A question about climate change/global warming.

since there is nothing that humans can do to influence climate change, we should turn to the old ways and offer up our people for sacrifice to the gods, in the hopes that they will listen and save us. we should start by ritually sacrificing scott morrison in an elaborate pyre situated in the path of one of angry god's bush fires

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/marine-heatwave-kills-fish-as-australia-faces-record-temperature/11808268

apocalyptic

― hot nuts (small) (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 31 December 2019 08:19 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i may have understated this

I say to those who are delaying action on climate change: Look at the blood-red sky and unbreathable air in Australia because of raging forest fires.

Our futures are all connected. That is why we must bring the world together and enact a Green New Deal. pic.twitter.com/GBQQpDc4vE

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 2, 2020

bernie take my (zero-carbon, renewable) energy

On the bbc lunchtime news today they led with the Australian bush fires, moved on to other stuff and then in the back half of the programme had a story about the floods in Jakarta and the rising death toll there and the record rainfall that’s twice the amount that qualifies as ‘extreme’ and why the fuck is this a totally separate item and why is the death and suffering of poor brown people due to the same underlying cause so much less newsworthy he yelled rhetorically into the gaping void. NB not trying to downplay the horror in oz here at all - sic, ed et al i can’t even imagine the nightmare you’re living through there

jesus christ the denialists in Bernie's replies there

I dunno if it's worse that Gladys thought she should get on TV making sad faces, or that she panics and slinks off halfway through the fire chief's words

Reminder that (the firefighters) are still volunteers, without breathing masks, taking unpaid time off work

Except for the ones that are unemployed: they have had their benefits cut off because they have not been actively seeking work. (The dole has not been raised in 25 years, incidentally. Housing prices have roughly quadrupled in Sydney in that time.)

Good news for the ones with jobs: it's been announced that they will receive (unspecified) compensation for up to twenty days off work, after the fires are over. Four months of fires so far, with another three or four to come, is less than twenty days, right?

(I'm in America myself now Nick, but obviously hooking myself as directly into the nightmare as I can manage, for self-care)

how is this playing politically?

One minister in the LNP NSW government, whose own electorate has been badly affected by fire, responded to the Cobargo heckling by saying "The locals probably gave him the welcome that he probably deserved."

(Don't imagine a saviour: no mention of climate change, weirdly for a guy who as Roads & Transport Minister has approved a foreign-owned eight-lane toll road that seized & evicted hundreds of family homes at below market rate and is going to dump out onto a two-lane street in my old neighbourhood, run by a consortium that had previously underbid and then collected massive cost blowouts in road projects around the world. Approved at a $10 billion tender, it is now projected to cost between $20 and $50 billion. Who can say! We definitely need to funnel more cars into the city though, so why not pay obvious fucking grifters whatever B I L L I O N S they arbitrarily demand for several decades, and when regular humans protest, literally fire every elected councillor in the areas of construction, and replace them with a consultancy firm before gerrymandering the councils away.

(He's got great ideas for raising funds to meet the shortfall, tbf: as Transport Minister, he has repeatedly advocated selling off all public transport: trains, buses, light rail and ferries. Has only privatised a few bus routes so far, though.)

very normal beach scenes, summer happens every year, stop catastrophising you demented greenies

https://i.imgur.com/xs4C2F3.jpg

thanks

Stay safe and have fun this new year, from all of us at ExxonMobil Australia.

— ExxonMobil Australia (@exxonmobil_aus) December 31, 2019

Jeff Bezos' newspaper: Jeff Bezos and Amazon executives are threatening to fire employees who have suggested the company could be a leader in the worldwide effort to avert climate catastrophe.

I shouldn’t read the letters page of the herald sun, not good for my blood pressure. However primitive is given to letter suggesting that some how the (not yet implemented) ban on logging old growth forests and the (not yet implemented) cull on feral horses and the (implemented) ban on alpine grazing along with the old chestnuts about forest management and back burning are given prominence (a few climate change ones as well).

I’m really fine, it all seems quite far away (it isn’t really). Melbourne is hazy today but no more than it would be immediately before it gets hot. It doesn’t smell smoky like it did in Sydney the other week. I’ve been trying to talk to my wife about moving to a more prepared an resilient part of the world but she doesn’t want to talk about it (we just bought a house). My existential panic is more global than local.

Six local governments and the Alpine Resorts in Victoria have been declared "a State of Disaster," giving authorities the legal ability to force evacuations and seize/make use of people's property.

This authority has never been enacted before.

We should hold a poll on whether Scott Morrison is thumped in public by a former fire chief, a currently serving firey or just a member of the general public.

Greg Mullins just compared Scott Morrison on Climate change your Trump on guns after a school shooting.

Greg Mullins - Former NSW fire chief who has been out fighting fires.

Scott Morrison - Sociopathic Thicko, alleged prime minister

Morrison has come up with a plan to mitigate the effects of climate change: sell off all national parks on the eastern seaboard for logging. No trees, no fires, no problem!

Note that even in this truly fucking insane statement, he makes sure to frame it as "the impact of the broader climatic effects we are seeing in this country" - Australia is only a small part of the world, climate change is global. Therefore Australia is helpless to actually lower emissions or stop carving the ecosystem apart to sell coal, and can only react to the world's effects on us.

(Also note that his sociopathy means he can only conceive of an entire continent having one coast, if he lives on that coast.)

great idea, to fight climate change, chop trees down. it's not like trees do anything to mitigate climate change anyway, they're just standing around taking up space and CO2

There’s only so many trees on Australia, cutting them down won’t make a difference when leonardo de caprio Bolsonaro is setting fire to the Amazon.

Seriously, Sic, I can’t see the contents of that Australian piece and I don’t really want to. Can’t be any more mad then the one from the other day that said we should build more dams so we have enough water to fight the bushfires. (NB for non Australians we don’t have enough water for our rivers to reach the seas because we recklessly grow cotton and rice on the driest continent on the planet, so any chance of water filling dams or staying in dams is slim to none).

have you all thought raking the forest? you wouldn't have forest fires if they were properly raked.

Zach, I think you'll find that brain geniuses on facebook have clearly established that the fires are the fault of the Greens Party stopping all federal, state and local authorities from conducting controlled rakes burns, despite the party having come out of May's election with one (1) federal MP compared to the Coalition's 44 Liberals (tories), 10 Nats, and 23 LNPQ members.

who is that one Green federal MP? this is all THEIR fault!!

(Ed, I got it with New Private Window in Firefox; it's apparently pulling quotes from Morrison's presser yesterday that I hadn't seen reported before, framing them with something close to objectivity, adding two Albanese quotes from elsewhere - not op-ed from a Murdoch hack. The main Morrison chunk is:

Asked if the fires were the new normal, Mr Morrison said the season­ had been “quite extraordinary” because of the drought that preceded it but he hoped that would break this year. “That will hopefully ensure we’ve got a differen­t situation as we confront next year’s fire season,” he said.

“That equally then has a need to address issues around hazard reduction in national parks, dealing with land clearing laws, zoning laws and planning laws around people’s properties and where they can be built in countries like Australia, up and down our coast …

“There have been many restrictions put around those issues that now I think would have to be reviewed on the basis of the impact of the broader climatic effects we are seeing in this country.”

)

poxy fuling, so unembedding some urls...

NB: the reason Scotty added his secret Hawaii holiday was because he couldn't take January off, as he had important Prime Ministerial business then. Governing the country? Responding to a climate emergency? No, he's going to India* with a coal lobbyist that he employs** as COS on probably around $600,000***, so the two of them can sell more carbon emissions.

This trip, he confirmed today, is still happening.


* https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/indias-carbon-dioxide-emissions-up-5/article26646376.ece

** https://reneweconomy.com.au/former-coal-industry-boss-is-scott-morrisons-chief-of-staff-69647

*** https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/pm-malcolm-turnbull-defends-pay-rises-for-his-staff/news-story/8b11ce62a86530c915f32fa81077ddaf

Greg Mullins - Former NSW fire chief who has been out fighting fires.

The ex-fire chief who has been asking Morrison to meet with a group of 23 emergency services experts since April, to warn of the conditions they were projecting for summer, on video two months ago

"Catastrophic" bushfires are predicted to hit [Angus Taylor's] electorate... on Saturday

https://i.imgur.com/F4t8Sok.jpg

the Labor Party leader who lost to Morrison's Coalition in May had a $101 million firefighting investment as a campaign plank, to be funded by closing tax loopholes on multinational corps operating in Australia:

https://www.billshorten.com.au/_labor_s_national_fire_fighting_fleet_sunday_17_march_2019

Abbott turned up to annoy up the place on Israel radio. Claims we are in the grip of a global ‘Climate Cult’

Sees to have been checked harder than he ever would on the ABC.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/03/tony-abbott-former-australian-pm-tells-israeli-radio-the-world-is-in-the-grip-of-a-climate-cult

have you all thought raking the forest? you wouldn't have forest fires if they were properly raked.

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone), Friday, January 3, 2020 1:43 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is basically the gist of most of the published letters in the herald sun.

The heat has hit melbourne early

Meant to be a high of 29 today we’re already over 35.

Listening to that whole abbot interview. The guy is a conspiracy nut and he goes on to say that because we had the warming in the Roman period and the little ice age in the early modern period its a ‘matter of simple logic’ that anthropogenic carbon dioxide isn’t causing the the current change in the climate.

Fuck me the guy is a poisonous idiot, but this is what we are fighting.

note for foreign readers: the Herald Sun is a Murdoch tabloid in Melbourne, so virulent that in decades when there was more choice, it was known nationally as The Hun.

From that Graun link: His anti-science views on climate change are well known in Australia and have been corrected many times by leading climate scientists but Mor-Cicurel was not aware of his views before the interview.

hollow lol at foreign media seeing what's happening in Australia and just blithely assuming that a recent Prime Minister would have a sane awareness of events

Meanwhile [Angus Taylor] the federal Minister for Emissions Reductions - last seen 12 days ago in this post, his criminal investigation there now referred to the feds by state police - has just issued an opportunity for business donors to pay to attend the cricket with himself on Saturday.

Apparently the cost is $3000 a head for the chance to peddle influence. Due to optics, however, Angus will now not be attending.

‘make sure you burn as much oil and gas as you can over summer, put your roast in a gas fired oven, fill up your gas bottles, and fly from one end of the country to the other.’

This elected MP, who was parachuted in to his seat by Scotty, posts several of these theories, links and memes a day on Facebook.

getting abused by residents in the only fire-affected town he has visited

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

The video at that link has been updated to add Scotty grabbing the hand of an exhausted, seated firefighter who had refused to shake, the guy snatching it away, and then getting up and walking out of the shed he's taking shelter in, bcz Scott just stood around like a balloon instead of taking the hint. Clip of that.

Here's the followup:

Shortly after the non-handshake:
PM: “Tell that fella I’m really sorry, I’m sure he’s just tired.”
Local incident controller: “No no, he lost a house.”#AustraliaBurning #ausfires #nswfires pic.twitter.com/9PodUTCf9z

— Siobhan Heanue (@siobhanheanue) January 2, 2020

(also note to Americans: 35 degrees is 95 in Fahrenheit.)

An unrolled thread of specific actions / inactions by the LNP Government just in the last two years that have contributed to the current blazing situation:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1212861755212197888.html

Apologies if this has been posted already:

Police are now working on the premise arson is to blame for much of the devastation caused this bushfire season. A strike force will investigate whether blazes were deliberately lit, and bring those responsible to justice. https://t.co/TWh1KQycs4 @ebatten7 #NSWFires #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/Dul8dMFrZv

— 7NEWS Sydney (@7NewsSydney) January 3, 2020

let’s speculate for a minute that a team of dedicated arsonists did indeed set out to torch australia - what were the environmental factors that allowed them such remarkable success and what caused them? makes u think

or, er, not

Police dusting the bodies of half a billion dead animals for fingerprints

thread to encourage us all to walk into traffic:

Until now, I have not been pessimistic about long-term climate outcomes. I thought that a combination of just-in-time action and mitigation would be effective.

— Richard Cooke (@rgcooke) January 3, 2020

we're all depressed enough without this "here's some shit to encourage you to kill yourself" framing, thanks

directly pertinent to viborg's revive.

yeah I don't wanna be fatalistic or nothin' but the fact that the one person who could theoretically do the most to help this can go off endlessly about "windmill cancer" and "bird graveyards" without being challenged whatsoever doesn't give me a lot of hope

this is the story of the last few years in one tweet -

The informational environment is almost impossible to counter. It has an almost Middle Ages witch rumour quality to it no facts can penetrate.

— Richard Cooke (@rgcooke) January 3, 2020

it's no mystery that people don't want to stop what they like doing, how they like living, even if they know it's bad for them. I mean, just read ILX.

Most of the people saying the greens did it aren't (as per twitter thread) low info voters.

This is fine.

Incredible footage of a so-called "fire twister" on #KangarooIsland has revealed the intensity of the flames burning near the Ravine Des Casoars Wilderness Protection Area. 🌪️

🎥: Kangaroo Island resident Brenton filmed this yesterday. #ausfires #SouthAustralia pic.twitter.com/VngAwBEomL

— ABC Adelaide (@abcadelaide) January 3, 2020

I predict that mandatory forest raking will be a precondition for getting your cashless welfare card or NDIS payment.

47.6° (117°F) in Sydney's west today.

Wholesale energy prices maxed out for an hour and were close to max for another hour in NSW after they had to shut down the transmission lines from the Snowy hydro dams with everyone maxing the AC in Sydney. Lucky not to black out some suburbs (or lucky it was a Saturday).

Meanwhile you can see the cool change come through SA and VIC in the price graphs. I love looking at energy market graphs it makes the solution seem so obvious and easy.

Prices went negative as the wind turbines picked up speed. Shows up how poorly connected our electricity grid is when prices in NSW are 1000x higher in NSW than VIC. Australia is not building infrastructure for resilience or renewables. More grid, more geographic diversity in renewables.

Some good illustrations, satellite imagery and graphs in this NYT piece.

https://i.imgur.com/iaf9mUV.jpg

(the 1974 spike includes when the largest tropical cyclone in history to date hit the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory, destroying 4 of every 5 houses.)

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

wE hAvE buShfiRE sEasOn evErY yeAr

Scott Morrison made an appearance at a disaster relief centre yesterday: he donated one plastic shopping bag of groceries, had his photo taken and left.

It has only been noted obliquely in this thread so far, but his complete failure in terms of optics this month is remarkable in that he entered politics on the strength of ten years as national director of tourism marketing for New Zealand* and subsequently national director of tourism marketing for Australia**.


* (a role from which he was fired for misappropriating $184 million in contracts)

** (a role from which he was fired for...[checks notes] ...misappropriating $184 million in contracts? [hits notes, reads them again])

so he was a consistent performer