A question about climate change/global warming.

Fires are now approaching the capital city of a fourth state. An area half the size of Belgium has been advised to evacuate immediately, before tomorrow.

https://i.imgur.com/iMkopKL.jpg

Due to the loss of disinfection infrastructure through the impact of fire within the Brogo River water supply catchment, Bega Valley Shire Council has introduced a Boil Water Notice.

This Boil Water Notice applies to Quaama, Cobargo, Bermagui, Beauty Point, Fairhaven, Wallaga Lake, Wallaga Lake Heights, Wallaga Lake Koori Village and Akolele, as well as trunk main customers in these areas.

It is not safe to consume the water. All water for drinking, food preparation, the cleaning of teeth and ice-making needs to be boiled before use. Water can then be allowed to cool and stored in a clean container with a lid and refrigerated. Dishes should be washed in hot soapy water or in a dishwasher.

Council will advise residents through local media, Council's website and Facebook page when the boil water notice is lifted.

The Emergency Services Minister for NSW has gone on holiday to France for an undisclosed period of time, while new fires continue to start.

Meanwhile, in Victoria, "The incident controller of the Gippsland fires said he could not confirm whether lives or property had been lost in massive fires that burned through East Gippsland overnight, because it was so hot they had to ground their infra-red tracking plane.

"And he said the beachside town of Mallacoota, where 4,000 tourists and locals are on the foreshore being protected by firefighters, is expected to be hit by fire this morning. Chris Eagle, from the department of environment, land, water and planning, said the fires grew about 60% in size overnight."

Here's a video from some guy at Mallacoota who moved the New Year's party offshore until the town finishes burning.

On land:

My cousin, a forestry professional, spent all night fighting fires east of Tallangatta. He sent this photo to the family group chat #Walwa #vicfires #AustralianFires #Australiabushfires https://t.co/VG3Yrg3jPX pic.twitter.com/FCNOxlqULI

— Declan Kuch (@agentdeclan) December 31, 2019

In the water:

Earlier this morning in Mallacoota.

"A mother took this photo. Her two primary school aged sons are in the boat with her. They're out on the Mallacoota lake trying to stay safe from fire, it doesn't look like it but it's daytime." - @ABCGippsland pic.twitter.com/WVi1Mz8dTz

— Sean Power (@seanpowerAU) December 31, 2019

apocalyptic

jesus that eerie filtered light, it's like you imagine ancient extinction events.

we’re bringing back extinction events for the 2020s baby!!1!

Humanity is going out in style, that's for sure!

I've got this book by an oxford professor of geology on the causes and history of extinction events. The cover illustration with desolate landscape, a couple of dying desert trees and a glowing sky. It is probably supposed to be either the Permian or Jurrassic "post-apocalyptic greenhouses". Don't need silly fantasy illustrations - it's here!

you

uh

you love to see it?

*closes thread, tries very hard not to think about the future*

he could not confirm whether lives or property had been lost in massive fires that burned through East Gippsland overnight, because it was so hot they had to ground their infra-red tracking plane

kinda showing up the paucity of George Miller's imagination here

Mad Max 2 was made in 1981, he's looking alright for prognostication of societal and environmental collapse due to an unstoppably destructive fossil fuel policy imo

Visual imagination I meant to say

Fury Road was written around 2004, with its "don't get addicted to water, it'll make you weak" government. Two weeks ago the Queensland state government announced a plan to bill farmers $100,000 apiece to install water monitors on their dried-out riverbeds.

Two and a half years ago, the same government gave the Adani coal mine permission to divert unlimited water from rivers and farms' groundwater for their own purposes for a period of sixty years, while 90% of the state was already 5 years into drought.

hey, if Warner Brothers weren't still refusing to pay him for making Fury Road, he could be out there shooting B-roll right now. Amortise the costs of paying him his contractual rights against the special FX savings.

imperator furiosa we need u now more than ever

tbc I wasn't knocking Miller so much as praising the spectacular visual effects of the actual apocalypse

oh yeah I get it, just being mordant since I rewatched Max 2 recently and was reminded how campaigners, scientists and popular fiction in Australia have been predicting these outcomes for forty solid years

It's easy to think of girdle-clad and artificially-coloured Immortan Joe with his two scheming, deadshit failsons as Trumpian now. But, say, this bloke was Minister For Local Government And Main Roads in Queensland* for 13 years and diverted a motorway so that an exit would go past a bottle-o (off-licence / liquor store) that he owned:

https://i.imgur.com/GoyMPI4.jpg

* and concurrently held portfolios as Minister For Racing (ie horse gambling) (he was also a professional breeder) for seven years and Minister For Police for two. Oddly, he resigned during statewide corruption enquiries that lasted a couple of years in the late '80s.

This is good content sic, especially the geopolitical specificity of MM (which is clear in the movies tbf)

That dude looks even more like a Mad Max monster in the tiny pic on my phone

"diverted a motorway so that an exit would go past a bottle-o (off-licence / liquor store) that he owned"

really tickled me did this, almost like the guy! (but obv not really)

visual one for Noodle:

The crew from Fire and Rescue NSW Station 509 Wyoming recorded this video showing the moment their truck was overrun by the bushfire burning South of Nowra. The crew was forced to shelter in their truck as the fire front passed through. #NSWFires #ProtectTheIrreplaceable pic.twitter.com/Hb0yVrefi9

— Fire and Rescue NSW (@FRNSW) December 31, 2019

how campaigners, scientists and popular fiction in Australia have been predicting these outcomes for forty solid years

Mark Colvin was mocked and attacked by Murdoch goons like Andrew Bolt for 'believing the new pagan religion' after airing warnings like this, back in 2003.

MT @Colvinius Will climate change mean more catastrophic bushfires for Australia? @Raf_Epstein https://t.co/hfpD0PuGcI

— Alt-Rupert (@TheMurdochTimes) December 31, 2019

all seems good and normal. jfc

i'm sure entire land masses going on fire is just a normal function of periodic climate change. maybe sunspots or something.

according to my father in law this is just a normal cycle

we should have a sweep on what percentage of the world has to be fucked before climate change deniers admit the vague possibility that this isn't "normal"

in geologic time lots of major cities being under 100 ft water was just "a normal part of the cycle", but hey let's not be in too much of rush to get there!

Australia is seven minutes from starting the second month of summer. Totally normal cycle for beachside towns to be wiped out after five months of fires, at this stage every year.

seemed a bit gauche of Auckland to set all them fireworks off tbh

Don’t worry the SYDNEY fuck you to the dead and fieries is kicking off right now. (And melbourne which I can actually hear)

I stopped posting about the Prime Minister because it was making me even sicker trying to re-read & condense his daily cuntery, but he was sighted this morning literally rearrranging deck furniture on the patio of his taxpayer-funded mansion, to enhance the view for his donors & friends of the Sydney Harbour fireworks.

xpost

deckchairs on the titanic morelike

I stopped posting about the Prime Minister because it was making me even sicker trying to re-read & condense his daily cuntery, but he was sighted this morning literally rearrranging deck furniture on the patio of his taxpayer-funded mansion, to enhance the view for his donors & friends of the Sydney Harbour fireworks.

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Tuesday, 31 December 2019 bookmarkflaglink

So...he will probably be re-elected then?

❗Breaking News❗

A new provisional maximum temperature of 18.7 °C was recorded at Achfary in Scotland on the 28th December 2019

It will be quality controlled & if validated would be the highest temperature officially recorded in the UK during December pic.twitter.com/FXVMXvcR5I

— Met Office (@metoffice) December 31, 2019

hell yeah it’s the scottish riviera

So...he will probably be re-elected then?

He was only "elected" (Australia doesn't vote for PMs) in May (after ascending in an inter-party coup last year, by leapfrogging the conspirators while they were knifing each other), so doesn't have to run again for another two and a half years.

My local member became national leader of the opposition after the election, and decided the way to win next time is rather than marketing moderate centrist or, heaven forfend, progressive policies, to spend three years attacking the right-wing coalition for not being right wing enough. So they're out there complaining that the government should be putting more brown people in concentration camps, to get better value for money on the actual billions being spent on running them. As recently as two days ago, he agreed that "now is not the time" to discuss beginning to think about possible plans for transitioning away from coal at some point, because the country is on fire and that's what's important.

The Greens (who are a party of broad, very very mildly progressive policies, not a single-issue environmental lobby) have been growing in electoral popularity for 20 years, but are absolutely marginalised by the destruction of non-Murdoch, non-Facebook media under the last few LNP governments, so have massive difficulty getting their policies in front of voters.


An LNP government managed to pass gun control legislation, against the wishes of their base, in a matter of months after the country's only mass shooting by an individual ever. (Legislation that had been languishing for 12 years, at that point.) A PM who doesn't actively shill for the coal lobby in Parliament, and isn't waiting to be Raptured, could absolutely have responded to the fires two months ago by announcing the need to create tens of thousands of jobs in the renewables sector, appeared on TV every day at the site of a new fire and pushed this message, and passed bold & sweeping legislation when parliament reconvenes in February.

Farmers are the rusted-on N voters that get the L politicians into government via coalition, and all they need is to be told that climate change is real (which they have already seen with their own eyes) and something can be done about it: the ideological opposition would stop existing if that ideology was no longer handed down. Without an opposition party though, and no personal belief in the future of the planet, Morrison has literally no incentive to change anything between now and the election. Right-wing governments usually trash the economy, and take over once a centrist government has patched some of it back up: the budget is in surplus, so Morrison's policy is simply not to spend money on anything, such that they can campaign on being the only govt to ever carry a surplus through to next election, or w/e.

Do we need to Mention our useless prick of a prime minster used the party he is hosting today (as opposed to the one last night) to deflect questions on the underlying causes of the bushfires and to encourage us all to be inspired by the great feats of our cricketers.

9 people confirmed dead today with more missing.

It’s probably for the other thread but surely the LNP will knife ScoMo in the back.

I’m guessing too much of a useful idiot.

Did I say useless prick? I should have said evil Christian millenarian sociopath.

Apparently he has deleted every Facebook reply on his “we can ignore the fires now, the cricket’s starting” press release that isn’t made by a fellow Pentecostal xtian, though I can’t check that obv

remember when the party spent 20 years trying to marginalise Tony Abbott because he was a religious nutcase, then got exhausted and accidentally made him PM, then had to knife him when it turned out he was too completely cooked in the head to function in a managerial role, let alone lead a country? I guess it was a long time ago, no lessons to be learnt from ancient history

*checks watch * ah yes, September 2015, or The Before Times

Different kind of Christian though, Abbott’s lot had incense and serial pedophiles in leadership roles. Maybe they though it could work without the incense.

Morrison’s personal mentor covered up the founder of their church’s serial child molestation in two countries, but there’s only room for one leadership role in a prosperity gospel. So once he’d taken charge of the church himself, Houston let the cops take his dad.

(For sure Morrison’s religioniness sailed under the radar, especially when the party is nominally made up of Christians themselves, by being less ostentatious. Recruiting for your teenage gay conversion camps and pregnancy jails through a multinational chain of popular coffee shops, and running the most jaw-droppingly obvious chart-rigging operation in music history, stands out less than robes and incense.)