A question about climate change/global warming.

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

Apocalypse Next Week And The Week After That, lol we're all gonna die

The managed apocalypse is moving on a bit faster now

cool to see my posts are now so normalised that it takes a fellow Brit posting the same info to break through the apocalypto-recognition-meter :)

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?

It's now been specified, and expanded: both unemployed and employed-but-fighting-fires-instead firefighters can apply for 13 weeks of Disaster Recovery Allowance.

The Disaster Recovery Allowance is the same amount as the dole, which has not been raised in 25 years.

It will also be taxed as income. A few years ago, the LNP government instituted a "robo-debt" administration system, where a broken algorithm will conclude that people on benefits were overpaid (usually if they were working but underemployed) and seize their bank accounts. Many people, especially chronically ill, have killed themselves after being robo-debt-ed, you might be surprised to hear! Firefighters will thus be eligible for $220 a week, in a few months, but about a hundred of it might be taxed, and if they return to work after the fires -- if the fires end -- then a known-to-be-faulty computer system might take the rest of their money too.

don't worry though, Scotty's got some good support behind him

Thanks for the call @realDonaldTrump and for your strong messages of sympathy, support and friendship for Australia during our terrible bushfire season. Thanks also to the American people for their many messages of support. Australia and the US are great mates. 🇺🇸 🇦🇺

— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) January 7, 2020

hope we can get the fires put out in time to send thousands of Australians to murder ppl in the middle east because a POTUS asks again

publicly saying that bushfires are God's punishment for gay marriage having been legalised earlier in the year.

Has he ever stopped and considered that maybe this is God's punishment for electing ScoMo?

The next week, he prepared charts proving that climate change is a "lie" and a "fraud," in order to wave them on a live televised weekly political panel discussion show. Due to "concern about the government's climate change position, [with MPs privately] arguing it was a weakness in the election campaign despite Mr Morrison's surprise win," Morrison barred him from appearing on broadcast TV*.

oh hey here he is on Good Morning Britain this morning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFvTrdOqdXo

note that while Morrison is now saying on TV that of course his goverment, long before he was the head of it, has always believed in the link between climate change and man-made blah blah blah

- Morrison personally intervened* to keep Kelly preselected for his seat
- Morrison personally nominated Kelly to appear on BBC Radio 4 to represent the government on Sunday, which is presumably where GNB picked up on him, if he wasn't personally recommended again
- Kelly was Chair of the LNP's Environment & Energy Committee, 2016-2019
- Kelly invited goons from the IPA to present to the government ahead of the Paris agreement
- Kelly set up a formal group for coal exporters to lobby parliament

Whatever lip service Scotty or LNP reps say now that they've finally realised the general populace have caught on, Craig Kelly still actively represents their position and intentions.

Kelly followed the above TV appearance by referring to Laura Tobin as an "ignorant Pommy weather girl."

Here are some of his greatest hits that made Morrison, weeks after becoming PM through a coup in 2018, leap to keep him in the government:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/10/25/why-did-scott-morrison-save-craig-kelly-from-preselection-defeat/

https://chaser.com.au/general-news/no-one-could-have-predicted-this-says-government-that-was-warned-about-this-in-1988-1993-1998-2001-2004-2009-2010-2011-2012-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017-2018-and-2019/

https://www.themonthly.com.au/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/Scott_Morrison_07012020.jpg

absolutely demented posed photo from Scotty, atop this summary of the goverment's inaction over the last month or two

It looks like he has been impaled in his crotch by that table.

"Research from QUT shows that 'some kind of a disinformation campaign' is pushing the Twitter hashtag #ArsonEmergency. There is no arson emergency"

Trump is piling in to help spread it.

Australia and the US are great mates, I hear.