A question about climate change/global warming.

It occurred to me looking at Au election maps that most of these fires have been in electoral districts won by the National Party. Has McCormack been similarly useless?

McCormack has today announced a new policy of the Morrison/McCormack government to lower vehicular emissions: reducing speed limits in areas used by pedestrians, cyclist and the chronically ill.

However,

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has backed the nation's $70 billion coal export industry, agreeing with Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton that ending local exports would only increase global emissions.

We have magic carbon free coal here in Australia.

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

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

the Sydney Morning Herald, 1987

yeah but those arsonists tho

At least we can all agree that it's anthropogenic.

An LNP government ruled under PM John Howard for eleven years from 2006 to 2007 (more than half of that due to Howard's 2001 campaign lie that brown people drowned children, which led to the series of concentration camps on which Australia continues to spend billion$). Even before being elected, Labor PM Kevin Rudd and state & territory leaders commissioned a climate study by economics professor Ross Garnaut.

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

"Recent projections of fire weather suggest that fire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later, and generally be more intense.

"This effect increases over time, but should be directly observable by 2020."

By... 2020, you say? Sounds like some science fiction bullshit.

"the weight of scientific evidence tells us that Australians are facing risks of damaging climate change".

"The risk can be substantially reduced by strong, effective and early action by all major economies. Australia will need to play its full proportionate part in global action. As one of the developed countries, its full part will be relatively large, and involve major early changes to established economic structure."

One of the report's key recommendations was the implementation of an emissions trading scheme. Rudd failed to enact a (pissweak) ETS, but an effective one was established by his successor Julia Gillard in 2011, in collaboration with the Greens.

Garnaut calculated that the overall cost to the Australian economy of tackling climate change, modelled under CO2 concentrations od both 450ppm and 550ppm, was manageable and in the order of 0.1-0.2 per cent of annual economic growth to *checks notes* 2020.

(In 2013, Rudd knifed Gillard, became PM again for a couple of months, and then lost an election to the Mad Monk, Tony Abbott, who axed the ETS and eradicated the Climate Change Commission.)

In 2009, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation also released a report on effects of climate change ar current rates.

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

Obvious disaster fantasies - even if climate change were real, surely we wouldn't be seeing changes like that as soon as 2020.

In 2014, Abbott cut $140 million in funding from CSIRO, resulting in 500 job losses, particularly in the area of climate research.

What would Professor Garnaut say if he'd been in any way accurate 12 years ago, and was thus worth listening to now?

"Although things are bad, they will keep on getting worse if the concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere keep increasing."

The report said there could be a 300 per cent increase in the number of days with extreme fire weather by 2067.

"It's in the interest of the whole of humanity that we move promptly towards zero net emissions," he said.

"Australia has a stronger interest in that than any other developed country because we are the most vulnerable of all developed countries.

"Australia will also be the biggest economic beneficiary of effective global mitigation because we have the best renewable energy resources and the best opportunities for capturing carbon in our geological and biological landscapes."

He's probably just looking to get another government research contract, though. Selfish prick.

from 2006 1996 to 2007

Have you noticed that every Facebook group is now about #AustraliaBushfires?

Another poster, Daniel Fanning, said he sarcastically wrote "please remember that climate change is the only factor in the fires" in VCE DiscussionSpace (a group about final high school exams in the state of Victoria) to challenge the way the group's 67,000 members were thinking about the fires.

"While I agree that [climate change] can exacerbate it, many people are claiming it to be the singular factor while ignoring other contributing factors such as arson."

Fanning doesn't think it matters that the group was created as a place to talk about study notes and practice questions, not politics.

"I feel it's a good place for people to voice their opinion and partake in discussion with people of a similar age. I don't mind the negative comments and feel they're enjoyable to read regardless."

Deputy Prime Minister (in November) said that only "raving inner city greenies" believed in climate change, today has said that it's really meddling kids responsible - “Most of these fires are being caused by little Lucifers running around with matches and firestarters and creating havoc" - in response to the state's Energy & Environment Minister noting that this is the hottest year in state history, surpassing last year, which was the hottest year in state history, and that record drought is a cause of extreme bushfires, which scientists predicted.

― insecurity bear (sic), Friday, December 13, 2019 9:09 AM (one month ago)

Yesterday, the (NSW) state Energy & Environment Minister told Sky News that "some of the most senior members of the government" were raising concerns about the Coalition's climate change policies.

"And they are not moderates. They are from the right of the party," Mr Kean said. When asked if this group included cabinet members, Mr Kean said: "in cabinet, absolutely".

"This is because their communities are crying out. They are listening to their communities saying 'We want you to protect our environment.' "

Mr Kean said there was "widespread support for the Prime Minister to take strong action when it comes to climate change".

"I understand a group of moderate MPs and MPs right across the party, from different states and different factions, all want to see decisive and responsible action."

Today, Scott Morrison responded on multiple TV and radio apearances "lol who the fuck are you, shut up and sit down, I'm the Prime Minister and you're just from a state government, you little pissant."

Morrison won't even go on the ABC, but he calls in to the right-wing talk radio station in Sydney

The show that Morrison regularly calls in to has been off air for summer holidays, but came back today. The host had some tough words for Scotty after his inaction and lying about his second taxpayer-funded overseas holiday in five months:

https://i.imgur.com/zNrBp7U.jpg

Ray Hadley also hasn't tipped his hand on climate change one oway or the other, previously. But he's getting a bit bloody peeved that people are now saying climate change is gonna happen, when they previously predicted "global warming" and "sea levels rising" and those eventually never happened!!!!!

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

Scott not only agrees, he furthermore advises Hadley twice that he is right.

bloody climate change isn't real! it's all underage arsonists

meanwhile in Canberra (where the federal government is located but Scotty won't live and commutes from a taxpayer-funded harbourside mansionin Sydney instead), it's still a few weeks before the government comes back from its own summer holiday. Let's see some video from this afternoon.

Hail destroying the trees at Parliament House.. poor gardeners pic.twitter.com/bHEES1yhHy

— Tamsin Rose (@tamsinroses) January 20, 2020

Yeah it really hailed.. pic.twitter.com/iEfG7iQ0ST

— Tamsin Rose (@tamsinroses) January 20, 2020

very fucking cunning arsonists, changing their tactics to throw cops off the scent

(late last week, some mild outrage sprung up about the Liberal (tory) government directing $100 million in sporting grants to projects exclusively in Liberal seats, with Morrison affirming that no disciplinary action will be taken against the minister who misappropriated directed the funds.

Today:
Scott Morrison's local soccer club boasted about funding weeks before grants announced

The president of the Lilli Pilli soccer club, Greg Storey, is director of an online male underwear store who was picked by Mr Morrison for a government board role when the now-Prime Minister was treasurer in 2018.

His five-year role with the Payments System Board required him to attend four meetings last year. He will be paid more than $300,000 over five years.

what a coincide-

Mr Morrison said when launching the clubhouse last year that he and Mr Storey had known each other since before he was an MP.

)

While the focus in on the Southern Hemisphere, I took a look at Moscow's weather

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/russia/moscow/historic?month=1&year=2020

Every day in 2020 has been above 0C at some point. There's been a couple of lows at night of -6C, but most the lows are around -1C

2011-2019 had lows of -18C down to -30C, with very few days above 0C

2011-2019 Januarys

Hail at the National Film and Sound Archive HQ in Acton, Canberra 'punctured the roof like bullets'. @canberratimes pic.twitter.com/qIq1zqeIzq

— Tim the Yowie Man (@TimYowie) January 20, 2020

seems bad tbh

https://i.imgur.com/QdDqhV3.jpg

Parliament House, two weeks ago / today.

TBF really big hail, stand up paddle boarders being eaten by crocodiles and massive corruption scandals are what the news in January is meant to be about.

Climate change now detectable from any single day of weather at global scale

^ (abstract of an academic article)



Buzzfeed Asked All 77 Government MPs For Their Views On Climate Science. Two Got Back To Us

320 nectar bats were killed by hail , and more injured, in one Canberra park yesterday. These dudes could have pollinated regrowing forest / bush in the coming years, if the Territory gets one or towo without fires.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FBWIZwxc.gif&f=1&nofb=1

oh no, here's some really sad news :(

BHP, the world’s single largest mining company based on market capitalisation, has an issue with the Australian bushfires. It’s not that millions of hectares have burned, that an estimated billion-plus animals have lost their lives, or that the nation at large is currently breathing some of the most heavily polluted air in the world. It’s not that dozens of people have died or that thousands have been displaced. The issue BHP has with the Australian bushfires is that they’re damaging coal production.

The multinational mining, metals, and petroleum company claimed in an end-of-year operational review that smoke and dust from the fires had negatively affected the air quality at their coal mines in New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia and the one that’s been most widely affected by bushfires. If the air quality continues to deteriorate, they added, “then operations could be constrained further in the second half of the [fiscal] year [ending June 30].”

These constraints have thus far included machinery operating slower than usual as a result of reduced visibility, and staff taking leave throughout December to make sure their houses weren’t burning down — leading to reduced coal production.

Jeremy Moss, a professor from the University of New South Wales, pointed out last year that, "BHP's emissions from its global fossil fuel operations alone were more than the whole of Australia's domestic emissions… If BHP were a country, the products it produces would cause emissions greater than those emitted by 25 million Australians."

Australia exports about AU$67 billion (US$46 billion) worth of coal every year, and is the sixth-largest producer of fuels that release carbon, according to The New York Times. What’s more, a 2019 report from the United Nations Environment Program found that these emissions are expected to double by 2030.

tfw the catastrophic side-effects of unchecked capitalism start interfering with your ability to do more capitalism

FWIW, a beautifully written first-person account from my SIL about living through the conflagration.

http://www.eleanorlimprecht.com/the-burning/

Three American firefighters died in an air tanker crash in NSW this morning.

Parliament House, two weeks ago / today.

Two hours ago, fire reached a recycling plant nine miles / 15km from here. Toxic black smoke is spreading through the area, and the Canberra airport has been closed.

It rained in Melbourne, washing smoke and dust into the Yarra river.

Scotty claimed today that Australia's emissions will be cut by 42% over the next ten years!

(He has no policy changes or plans of any kind to reach this made-up target, the Department Of Environment's best projections are for 4%, and nearly 80% of Australia's 2020 permitted emissions have been generated *checks notes* ...already, by ... *checks notes again* ...the bushfires.)

Maybe he plans to pray it away.

As repeatedly noted, Morrison is a Pentecostal worshipper with a separate personal mentor who runs the largest prosperity gospel grift in the world. By inference, he believes God wants to destroy the planet, and that death is God's punishment for being poor. Coal companies give you hundreds of thousands of dollars if you give them $27 billion in subsidies and the ability to stop agriculture and destroy the homes of traditional residents. Why would you pray that away?

The producer of the Jersey Boys movie also says that the US has somehow reduced emissions more than any other country, despite pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and that divesting from fossil fuels won't do anything to reduce emissions.

When asked how that would affect the U.S. economic model, Mnuchin took a swipe at Greta Thunberg.

“Is she the chief economist? Who is she? I’m confused,” he said. Then following a brief pause, he said “it was a joke.”

“After she goes and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us,” he concluded.

“Economics,” you say pic.twitter.com/on8C0h69sm

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) January 23, 2020

Parliament House, two weeks ago / today.

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Tuesday, January 21, 2020 9:50 AM (one week ago)

On Monday, an army helicopter was on reconnaissance to clear landing zones in a National Park next to Canberra, in case a fire started and drop zones were needed to fight it.

The landing light on the bottom of the helicopter started a fire in this nature preserve that spread by 400ha an hour, and was at 7,900 hectares by Tuesday evening.

Fire in Canberra, Australia’s capital. Looking south over Lake Burley Griffin. Parliament House is in the left of the shot. pic.twitter.com/masgYPEOSp

— Ash Andersen (@TheAshAndersen) January 28, 2020

RAW timelapse footage of the last few hours - Orroral Valley fire -Out of control #canberra #australia #AustraliaBurning #AustralianFires pic.twitter.com/akBjC8AIof

— Martin Ollman (@martin_o) January 28, 2020

The government is still on summer holiday, and has not returned to Canberra in nearly two months.


Also in Canberra:

Bezos has announced that Amazon will donate $690,000 to bushfire relief in services, if agencies and government services switch their operations to AWS storage.

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Monday, January 13, 2020 2:02 PM (two weeks ago)

"Tech giant Amazon has apologised after a technical upset caused a website providing crucial emergency bushfire information to crash.

For several hours on Thursday afternoon, the website Canberrans are meant to go to for emergency information was taken offline as a dangerous fire threatened properties south of Canberra Airport."

Our PM says apparently Australia is doing enough and we should get onto adapting to being on fire every summer. (PM remains a prick)

Is the Australian Government part of a global conspiracy to worsen Climate Change? Probably.

Read through and see if your government is implicated too!

These silver dribbles? They’re solid metal. The heat from the fire at Yowrie literally melted the bottom out of this car. Glass has melted too... that means temps of around 1400 degrees. It’s difficult to fathom. #yowrie #cobargo #AustraliaBurning #bushfiresAustralia pic.twitter.com/UoZ0FgKtMM

— Ruby Cornish (@rubycornish) January 28, 2020

bush fires can't melt steel cars

pre-teen arsonists, pushing the cigarette lighter in on every grandparent's car when they get a lift, done the 2019-20?? bushfire season

jfc

This Ceramic Artist Survived the Australian Wildfires by Crawling Inside His Kiln

One single fire that the NSW volunteer firefighters have been combating since November 27th is now classed as Contained.

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

Scotty has today come up with a way to make this concentration camp more economically efficient: Australians exposed to the coronavirus will be evacuated from Wuhan to the island and quarantined, as long as they agree to pay for their transport and containment

because it's very important not to allow anything from foreign nations to affect the health of Australians

Christmas Island, located 2,600km from the Australian mainland in the Indian Ocean, is the site of a notorious immigration detention facility that currently houses a Sri Lankan family of four.

unbelievable

PM says apparently Australia is doing enough and we should get onto adapting to being on fire every summer

what's the cost going to be of retrofitting every motor vehicle on the continent with allover drenching protection tanks like this?

This vision from the Dunmore brigade of the @NSWRFS from early January is terrifying. It shows how quickly a fire can move 🔥 pic.twitter.com/dhrnpBX1un

— James Glenday (@jamesglenday) January 30, 2020

wow, that footage at the end is really is terrifying. amazing how the fire leaps the highway so easily

And yet ScoMo wants us to create more fire breaks because they are so effective.

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/

But on this particular Wednesday, as the winter sunlight in his living room was dimming and the charger for his spare ankle bracelet battery flashed on a nearby shelf, his optimism about his epic battle against one of the biggest oil companies in the world seemed to be flagging. “They are trying to totally destroy me.”

Donziger is not exaggerating. As he was arguing the case against Chevron in Ecuador back in 2009, the company expressly said its long-term strategy was to demonize him. And since then, Chevron has continued its all-out assault on Donziger in what’s become one of the most bitter and drawn-out cases in the history of environmental law. Chevron has hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him. As a result, Donziger has been disbarred and his bank accounts have been frozen. He now has a lien on his apartment, faces exorbitant fines, and has been prohibited from earning money. As of August, a court has seized his passport and put him on house arrest. Chevron, which has a market capitalization of $228 billion, has the funds to continue targeting Donziger for as long as it chooses.

But the latest twists and turns in the Chevron case may also be particularly bad news for climate activists. A mere 20 companies are responsible for a third of the greenhouse gases emitted in the modern era; Chevron ranks second only to Saudi Aramco among them. And it’s increasingly clear that addressing the climate crisis will require confronting these mega-emitters, whose resources for litigation dwarf that of any individual.

Making Chevron and other companies clean up the messes created by their oil production will speed the transition away from fossil fuels, according to Rex Weyler, an environmental advocate who co-founded Greenpeace International and directed the original Greenpeace Foundation. “If hydrocarbon companies are forced to pay for the true costs of their product, which include these environmental costs, it will make the alternative energy systems more competitive,” said Weyler.

Chevron, which has a market capitalization of $228 billion

just wanna point out that this is still less than we're spending on those F-35s that don't actually work cuz we had to make them suitable for dogfighting even though we haven't had a dogfight in like 50 years

Aside: that's not the problem with the F-35. The F-35 doesn't work because 1) the AF & Navy decided to make the next gen combat aircraft a technology demonstration vehicle; 2) it's a jack-of-trades plane, poorer at air superiority, strike, or close air support than existing platforms; 3) stealth against short band radar isn't stealth anymore; 4) the VTOL Marine version requires too many compromises on the AF and Navy STOVL versions, 5) it just can't carry enough munitions, internally: short wave radar stealth requires 2-4x as many sorties.

Until the military goes back to the more functional approach of separating research (tech demonstrators) from major procurement (engineering established tech), we'll see more procurement fiascos like the F-35, Zumwalt-class destroyer, Littoral Combat Ship, the Army's Future Combat Systems, etc.

As for dogfighting, the US hasn't engaged in a near peer for 50 years. The Israelis have in the last 35 years, and their planes engaged in dogfighting when the spendy air-to-air missiles were depleted.

Xps to Donziger story ... that is fucked up. What's he supposed to have done that requires ankle bracelet and house arrest?