exercise if The AIMN had an algorithm that could conduct meta-analysis on its articles – number of views, number of replies – in the context of the category of article: political, environmental, social etc. I say this having scrolled though the ‘environmental’ section and made a quick mental note of page views and comments, and got a quick gut feel for those rough stats against those for other sections, particularly political. While I appreciate deeply how much we are touched by the immediacy of the political circus and its dominance of the daily news cycle, I also have a deep sense of the (now not so) slow burn of the environmental issues that face us all without discrimination or status. Per page views & comments, politics wins hands down. So be it. The clown show always dominates. But we need to keep our feet on the ground, and wherever & if at all possible, keep those responsible for husbanding this planet focused on the tasks ahead.
Salient article in the Guardian today, written by the British environmental and political activist George Monbiot.
The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb.
Amongst his comments… this unsurprising reference to wildlife control in the killing fields of the USA…
‘In the United States, where big carnivores still exist, federal and state agencies wage war against them on behalf of cattle and sheep farmers, often with astonishing brutality. A federal body called Wildlife Services uses poisoned baits, snares and leghold traps and shooting from planes and helicopters to kill wolves, coyotes, bears and bobcats. Its agents have incinerated pups in their dens, or dragged them out and clubbed them to death.
Perhaps its most controversial killing tools are cyanide landmines: spring-loaded canisters of sodium cyanide planted in the ground, that spray the poison into the faces of animals that trip them. They’ve killed a wide range of endangered species, dozens of domestic dogs and at least one person. There are very few places – mostly parts of eastern and southern Africa – in which livestock farmers tolerate large predators, generally where tourism revenues are high.’
It’s no longer shocking; America’s love affair with killing anything that moves is now as familiar as the beliefs of innocent children that milk is from the supermarket and Santa from the North Pole. It seems, nevertheless, that it’s a losing battle when even the government is waging mandated war on the ecosystems that are meant to keep us alive & healthy. But then, the USA is really, after everything else is taken into consideration, nothing but a huge machine built around the enrichment of those whose lives are dedicated to growing small piles of greenbacks into bigger and bigger ones.
Get ready for the EV revolution, it is already happening in China, the USA and Europe but because of the coalition’s negativity it will take a bit longer here.This article in Wired is quite instructive on what is happening in China in the EV space right now.
https://www.wired.com/story/china-ev-infrastructure-charging/
The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV runabout pictured in the article retails for around $US10,000 and has a range of 200km before needing a recharge.
The future is looking bright !
Also, see here : https://www.drive.com.au/news/wuling-hongguang-mini-ev-cabrio-convertible-concept-revealed-in-shanghai/
The little things (molecules) really do matter.
The widely held belief: Global warming is caused by emission caused carbon dioxide molecules capturing surface emitted radiation and the storing it, then later on, emitting it back form the upper atmosphere and thereby adding heat to the surface.
Unfortunately, quantum physics says that this is impossible.
CO2 molecules only store radiative energy for 0.0001 seconds. Their energy is lost by molecular collisions each second which warm the nearby air.
– And they very rarely reemit radiation (probability is one billion to one).
Any CO2 radiation that might e emitted back rom the atmosphere at minus 30 decrees centigrade is very weak and couldn’t warm an ice cube.
But facts don’t matter, do they.
Let’s destroy our economy.
Terence McDonald, I beg to disagree. Facts do matter.
Whether the reemission time is as you state or not, the fact that billions of tonnes of CO2 are dumped into the atmosphere in historically majestic amounts – 36.44 billion in 2019 – and those ‘whatever the number is’ molecules absorbing and then re-radiating infrared radiation, some of which heads out to space and some of which heads back to earth; consequentially, as Blind Freddy agrees, contributing to the warming effects that are increasingly evident on this planet.
Are you disputing the evidence? Oceanic warming and acidification? Glacial melts at historically unprecedented rates. Polar icecaps, ditto? Historically out of median values of rainfall, wildfires, hurricanes (typhoons, cyclones), anthropogenic phenomena – insectageddons, species losses, ecosystem & habitat breakdowns, ramping up of opportunistic diseases etc. etc.?
There is no second tranche of ‘facts’, no alternative version.