A question about climate change/global warming.

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

oh wait, here's some proud promotion from Scotty

https://i.imgur.com/fZwyQ7A.jpg

[checks notes again]

https://i.imgur.com/zyb87bg.jpg

(Guessing this is the work of a $190,000/pa comms hire, though. Let's see what sort of brilliant, clear marketing he comes up with under his own steam:)

wishes all fellow dads a great daym let's be the best dads we can be. also thinking of dads no longer with us. thanks dads

— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) September 5, 2009

Donate to firefighters or relief efforts or charities, or to a fund for people who've lost their homes? Ha ha ha ha, no, to Morrison's political party.

that dads tweet is dril-tier

American singer P!nk has just donated $500,000 to firefighters. Morrison is advertising for donations for his own party, who have spent thirty years fighting, weakening, and cancelling existing legislation and actions that were intended to avoid this situation.

Two new fires have just started in coal seams in the Blue Mountains', at Sydney's western edge, second largest town.



https://1v1d1e1lmiki1lgcvx32p49h8fe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/scott-morrison-coal-joyce-aap-960x540.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this

yeah, if just one of those "dads" had an errant apostrophe, it'd be perfect

a $190,000/pa comms hire

whether it's this or a secretary or Scott himself, someone's busy deleting comments on Morrison's facebook ad, apparently within seconds, leaving a sea of this:

https://i.imgur.com/xs6L0vf.jpg

Imagine a terrorist attack destroying 1000 houses, killing 18 people and half a billion animals. Imagine a terrorist attack ravaging millions of acres, causing pollution in cities 11 times a hazardous level. Imagine if it was just the beginning. The world would change overnight.

— Matt Haig (@matthaig1) January 3, 2020

daym let's be the best dads we can be!

#ItsTheGreensFault is now trending.

by constantly repeating the fake news of climate change for so long, the greens have actually willed it into being. shame on them!

Last I checked, that hashtag had been taken over by parodic responses.

Herald sun is full of it. Letters to the editor saying ‘greens dominated councils’ have banned land clearing, a two page article on the need for land clearing, for some variety a letter saying we should take lessons on youth offender management from Joe Arpaio.

Murdoch press full court press on how we should be raking, burning and chopping down the forests so they don’t do it again.

Good luck with this horrible shit. I cannot imagine it really.

I've been searching Australia, Oz, Sheepfuxxors etc for days looking for where people were discussing this situation and finally realised it was happening on this thread.

Anyway, here we are.

Fucking hell.

Are there any ILX friends at risk? I dunno what to say other than to say that I care about this a lot and I care about you all who are affected. And that I know there's really nothing I can say.

I know there are Oz ILX people who aren't on this thread though, so are they talking on ILX elsewhere or using social media?

California has at least a couple wildfire threads, the Aus situation is certainly worth its own thread.

Crazy stories from my sister in law. She said they were at the farm when they got the order to evacuate ... but the main road was closed, so they couldn't go anywhere. They had a place to hunker down, but she said they saw cars lined up and down the side the road, just sitting there, waiting for it to open. She and her family spent their time making sandwiches to hand out to people stranded. She said there was no power, no cell service, and it was really scary trying to track down her husband (my brother in law) who was back at the farm doing his own controlled brush burns to try to protect what hadn't burned yet. She said it was downright apocalyptic, driving through clouds of smoke, huge embers landing on the dash .

cheers jed. there aren't really many regular Australian posters anymore, and most who are still here stick to a pet thread or two.

In more Liberal (tory) Party fundraising hypocrisy, the Minister For Fascism, who's given himself more spying powers than any governmental agency has ever held in Australia, and recently spent $100 million reopening one single concentration camp to hold one single family, is asking people to donate to the Red Cross, rather than coming up with any way for the government to contribute to relief funds or firefighters.



As of the election last year, the IMF estimated government subsidies to fossil fuel companies to be $29 billion in Australia, or 2.3% of GDP.

The report found that if fossil fuels had been priced appropriately, global carbon emissions would be reduced by 28 per cent. Significantly, effective fossil pricing would also lead to a decrease in air pollution deaths by up to 46 per cent. The elimination of fossil fuel subsidies would also increase global government revenues by 3.8 per cent of GDP.

A recent report from the Climate Council estimated that up to $571 billion were predicted to be wiped off Australian property values as a result of the impacts of climate change.

Economists from the University of Newcastle have estimated that a green job guarantee program, set up to create over 600,000 jobs and virtually eliminate involuntary un- and under-employment, would cost around $28 billion.

Here are a couple of (I guess) 60-year-old-ish volunteer firefighters with measured words for the Prime Minister:

Here’s the full clip: “Stand down now. You don’t deserve to govern. You knew this was coming.”

Firefighter who collapsed: “I’ve already lost seven houses in Nelligen. I’m not gonna lose anymore, dickhead.”

via @FocusNewsNow #AustralianFires pic.twitter.com/vTFHjsIetG

— Angus Duncan (@Angus_Duncan) January 4, 2020

I drove right through the southern highlands this spring. I’ve just been going through my photos from tumut through Adimanby to Cooma. This was on my insta from October.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3-2gdQgO_x/?igshid=l83ev061fxdb

It’s all burnt out now. It will grow back, but only at the speed trees grow. I remember riding through kinglake when I first got to Australia in 2013, four years after black Saturday. A lot had grown back but there where still a lot of blackened stumps and bare patches. This will take decades ti recover.

Is this the driest/hottest part of the year or may there, god forbid, be worse weather to come?

December through March is generally the hottest, and the most prone to fires in the southeast part of the continent.

Auckland at 3:45pm today. This is no filter and with colour correction off. Australia is 2000km away. pic.twitter.com/57C5etBkkA

— kendra! join a communist party (@kendra_c__) January 5, 2020

A grim account of the absence of governmental involvement, during the collapse of communication infrastructure, stopping doctors from being able to get to injured or affected people.

Good luck, Australia! The rest of us are next.

Visualization of areas fires have been detected by satellite imaging, not current fires. Credit Anthony Hearsey - Creative Imaging
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENhF2oAXYAAZ7uJ?format=jpg

detected over what time period?

5 December 2019 to 5 January 2020. Originally an instagram post

visualisation of the fires in Aus. This is made from data from NASA’s FIRMS (Satellite data regarding fires) between 05/12/19 - 05/01/20.
These are all the areas which have been affected by bushfires. Scale is a little exaggerated due to the render’s glow. Also note that not all the areas are still burning.

Here would be NASA's interactive rendering over the past 7 days.

From that NASA map it looks like Cambodia is burning up, too.

Melbourne smells of woodsmoke this morning.

This Australian Magpie has been hearing fire engines so often it has started to mimic the sound

Wildlife adjusting to the disaster we created is heartbreaking

This is second only to the time I saw gorillas cover their ears when they heard gunfire pic.twitter.com/Sl7kw4dTFq

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 5, 2020

Two new fires have just started in coal seams in the Blue Mountains', at Sydney's western edge, second largest town.

These fires are now travelling underground, as is typical for burning coal seams.

One in Centralia, Pennsylvania has been burning for 57 years. The entire town was condemned in 1992. Its population was 1,200 when the fire started; the population of Lithgow - not a mining town - is 22,000.



https://1v1d1e1lmiki1lgcvx32p49h8fe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/scott-morrison-coal-joyce-aap-960x540.jpg

"This is coal! Don't be afraid! Don't be scared!

"It's coal, it was dug up by men and women who work and live in the electorates of those who sit opposite.

"There is no word for coal-phobia technically, Mr Speaker, but it is that malady that affects those opposite [the Labor party], and it is that malady that is affecting the towns and jobs and, indeed, this country, because of their pathological, ideological opposition to coal being an important part of our sustainable and more certain energy future."

not a mining town

(that is, Centralia was still a mining town; Lithgow grew as a railway location for coal and iron ore in the 19th century - hence the seams - and there is still a power station in the region, but mining hasn't been its core business for a century or so.)

the "get fucked, from Nelligan" guy is awesome.

Office buildings are being evacuated in Sydney because the fire alarms won't stop going off. the Prime Minister says it's "not the time" to discuss whether climate change is involved, is approving more coal mines, refuses to meet with firefighters or allot emergency services any emergency funding, but is pushing one piece of legislation today: to make it legal again to refuse employment or services to gay and trans people

― insecurity bear (sic), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 9:12 AM

This is the highway leading out of Canberra, the capital of Australia, to the south coast.

Don't worry, the politicians all went home for a few months earlier this month, after postponing the bill that allows you to verbally attack gay, trans, and brown people in the street, or deny them medical attention, or refuse to serve them in shops, or exclude them from jobs.

― insecurity bear (sic), Sunday, December 22, 2019 10:04 AM

(It also took Morrison hours to react when he found out that some of the bathrooms in Parliament House were allowed to be used by any gender, versus four months for bushfires spreading down the side of the continent.)

The footballer then sued the rugby organisation for $14 million dollars.

By the time the legislation was tabled, he was publicly saying that bushfires are God's punishment for gay marriage having been legalised earlier in the year.

The week of that top quoted post, he had received an "extremely pleas[ing]" settlement that left him "vindicated."

So do the Tory fuckers just like being on fire, at this point, in their heart of hearts

They aren't on fire you silly-billy, silby. It's poor people, who don't even OWN coal mines.

This radio talk bloke has been fired and suspended several times for groping and abusing female colleagues, and waving his dick around at a Christmas party, until they got tired of reprimanding him and let him carry on as long as his subordinates resign quietly instead of pressing complaints. He does NOT approve of Shakespearean words though!!!

Anyone who tells a PM to P off and F off for NO reason is feral. https://t.co/aCYArrwnB5

— Chris Smith (@chrissmithonair) January 4, 2020

If he ever started acting like a PM I’m might be inclined to stop telling him to fuck off.

As it is I’m going to tell him to fuck off a lot, especially on Friday outside the star library.

A shocking video of dead animals strewn across a roadside in New South Wales killed in the #AustralianBushfire .

At least 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles are likely to have died in the state alone since September. Devastating.

Credit: The 'new' Batlow Hotel pic.twitter.com/BaGFsMvfm6

— Patrick Greenfield (@pgreenfielduk) January 5, 2020

apocalyptic

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

i may have understated this

― hot nuts (small) (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 2 January 2020 21:09 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i may have understated my understatement