UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction:

William P. Hall on April 28, 2022

Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance
for a Resilient Future 2022

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (2022). Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022: Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance for a Resilient Future. Geneva

Preface

As this Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022 (GAR2022) goes to print, the world finds itself in some of the darkest days in living memory. The war in Ukraine becomes more devastating every day, and COVID-19 has affected every corner of the world. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns that without immediate and deep emission reductions across all sectors, keeping global warming below the 1.5°C threshold will be impossible.

In the years since the previous GAR, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown starkly how a hazard can cascade across systems, but also how people and societies can adopt new behaviours when the problem and the needs for action are clear.

…

GAR2022 highlights country case study examples, tools and ideas for how to address systemic risk and transform how we think about risk – including addressing biases and prejudices of which we are sometimes not conscious. It also encourages action to make risk governance fit for purpose in the context of the climate emergency and an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

GAR2022 is a call to action to better understand and act to address systemic risk and to invest in building resilient communities and global systems. Whether we can achieve [this] in the coming years to 2030 is decisive in the race to reach the Sustainable Development Goal targets, for a sustainable and resilient future for all.

There is no time to waste; we need to act now.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REPORT….

Why is this report important to Australian voters?

Even if you haven’t been impacted directly, evidence from a wide variety of sources surveyed and reported on Vote Climate One’s Climate Sentinel News documents the fact that increasing numbers of humans (including those of us living here in Australia) have been battered, impoverished, injured and even killed in a growing crescendo of ‘natural’ disasters and catastrophes. Many of these ‘extreme’ events are clearly associated with the accelerating warming of our planet. Clearly we need to improve our disaster risk reduction.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Screenshot-Global-Assessment-Report-on-Disaster-Risk-Reduction-2022_0..png

Not only are the disasters becoming more frequent, but they are both becoming more extensive in terms of their areas of impact and numbers of people harmed, and they are beginning to concatenate/overlap. Here, the next disaster may follow the first disaster so closely that people affected have not had time to recover fully from the first — greatly increasing their impoverishment and diminishing their hopes for a better future. The repeated floodings of northern coastal areas of NSW and areas of Queensland including Brisbane are clear examples of this.

In line with the UN IPCC’s Assessment Reports on Climate Change, the UN has published a series of Global Assessment Reports on disaster risk reduction and management. Here the focus is on identifying disaster risks and working out how to avoid/control the risks and minimizing the consequences of those that actually happen. Much of the analysis reflects the logic of a complex systems engineering analytical point of view.

Part I of the present report looks at the concept of risk in complex social systems and the roles of human actions in generating risk and what people need to learn from this.

Part II focuses on the roles of human biases and communications in creating and managing risks associated with the social systems.

Part III explores possible solutions for better understanding, managing risks, and risk mitigation strategies in the social systems exposed to the risks.

Contents of Chapter 12,

Here, Chapter 12 explores how we can transition from our existing chaotic and ineffective states of ‘ungovernance’ based on ‘beliefs’ of the day, to rational, evidence-based thinking about risky aspects of complex system in the real world. A couple of days ago, I considered in some detail the differences between believing and thinking in a major essay, Corrupt leaders, casual media, gullible believers.

How and to what extent our Government leaders come to understand and apply the ideas and concepts explored, explained, and developed in this UN Assessment Report will have a profound impact on the future qualities of life we can achieve as Australian citizens.

We Australians have a choice to make on Saturday 21st May

What kind of people do you want to be responsible for governing our country now that we are on the cusp of what will be probably the historically most crucial decisions relating to how we manage the accelerating climate crisis, along with possibly increasingly virulent pandemics (e.g., H5N1 Avian Flu potentially crossing species barriers) as ecosystems become more chaotic with warming: ● Scotty the marketing guru who is Capt Humbug for his troop of puppets and knaves peddling faith and belief in the fossil fuel industry? Or ● Independent thinkers and green parties who have publicly committed themselves to tackling the climate emergency as their first priority if elected to Parliament?

If you believe that our present COALition government will govern in your interests rather than their patrons in the fossil fuel and related industries, then go with the flow and don’t concern yourself with the likely consequences of going down their fossil fueled road towards runaway global warming. On the other hand, if you think it is better to work for a sustainable future where your children and their children can hope for a happy future, Vote Climate One can help you elect a government that will actively lead and support this effort.

Our Climate Sentinel News provides access to factual evidence about the growing climate crisis to support your thinking; and our Traffic Light Voting System gives you easy to use factual evidence about where each candidate in your electorate ranks in relation to their commitment to prioritize action on the climate emergency. This should make it easier to decide your voting preferences before confronting a long ballot paper in the voting booth.

We need to turn away from the the Apocalypse on the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with business as usual!

It seems to have taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, wake up! smell the smoke! see the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for an existential climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact all they doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future.

Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish.

Featured image: We live on a finite planet – what we do to it has consequences. From William P. Hall (2019). We’re told we are facing climate and ecological emergencies – Is it so? What do we do about them?

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Corrupt leaders, casual media, gullible believers

William P. Hall on April 26, 2022

This is the recipe for extinction when facing existential catastrophe. A lesson on the difference between thinking and believing

We humans face a very real risk of runaway global warming that we have triggered by burning fossil carbon accumulated over millions of years in around 150 years. We have already passed the trigger points where the warming will continue without further human contributions; and are approaching the point of no return where nothing that humans could do would stop positive feedbacks from continuing the warming until Earth’s “Hothouse” state is reached.

Rather than promoting and facilitating effective responses to control and resolve the crisis, much of the world’s media and political ‘leadership’ seems to be working to primarily to promote and protect the continued growth of the fossil fuel industry from ‘harm’ by citizens more concerned to promote and protect their families from the existential consequences of runaway warming.

The crisis

Climate Sentinel News has presented a plethora of fact-based science that Earth’s Climate System is being driven by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions towards a point of no return.

Here, increasing global temperatures will generate enough natural positive feedbacks to ‘run away’ into a global ‘hothouse’ of lethally high temperatures and insanely extreme weather. Given the exponential nature of positive feedbacks, only a few more decades of heating will drive global temperatures to extremes that will be lethal to most life – resulting in global mass extinction for most large and complex organisms — including humans.

A fundamental problem is the ease by which many people are conned by marketeers, faith-healers, demagogues and other humbuggers that tell them what they want to believe and that there is nothing to fear (i.e., ‘this is coal – – don’t be ‘fraid, don’t be scared‘)….

Facts vs Beliefs

Some of our religions and many of our political ‘leaders’ try to teach us that our “beliefs” are all-important. They teach that we must accept and believe in whatever ‘truth’ they teach by ‘faith and faith alone’ — at least that was what I was being taught in Sunday school shortly before refusing to go any more. (Fortunately my parents were easy enough about religion that they accepted my decision – others haven’t been so lucky).

Science teaches us that we need to base our decisions and actions on what we think and know about reality based on facts and evidence provided by the world we live in. This gives us the best chances to anticipate and react rationally to whatever the real-world throws at us.

Although I tacitly understood most of this from my science education, it was a master machinist who had a vast knowledge of what you could do with a block of metal from many years of hands on experience, that taught me the deeply visceral difference between believing and thinking.

As I finished my BS degree in Zoology and started my postgraduate work I was working part time as a research assistant in a hospital-based neurophysiology research lab where Norm hand-made all-kinds of precision scientific and microsurgical equipment from blocks of metal, glass tubing, and other sorts of bulk materials as required. Other than technical stuff for the job, the only reading Norm ever admitted to was the Bible and Shakespeare’s complete works, because these taught him everything he wanted to know about people. Our lunch-break was the best time of the day, when Norm and I would have long rambling discussions of world affairs and the future (in a time when one could be optimistic about he future).

Many of my flights of fancy unconsciously included the words “I believe that…” as if this was a telling point in the argument. The day finally came when Norm had had enough of my fancy talk, and decided to teach me a lesson in humility.

He stopped responding to any and all of my attempts to start a conversation. After a week or so of the silent treatment, I broke down and begged for him to tell me what was so wrong. He thought a bit, and answered: “Bill, I’m fed up with your ‘beliefs’. I don’t give a damn what you believe…. It’s what you THINK that matters…. ‘He who assumes, zooms‘ [as in taking a pratfall]. Since I’m not interested in talking about baseless beliefs, whenever you used the world ‘believe’ I decided there was nothing worth discussing. However, when you start a statement with ‘I think, there is an assumption of a rational chain of reasoning based on some fact-based evidence.” This would have been around 1963-64. Since then I have worked to remove ‘I believe’ from my vocabulary, and to ensure that my statements are underpinned by rational connections with real-world evidence.

The following search strings show you the evidence that Climate Sentinel News has reported about the fact-based science: ● “Road to Hothouse Hell“, ● “Existential Risk“; and our LNP COALition Government’s responses to the evidence:

Unfortunately, Australia is presently governed by a PM from marketing who actively spruiks whatever humbug his special interest patrons appear to want.

Lesson begins

Here is a real-life televised interview between some media people and Miranda Whelehan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain (11 April 2022 | Just Stop Oil). The interview lasts 10 minutes – but displays the stark reality as to how the ‘seriously’ some commercial media take the climate emergency.

The ‘parody’ using parts of Whelehan’s interview demonstrates Hollywood’s imagination in the movie Don’t Look Up was limited in comparison to the reality of British morning TV. Too many people believe what they hear/see on TV in preference to thinking about the extent of what they hear/see is actually based on evidence of reality.

Miranda Whelehan | ITV | Good Morning Britain | 11 April 2022 | Just Stop Oil

The Parodies

‘Good Morning Britain’ Interview Gives ‘Don’t Look Up’ Vibes | The Mehdi Hasan Show

Australia today

Unfortunately, the next parody by Juice Media isn’t a parody at all. Juice is far more factual than you will hear from most COALition politicians (along with many others). The evidence underlying almost every statement has already been discussed on Climate Sentinel News; and there would be even more if I had the time and stamina to produce it.

Sorry about the profanity, though.

Unfortunately, polite English doesn’t have strong enough words words to express how many people who think rationally feel about a government that is supposed to keep Australians safe but spends billions of our dollars shoveling more coal on the fires causing global warming….

What to do about the situation

Vote Climate One is comprised of a group of volunteers who decided to pool our various resources to document the issues and the consequences of ignoring them. Our primary goal is to do what we can to replace the existing puppet government in league with the fossil fuel industry with people who have provided evidence that they will prioritize action on the climate emergency in government. Towards achieving this goal, (1) we are ranking every candidate in every Australian electorate as to the evidence we have as to their willingness to place action on the climate emergency as their first priority in parliament, and (2) establish Climate Sentinel News as a way to detail evidence that the crisis is real, and of the COALition’s malfeasance in protecting Australian citizens from the dangers of global warming.

Another Juice Media parody that isn’t a parody at all, explains how preferential voting can be used to change our government for the better.

Tells the truth about electing honest government

Juice Media describes Australian preferential voting quite effectively. It is up to Australian voters to use this process effectively to get the kind of government you want.

Vote Climate One works under the assumption that there are a lot of people who have been swayed in the past by the rhetoric and what the Juice Ladies call ‘shitfuckery’ to vote for fossil fuel puppet parties and and individuals protecting and promoting the fossil fuel industry. In the past this could be justified by their (supposed) support for economic growth and employment opportunities. However, in in the present, as our understanding of climate change grows, it is increasingly evident that the fossil fuel interests and their puppets are paving the road to mass extinction by still working to expand the burning coal, oil and gas.

We think that if they are given the facts and understanding of the differences between thinking and believing many past voters for the LNP and similar puppets will consider voting for people who have pledged to put action on the climate emergency at the tops of their agendas if elected to Parliament. Climate Sentinel News focuses on what we know about climate change and think about it. Our Traffic Light Voting System ranks every candidate in every electorate with our traffic lights and provides a form you can fill out at home before voting to ensure your preferences have the best chance of giving you the election results you want.

The bad news is that if Capt Humbug’s government remains in power, they have proved that they can be quite effective in distracting from and blocking effective action to resolve solve the climate emergency. If Humbug has its way, Australia will have done nothing effective to slow and stop our progress towards runaway global warming and what may prove to be the end of humanity in our world’s worst global mass extinction event.

The good news from the IPCC and other scientific bodies is that if we accept we are facing the crux of the crisis and unite with other nations who take the risk of extinction seriously, we still have a very few years where it is still possible to stop and reverse the warming process. However, to do this we will need the backing and support of a progressive government that puts action on climate change at the top of its Parliamentary agenda, as the candidates we have flagged with our ‘green light’ have done.

Featured Image: Scott Morrison: From the Australian, Paul Murray Live – 14/03/2022.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he is supportive of Australia’s fossil fuel industry – and particularly coal, which he says will be around for “decades to come”. “When it comes to the coal industry, it’s worth $35 billion to us every year in exports, and that’s money Australia needs to grow our economy,” Mr Morrison said. “What you need in today’s energy economy is you need to continue to run your coal-fired power stations for as long as you possibly can and that is our policy … we want them to run as long as they possibly can.” Coal-fired power stations will continue to run to back up renewable power sources, although Mr Morrison said gas would play a larger role in the energy mix in years to come. Mr Morrison added that building a new coal-fired power station would be difficult because of the state government planning powers, which would “probably never allow them to do it”.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Leaders Debate: Live view was owned by Sky News

William P. Hall on April 24, 2022

If you compare what Scotty and Albo think about climate change, you won’t find it here. Unlike Q&A, Sky didn’t find an audience concerned about the future

IN FULL: Sky News-The Courier Mail People’s Forum: Scott Morrison vs Anthony Albanese: “REAL NEWS, HONEST VIEWS”

Editors commentary

After not finding any freely available live broadcast of the Leaders Debate from the Gabba Stadium in Brisbane, someone sent me a link to the YouTube version, linked here. Comparing the questions and responses here to what transpired on ABC’s Q&A session in Gladstone is like comparing two completely different planets.

Based on questions Sky News read out, their audience was primarily interested in personal things like taxes, jobs, immigration, cost of living, pensions, health services, etc. Energy policy was mentioned perhaps twice, net-zero (with no explanation) was mentioned about once; and I don’t think issues like climate change, climate emergency, etc. were mentioned at all by questioners or the ‘leaders’. Interestingly, in over half an hour of searching with Google (which I am fairly good at using) I couldn’t find any news outlet or other organ who has published a complete transcript of the debate.

Contrast this with ABC’s live broadcast of Q&A from Gladstone, Qld:

Q&A Live from Gladstone

Note that the Youtube video from Q&A includes a complete and searchable transcript of the video, making it easy to analyze the discussion. In any event there were a good 18 minutes of discussion relating to the climate emergency and its effects on Australia.

In any event, my own thoughts on the Leaders Debate, is that if this the best on offer by the dominant parties, if you are concerned about our future in a catastrophically changing climate, bring on the independents. Labor may be better than the COALition, but if they have no intention to shut down coal mining or gas production, the difference is minor where climate action is concerned.

Featured Image: Grab from the Featured Video.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Since when does pay-tv own the Leaders Debate?

William P. Hall on April 20, 2022

Does Murdoch media own the Australian’s Leaders Debate?

It took a fair bit of searching to find a explicit statement for what I suspected. Murdoch’s media somehow ended up owning the content of our first Leaders Debase in the 2022 National Election:

ABC News’s ‘analysis’ of the first Leaders’ Debate. No live feed was available free to the air in any of Australia’s capitol cities. It was only available on Murdoch’s pay to view Sky News cable and satellite broadcasters

by Rayane Tamer, 20/04/2022 at 5:03pm, updated 3 hours ago at 6:43pm SBS News

Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese will face off in a leaders’ debate tonight. Here’s what you need to know: In an Australian-first, SBS will live stream the debate in both Arabic and Mandarin [but NOT in English!].

The debate is not on free-to-air in the major cities, so you can only watch the broadcast event live in English on Sky News.

SBS will be live-streaming the debate, translated into both Arabic and Mandarin to ensure two of the largest language groups will be able to watch along as both political leaders are grilled on their contested policies.

“By offering the leaders’ debate in Arabic and Mandarin, we hope to ultimately drive an understanding of the key issues, and enable informed participation in this election,” SBS Director of Audio and Language Content David Hua said.

You can tune in with the live translations on SBS On Demand.

To me this is close to unbelievable, that somehow the two major political parties would allow Rupert Murdoch’s media empire take ownership of information in the candidates’ own words that should be readily available to all Australian voters. As the situation stands tonight, the more than 17 million Australians living in our capital cities can easily access the debates ONLY through Murdoch’s media or if they understand Mandarin or Arabic.

There is good reason to believe that Scotty from Marketing and many of his COALition henchmen/women are Murdoch Puppets, but I am surprised the Albanese would go along with this kind of arrangement.

Yet another reason to give your first preferences to green independents, or the Greens. @Vote Climate One’s Climate Sentinel News will give you many more reasons for putting the COALition and their friends last, and not putting Labor first on your ballot, and our Traffic Light Voting System for every Australian electorate shows you how you can use your preferences most effectively to support green independents and Greens who are publicly committed to put action on climate change at the top of their Parliamentary agendas.

Featured Image: Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor leader Anthony Albanese will go head-to-head in the election campaign’s first leaders’ debate. Source: From the featured article in SBS News.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Direct Air Capture of CO₂ at PPM levels is a folly

William P. Hall on April 15, 2022

The physical laws of thermodynamics rule that it takes a lot of energy to capture wide-spread rare gas molecules into a tight space

The article below extrapolates the costs of ‘proven’ technologies for direct air capture and sequestration of CO₂. To have any hope of cleansing our planet’s atmosphere, MILLIONS of these complex engineered contraptions would have to be manufactured, transported, and installed around the world. Of course, the fossil fuel industry would love to take on the task of doing this because of the trillions of dollars to be made from building the devices and producing the vast amounts of fuel required to make them work to reduce the entropy of the gas molecules emitted from driving the machines capturing the gas.

Plants already do this work using solar energy. They too are inefficient, but they use the small fraction of the solar energy captured that passes through their cells to grow more and ever more plants until space and/or their simple nutrients are used up. Nevertheless, they are self-reproducing and grow exponentially as long as they can, capturing CO₂ to make the sugars they use for fuel and building blocks for their structures. As long as the carbon remains captured in living or dead plant matter it is well concentrated and easily sequestered.

With appropriate changes farming and forestry techniques a lot of carbon can be captured and sequestered; but potentially much more can be done by fertilizing AND FARMING the nearly sterile areas of ocean over abyssal depths These comprise approximately 1/5 of the Earth’s total unfrozen surface. The US National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine (2021) A Research Strategy for Ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal and Sequestration — especially Chapter 3, Nutrient Fertilization provides an excellent review.

The Featured Image above, based on satellite tracking of the amount of chlorophyll-a in the oceans shows ocean deserts (i.e., areas where there is virtually no chlorophyll – and thus no photosynthesis) as dark blue or purple. Even some of the lighter blue areas might also be made more productive with fertilization.

The National Academies report considers mainly the first part of the process – fertilization mainly by providing iron in micronutrient quantities. This is often all that is required to enable large blooms of microalgae, but the blooms also can cause problems, and the individual algal cells aren’t large enough to sink the carbon they capture out of the zone where decomposition soon releases the carbon back to the atmosphere.

What is missing in the National Academies report is the need for active seeding and farming of appropriate ecosystems of consumers to eat and package the microalgal carbon content into fecal pellets and dead bodies dense enough to sink into the abyssal depths where the carbon will be incorporated into the bottom sediment. However, unlike mechanical contrivances that have to be manufactured, once the appropriate mix of ‘seeds’ is worked out, the suite of consumer organisms will also with some appropriate tweaking by the farmers, self-reproduce and grow exponentially to meet the demand,

Yes, it is quite likely there will be eggs broken and catastrophic major failures (easily stopped by stopping the algal fertilization with iron), but if we don’t have other proven means of sequestration, the price of not trying this reasonably quick and thermodynamically plausible solution could well be the completion of global mass extinction and the end of the human species.

Direct Air Capture installation / from the article

by Leigh Collins, 14/09/2021 in Recharge

‘The amount of energy required by direct air carbon capture proves it is an exercise in futility’

Removing CO2 directly from the air requires almost as many joules as those produced by burning the fossil fuel in the first place, writes Leigh Collins

Capturing CO2 emissions using direct-air-capture (DAC) technology requires almost as much energy as that contained in the fossil fuels that produced the carbon dioxide in the first place, according to new analysis.

In 2020, the world used 462 exajoules (EJ) of energy from fossil fuels, which resulted in 32 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions. Capturing that carbon dioxide through DAC — which sucks the greenhouse gas out of the air — would require 448EJ, according to calculations by Australian maths-as-a-service company Keynumbers.

Read the complete article….

Australia needs a government formed of people who understand and accept the reality of the physical world, not one formed of fossil fuel puppets led by Scotty from Marketing (a.k.a. Capt. Humbug).

Working WITH our multi-billionaires

Scotty from marketing and his fellow puppets work assiduously to protect fossil fuel multibillionaires (not all of them are even Australian – e.g., Adani) and make them even richer. And then there was Clive Palmer last week

Green’s Adam Bandt’s National Press Club address this week proposes taxing Australia’s billionaires to support otherwise unprofitable community services.

However, I think Australia has at least one multi-billionaire who is already doing a lot to develop ‘green’ industries to minimize carbon emissions. Dr Andrew Forrest (i.e., ‘Twiggy’), Australia’s second richest person last time I looked, may have stepped on more than a few toes building his industrial empire, but I am unaware of any other person who parked his industries and iron mines in a charitable foundation and spent several years EARNING a doctorate in marine sciences and establishing a substantial marine sciences lab, aside from pledging upwards of a billion dollars to establish zero emissions mining and manufacturing systems.

Hopefully we can elect the kind of people to our Parliament who have the foresight, understanding and integrity to persuade and work with people like Forrest who seems inclined to invest significant fractions of their private resources in the fight against likely runaway global warming. Unfortunately, several narcissistic and hedonistic multibillionaire fossil fuel special interests are doing a very effective job persuading their current Parliamentary puppets to spend public resources shoveling more carbon fuel onto the fires of global warming.

In his own words, Scotty makes it blindingly obvious that he is vastly more interested in stoking his patrons’ fossil fuel fires than in stopping their emissions to mitigate global warming and the possible mass extinctions of humans and the millions of other species of life we share our planet with.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he is supportive of Australia’s fossil fuel industry – and particularly coal, which he… says will be around for “decades to come”. “When it comes to the coal industry, it’s worth $35 billion to us every year in exports, and that’s money Australia needs to grow our economy,” Mr Morrison said. “What you need in today’s energy economy is you need to continue to run your coal-fired power stations for as long as you possibly can and that is our policy … we want them to run as long as they possibly can.” Coal-fired power stations will continue to run to back up renewable power sources, although Mr Morrison said gas would play a larger role in the energy mix in years to come. Mr Morrison added that building a new coal-fired power station would be difficult because of the state government planning powers, which would “probably never allow them to do it”. For the video see: The Australian, 14/03/2022, Commentary/coal-will-be-around-for-decades-to-come-scott-morrison/video. See also ‘We will keep mining’, says Australian prime minister Scott Morrison about the future of coal.

If that wasn’t enough, here’s a choice of some more of Scotty’s thinking about stopping the Apocalypse of global warming

Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal
15/02/17 via the Guardian
We’ll keep mining!
09/09/2021 via the Guardian
We need to get the gas from under our feet. We’ve got to get the gas!
The future of power: What’s behind Australia’s push for gas-fired energy | ABC Four Corners

We need to turn away from the the Apocalypse on the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with business as usual!

It seems to have taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, wake up! smell the smoke! see the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for an existential climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact all they doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your preferential votes wisely on behalf of our offsprings’ future.

Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish.

Featured Image:  still frame from a NASA MODIS video of the changing distribution of chlorophyll in Earth’s oceans, showing where photosynthetic carbon fixation is occurring. Most is in near-shore areas of comparatively shallow waters where the fixed carbon is fairly rapidly consumed and cycled back into the atmosphere by the aerobic metabolism of microorganisms, animals and plants. The dark blue to lavender areas are the ocean deserts above abyssal depths where little or no photosynthesis can occur due to the lack of even a few iron and/or magnesium atoms required as micro-nutrients for the formation of a few critical enzymes in the photosynthetic pathway. / via William Hall.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

IPCC: Stopping emissions no longer enough on its own

William P. Hall on April 9, 2022

Part III of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment published late on 4 April says net zero alone won’t stop global warming. Carbon capture is also needed.

According to the Third Part of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report published this week, our last chances to stop and reverse the still accelerating global warming are running out of time. If we don’t act effectively within the next three years or so, humanity will be condemned to extreme hardship and dieoffs as increasingly large areas of our only planet become effectively uninhabitable because of high temperatures and extreme weather, and our agricultural systems also begin to fail for the same reasons. I have already commented extensively on Parts I and II of the report and consequently have reached and written about many of the topics covered in Part III, and my conclusions from the evidence are even more grim than the IPCC’s. So, other than providing a bit of background on the IPCC and possible limitations of their authoring process, in this post I simply present links to 12 independent commentaries.

Background

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (!PCC) was established by the United Nations in 1988 to study and make recommendations relating to climate changes triggered by the greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere beginning in the Industrial Revolution by the burning of coal and other fossil carbons for energy production. It presents the most solidly based and peer reviewed scientific understanding of the rapidly expanding climate crisis there is. However, because of its political and academic foundations it has and will consistently under-represent novel and extreme consequences of the on-going global warming. (The reasons for this scientific reticence or ‘conservatism‘ are discussed and explained in detail in my presentation: Some fundamental issues relating to the science underlying climate policy: The IPCC and COP26 couldn’t help but get it wrong.)

However, even in the face of these constraints, the AR6 part 3 Report: Climate Change 2022 – Mitigation of Climate Change, accepts and is based on the extensive research reported in parts 1 and 2 of the full report that failure to stop and reverse global warming before temperatures reach 2.0 °C (or preferably 1.5 °C) will be catastrophic for humans and the biosphere.

Where are we now with the physical state of our atmosphere that drives climate change

NOAA Trends in atmospheric greenhouse gases as at 8 April 2022 / Data source NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases. / William Hall

The rising concentrations of the three most important greenhouse gases shown above record the physical physical measurements in parts per million or parts per billion (compared to the total number of gas molecules of any kind in the atmosphere) as reported from the Mouna Loa (Hawaii) climate observatory. Details on how the samples were collected, processed and measured are available on the observatory web site. One thing worth noting, is that the longest base-line record from the observatory itself at 3400 meters elevation in the oceanic sub-tropics (shown here) that peaked in February is not identical to the worldwide average CO₂ from multiple sites shown for the Global Monthly Mean CO2 that is still rising in March. NH₄ and N₂O graphs show global means.

It is also worth nothing that the atmospheric concentrations for all of the gases reflect both human generated emissions AND the Earth’s ‘natural’ emissions for each year. We can control human emissions, but the natural emissions increase significantly with each rise in global average temperature.

The chart below shows RELATIVE changes in the global average temperature for each year relative to the global temperature averaged over the 30 years years 1951 through 1980. Earth’s temperature is based on a balance between the absorption of energy from solar radiation at ‘visible’ wave lengths by the planet and everything on it, and the emission of infrared energy by the planet and everything on it. Greenhouse gases heat the planet by blocking some outgoing infrared wave lengths causing the planet to warm until enough energy can be emitted at shorter (more energetic) wavelengths to balance the incoming visible radiation. Again this is a purely physical process that can be measured to relatively high precision.

Global average temperature datasets from NASA, NOAA, Berkeley Earth, and meteorological offices of the U.K. and Japan, show substantial agreement concerning the progress and extent of global warming: all pairwise correlations exceed 98%. / CC BY-SA 4.0
File:20200324 Global average temperature – NASA-GISS HadCrut NOAA Japan BerkeleyE.svg (Version 12) – for more details on sources and construction of the graph see: Wikimedia Commons.

The early trends illustrated by these facts are what drove the formation of the IPCC and its series of increasingly desperate calls to action in its series of “Assessment Reports” involving thousands of well qualified research scientists working as authors over the years of it existence. The 6th Assessment Report discussed here consists of 3 parts: I – The Physical Science Basis: 3949 pages, published 7 Aug 2021; II – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: 3675 pages, published 27 Feb 2022, and III – Mitigation of Climate Change: 2913 pages, published 4 April 2022. Together the full 3 part report includes 10,537 pages of meticulously peer-reviewed content. My December 202 presentation, Some fundamental issues relating to the science underlying climate policy: The IPCC and COP26 couldn’t help but get it wrong details the IPCC’s rigorous processes for producing the reports. My major criticism is that these processes add years of delay between scientific observations and publication, that the political and academic/institutional environments lead to reticence and understatement of risks, and that an over-reliance on mathematization gives the impression that complexly and chaotically dynamical systems such as the generation of weather and climate are more accurate than they can actually be.

Whatever humbug our governments tell us, we won’t know if we can get off the road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell state until all of the above curves are actually trending downward. As long as they point upwards, it is a clear indication that we are headed towards runaway warming and the unsurvivable hothouse.

Simply stated, where the IPCC observes that the future of humanity is dire, the reality is that it will probably be even worse than that.

What do others make of the IPCC’s Part III report?

Following are 12 independent takes on the IPCC’s recommendations for what we can do that might mitigate the global warming that is already dialed into Earth’s Climate System. Urgently stopping human carbon emissions on its own is no longer enough to stop warming soon enough to avoid major catastrophic damage. We will also have to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere with still unproven technolgies:

One success story in the battle against climate change is that renewable energy sources, such as wind turbines, have dropped significantly in cost over the past decade.Credit: Vincenzo Izzo/LightRocket via Getty

by Jeff Tollefson, 05/04/2022 in Nature / News

IPCC’s starkest message yet: extreme steps needed to avert climate disaster

Radical emissions cuts combined with some atmospheric carbon removal are the only hope to limit global warming to 1.5 °C, scientists warn.

Humanity probably isn’t going to prevent Earth from at least temporarily warming 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels — but aggressive action to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and extract carbon from the atmosphere could limit the increase and bring temperatures back down, according to the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report makes it clear, however, that the window is rapidly closing, and with it the opportunity to prevent the worst impacts of global warming. Above the 1.5 °C limit — set by the Paris climate agreement in 2015 — the chances of extreme weather and collapsing ecosystems grow.

Read the complete article….

Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

Getty / from the article

by John Quiggin, 06/04/2022 in The Conversation

Time’s up: why Australia has to quit stalling and wean itself off fossil fuels

If the world acts now, we can avoid the worst outcomes of climate change without any significant effect on standards of living. That’s a key message from the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The key phrase here is “acts now”. Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC working group behind the report, said it’s “now or never” to keep global warming to 1.5℃. Action means cutting emissions from fossil fuel use rapidly and hard. Global emissions must peak within three years to have any chance of keeping warming below 1.5℃.

Unfortunately, Australia is not behaving as if the largest issue facing us is urgent – in fact, we’re doubling down on fossil fuels.

In recent years, Australia overtook Qatar to become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). We’re still the second-largest exporter of thermal coal, and the largest for metallurgical coal.

Read the complete article….
Scientists react
From the article

by Carbon Brief Staff, 07/04/2020 in Carbon Brief

Scientists react: What are the key new insights from the IPCCs WG3-report

A new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlines what progress has been made in tackling global warming so far – and what will be needed for the world to curb emissions and achieve its climate targets.

It is the third part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6), a process that comes around every six or seven years and aims to provide a comprehensive view of the state of knowledge on climate change. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth Q&A.)

…

This report, by the IPCC’s Working Group III (WG3) “provides an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges, and examines the sources of global emissions”

Read the complete article….
Flooded streets in New South Wales, Australia, last month. Photograph: Jason O’Brien/AAP / from the article

by Damian Carrington, 04/04/2022 in The Guardian

IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster

Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, say climate scientists in what is in effect their final warning.

The world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society, scientists have said in what is in effect a final warning for governments on the climate.

Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and can be nearly halved this decade, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

The final cost of doing so will be minimal, amounting to just a few percent of global GDP by mid-century, though it will require a massive effort by governments, businesses and individuals.

But the chances were narrow and the world was failing to make the changes needed, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists warned. Temperatures will soar to more than 3C, with catastrophic consequences, unless policies and actions are urgently strengthened.

Read the complete article….

from the Article

by, Dana Nuccitelli, 06/04/2022 in Yale Climate Connections

New IPCC report: Only political will stands in way of meeting the Paris targets:

The latest major climate assessment outlines the urgency and feasibility of rapid decarbonization to preserve the economy, health, and a stable climate.

In the just-released third installment of its Sixth Assessment Report (the first two volumes covered climate change causes and impacts), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarizes the latest scientific research on efforts to mitigate climate change. Written by 278 authors from 65 countries, the new report can be summarized in one word: “urgency.”

To meet the Paris targets, the IPCC says that global emissions must peak immediately; that governments have not yet implemented sufficient policies to make that happen; and that continued expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure would create additional stranded assets potentially amounting to trillions of dollars in lost investments.

Read the complete article….
Smoke billows from a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, September 2019. Photograph: Bruno Kelly/Reuters / from the article

by Peter Kalmus, 07/04/2022 in The Guardian Opinion

Climate scientists are desperate: we’re crying, begging and getting arrested

On Wednesday, I was arrested for locking myself onto an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown LA. I can’t stand by – and nor should you.

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.” – United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres

I’m a climate scientist and a desperate father. How can I plead any harder? What will it take? What can my colleagues and I do to stop this catastrophe unfolding now all around us with such excruciating clarity?

Read the complete article….
Wind turbines in a rural area of south Wales. Photograph: Wales/Alamy / from the article

by Damian Carrington, 05/04/2020 in The Guardian

It’s over for fossil fuels: IPCC spells out what’s needed to avert climate disaster

Analysis: The third part of the panel’s report makes clear a century of rising emissions must end before 2025.

Thirty months: that is the very short time the world now has for global greenhouse gas emissions to finally start to fall. If not, we will miss the chance to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

The conclusion of the world’s scientists, collated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and approved by all the world’s governments, says this reversal requires “immediate and deep” cuts in emissions everywhere.

The language of the third part of the IPCC’s report is less dramatic than the first two, which placed “unequivocal” blame on us for putting a “livable future” in grave peril. Rather than plainly stating the scale of the climate emergency, the new assessment spells out what needs to be done. Its text was therefore haggled over furiously by those states with much to lose.

Read the complete article….
Shutterstock / from the article

by Thomas Wiedmann et al., 05/04/2022 in The Conversation

IPCC finds the world has its best chance yet to slash emissions – if it seizes the opportunity

The world has its best chance yet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly, but hard and fast cuts are needed across all sectors and nations to hold warming to safe levels, the global authority on climate change says.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today, says opportunities to affordably cut global emissions have risen sharply since the last assessment of this kind in 2014. But the need to act has also become far more urgent.

The report is the definitive assessment of how well the world is doing in finding solutions to rising temperatures. We each contributed expertise to the report.

Here, we explain key aspects of the findings and what it means for the world, including Australia.

Read the complete article….
Australian Professor Frank Jotzo was one of the authors of the latest IPCC report.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen / from the article

by Nick O’Malley, 05/04/2022 in The Age

Goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees ‘no longer plausible’: UN

The goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees is no longer likely to be achieved, the latest report of the United Nations chief climate body says, though scientists still believe warming may be stabilised and returned under the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious warming target after a period of “overshoot”.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published early on Tuesday morning Australian time, was evidence of a damning “litany of broken promises” and a “file of shame”, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a speech after the release of the report.

Mr Guterres, whose language on climate has become increasingly strong since the lead-up to the COP26 climate talks last year, catalogued the empty pledges that put humanity “firmly on track towards an unlivable world”.

He said governments and companies had lied to people about their commitments to reducing emissions, and that though the world needed to see a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by the end of the decade the world was on track for a 14 per cent increase.

Read the complete article….
From the article

by Sam Wenger & Deanna D’Alessandro, in The Conversation

On top of drastic emissions cuts, IPCC finds large-scale CO₂ removal from air will be “essential” to meeting targets

Large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods is now “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to this week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, released on Monday, finds that in addition to rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse emissions, CO₂ removal is “an essential element of scenarios that limit warming to 1.5℃ or likely below 2℃ by 2100”.

CDR refers to a suite of activities that lower the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is done by removing CO₂ molecules and storing the carbon in plants, trees, soil, geological reservoirs, ocean reservoirs or products derived from CO₂.

As the IPCC notes, each mechanism is complex, and has advantages and pitfalls. Much work is needed to ensure CDR projects are rolled out responsibly.

Read the complete article….
From the article

by Aruna Chandrasekhar et al., 05/04/2022 in Carbon Brief

In-depth Q&A: The IPCC’s sixth assessment on how to tackle climate change

Limiting global warming to 1.5C or 2C would mean “rapid and deep” emissions reductions in “all sectors” of the global economy, says the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Instead, emissions have continued to rise – albeit at a slowing rate – and it will be “impossible” to stay below 1.5C with “no or limited overshoot” without stronger climate action this decade, says the new document, which forms part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6).

It outlines how these emissions cuts could be achieved, including “substantial” reductions in fossil fuel use, energy efficiency, electrification, the rapid uptake of low-emission energy sources – particularly renewables – and the use of alternative energy carriers, such as hydrogen.

Read the complete article…
The latest IPCC report offers a range of solutions that may help limit global warming impacts. Credit:AP / from the article

By Laura Chung and Nick O’Malley, 05 /04/2022 in The Age

UN offers new solutions to limit global warming

The new UN report shows the world is not on track to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, the more ambitious Paris Agreement target, and that the window to achieving the goal is closing fast.

One of its lead authors, Australian National University Professor Frank Jotzo, says it may no longer be plausible that the world can make the necessary immediate global reduction in emissions.

But the report also presents a range of solutions that, if applied immediately, could limit global warming, some of which have not been part of previous versions.

Read the complete article….

What do we know about the LNP’s concerns and abilities to mitigate the climate crisis?

As noted in my previous post, many communities are already well prepared to switch from fossil to renewable energy sources as soon as the supply and distribution issues can be resolved. Given that governments supposedly exist to protect and keep their citizens safe from external threats (i.e., global warming) in this case) we should be able to expect that that they would be promoting and facilitating the growth and spread of renewable energy technologies. But, at least in the case of Australian federal and some state governments, they are dong precisely the opposite: denying the science, and blocking and humbugging efforts to research, develop, promote, and roll out renewable technologies across all of our communities.

We have to replace the COALition Government in Parliament with people we can trust to put action on climate change as their first priority before we can have any hope that the government will do its job to facilitate and support effective action to stop global warming and mitigate its effects. Not only do we need to replace Capt Humbug and his troop of fossil fuel puppets, but the clean-out should also include micro-party members such as mining multi-billionaire Clive Palmer’s one-man fake news bureau Craig Kelly, and Pauline Hanson’s anti-science nut Malcolm Roberts.

If you doubt my interpretation, let the fossil fuel industry puppets and humbuggers tell you in their own words how hard they are working to keep growing their patrons’ greenhouse gas emitting industries in the face of the oncoming climate catastrophe.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he is supportive of Australia’s fossil fuel industry – and particularly coal, which he… says will be around for “decades to come”. “When it comes to the coal industry, it’s worth $35 billion to us every year in exports, and that’s money Australia needs to grow our economy,” Mr Morrison said. “What you need in today’s energy economy is you need to continue to run your coal-fired power stations for as long as you possibly can and that is our policy … we want them to run as long as they possibly can.” Coal-fired power stations will continue to run to back up renewable power sources, although Mr Morrison said gas would play a larger role in the energy mix in years to come. Mr Morrison added that building a new coal-fired power station would be difficult because of the state government planning powers, which would “probably never allow them to do it”. For the video see: The Australian, 14/03/2022, Commentary/coal-will-be-around-for-decades-to-come-scott-morrison/video. See also ‘We will keep mining’, says Australian prime minister Scott Morrison about the future of coal.

If that wasn’t enough, here’s a choice of some of Scotty’s thinking about stopping our slide down the slope to runaway global warming and possible near-term extinction:

Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal, 15/02/17
via the Guardian:
We’ll keep mining!
09/09/2021 via the Guardian

We need to get the gas from under our feet. We’ve got to get the gas!
The future of power: What’s behind Australia’s push for gas-fired energy | ABC Four Corners

We need to turn away from the the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with the kind of business as usual Scotty from Maketing and his fossil fuel puppets are spruiking!

It seems to taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, wake up! smell the smoke! see the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment WG2 Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact all they doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your preferential votes wisely on behalf of our young one’s future.

Give the children a future worth running towards rather than misery and probable death in the collapsing shambles of global mass extinction along the road to Hothouse Hell
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Community batteries: Managing green energy on grid?

William P. Hall on April 6, 2022

Existing fossil energy grids were not planned to manage and distribute renewable energy and require either $$$ re-engineering or new thinking

The approved “Summary for Policy Makers” that begins the third part of the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 6th Assessment Report, was issued late yesterday after receiving political sign offs after considerable discussion with sponsoring governments. Despite attempts by several governments including Australia’s, to deny or downplay aspects of the report, even this rendition of the scientific findings forecasts an extremely dire future from continued global warming if it is not stopped and reversed below the 1.5 °C level. Fossil fuel burning must stop! (see video).

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5C,” said Prof Jim Skea, a co-chair of the report. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”

The implication for the biggest culprit, fossil fuels, is clear: it’s over. The IPCC states that existing and currently planned fossil fuel projects are already more than the climate can handle. More projects will lock in even greater emissions and our journey to climate hell.

Damian Carrington, 05/04/2022 in the Guardian. It’s over for fossil fuels: IPCC spells out what’s needed to avert climate disaster – Analysis: The third part of the panel’s report makes clear a century of rising emissions must end before 2025.

As strong as the present report is in discussing the dire consequences facing humanity if we fail to stop and reverse the warming, the whole IPCC process is structured in such a way that it cannot help but understate the magnitude and likelihood of the risks. I document and discuss this issue at length in my presentation: Some fundamental issues relating to the science underlying climate policy: The IPCC and COP26 couldn’t help but get it wrong.

Vote Climate One’s local community in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges has been aware of the need to replace fossil fuels for decades. It has a long established interest in renewable energy projects including the establishment of a community owned ‘Power Park’ supporting wind and solar generation together with battery storage. Unfortunately, this has been stalled for years by state government bureaucracy, not helped by relentless attacks on the harvest of wind energy by Federal and State COALition governments, beginning with Tony Abbott (then PM), Barnaby Joyce (then Agriculture Minister) and Joe Hockey (then Treasurer).

With the major project still stalled, and aware of difficulties incorporating big renewable energy generators into the fossil energy grid, the Macedon Ranges community group recently won state government funding for a feasibility study and community engagement program to implement energy storage and batteries at the community level. This project is detailed in the webinar video: “What is a neighbourhood battery and why should I care?“. Even without the local energy farm, the ability to localize and manage energy storage at the community level should considerably reduce the problems anticipated from incorporating renewable energy sources into the fossil electricity grid. This offers a way to facilitate the generation and use of renewable energy at the neighborhood level while reducing peak demands on the fossil network.

Our featured article from the ABC explores this ‘neighbourhood battery option’ in some detail:

  • Virtual Power Plants versus community batteries
  • The most effective scale, size, and location
  • Community battery program initiatives by local community groups and councils.
  • Lack of trust in retailers, long identified as a problem in Australia’s energy market, is highlighted as a barrier to the adoption of commercially run community battery programs.

This 464kWh community battery in the Perth suburb of Port Kennedy means local residents don’t need their own home battery.(Supplied: Western Power) / via the article

by James Purtill, 05/04/2022 in ABC News

A community battery ‘like a corner store’: Is this the future of home energy storage?

When Australia’s first community battery trial came to the Perth suburb of Alkimos Beach in 2016, Kelly was sceptical.

“There was a whole lot of discussion about whether it would save us money or not. The fee structure was quite complex,” she said.

Eventually, her family took a punt and signed up to the trial.

“And it did save us money. It was at least $100 every two months.”

Read the complete article….

What does this all tell us about our governments’ concerns and abilities to solve the climate crisis?

Many communities are already well prepared to switch from fossil to renewable energy sources as soon as the supply and distribution issues can be resolved. Given that governments supposedly exist to protect and keep their citizens safe from external threats (i.e., global warming) in this case) we should be able to expect that that they would be promoting and facilitating the growth and spread of renewable energy technologies. But, at least in the case of Australian federal and some state governments, they are dong precisely the opposite: denying the science, and blocking and humbugging efforts to research, develop, promote, and roll out renewable technologies across all of our communities.

We have to replace the COALition Government in Parliament with people we can trust to put action on climate change as their first priority before we can have any hope that the government will do its job to facilitate and support effective action to stop global warming. Not only do we need to replace Capt Humbug and his troop of fossil fuel puppets, but the clean-out should also include micro-party members such as mining multi-billionaire Clive Palmer’s one-man fake news bureau Craig Kelly, and Pauline Hanson’s anti-science nut Malcolm Roberts.

If you doubt my interpretation, let them tell you in their own words how hard they are working to keeping their patrons’ greenhouse gas emitting industries keep growing in the face of the oncoming climate catastrophe.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he is supportive of Australia’s fossil fuel industry – and particularly coal, which he… says will be around for “decades to come”. “When it comes to the coal industry, it’s worth $35 billion to us every year in exports, and that’s money Australia needs to grow our economy,” Mr Morrison said. “What you need in today’s energy economy is you need to continue to run your coal-fired power stations for as long as you possibly can and that is our policy … we want them to run as long as they possibly can.” Coal-fired power stations will continue to run to back up renewable power sources, although Mr Morrison said gas would play a larger role in the energy mix in years to come. Mr Morrison added that building a new coal-fired power station would be difficult because of the state government planning powers, which would “probably never allow them to do it”. For the video see: The Australian, 14/03/2022, Commentary/coal-will-be-around-for-decades-to-come-scott-morrison/video. See also ‘We will keep mining’, says Australian prime minister Scott Morrison about the future of coal.

If that wasn’t enough, here’s a choice of some of Scotty’s thinking about stopping our slide down the slope to runaway global warming and possible near-term extinction

Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal, 15/02/17
via the Guardian:
We’ll keep mining!
09/09/2021 via the Guardian

We need to get the gas from under our feet. We’ve got to get the gas!
The future of power: What’s behind Australia’s push for gas-fired energy | ABC Four Corners

We need to turn away from the the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with the kind of business as usual Scotty from Maketing and his fossil fuel puppets are spruiking!

It seems to taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, wake up! smell the smoke! see the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment WG2 Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact all they doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your preferential votes wisely on behalf of our young one’s future.

Give the children a future worth running towards rather than misery and probable death in the collapsing shambles of global mass extinction along the road to Hothouse Hell

Featured Image: Community battery in WA. / from Your Guide to Batteries, Western Power

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Thawing permafrost: Big climate system danger

William P. Hall on April 4, 2022

Permafrost holds 2x more carbon than Earth’s atmosphere and 3x more than all forests. Thawing will hugely impact global climate warming

Science Session: Thawing Arctic Permafrost–Regional and Global Impacts

by US National Academy of Sciences, 12/05/2020

Science Session: Thawing Arctic Permafrost–Regional and Global Impacts

Temperatures across the Arctic are increasing two to four times faster than the global average. The dramatic consequences that are already apparent include reduction of sea-ice cover, accelerating loss of land ice from glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet, proliferating wildfires, and—the topic of this panel—ongoing heating and thawing of the permafrost that underlies most of the land area of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions across the globe. Permafrost thaw is a direct threat to buildings, roads, and pipelines, and it can greatly accelerate erosion along rivers and coastlines with severe consequences for communities located there. But an impact with much wider consequences is the release of carbon dioxide and methane by the decomposition of previously frozen organic matter, affecting the rate of growth of global warming and all of its impacts everywhere. (There is estimated to be something like 2.5 times as much carbon in the as in the entire global atmosphere; the key question is how fast it will come out.) The panelists, leading Arctic experts all, explain the complex science of thawing permafrost and elucidate the implications both regionally and globally.

Editors note: I have often mentioned the potential risk of rapid permafrost thawing serving as a source of powerful positive feedback on global warming from the abrupt emissions of greenhouse gases. The emissions include methane, which has a global warming potential more than 80 x that of CO. The video runs for almost 1½ hours. However, if you want to understand how science works in what are relatively conservative approaches and whether the risks that concern us in the Vote Climate One group are real, the whole video should be well worth watching.

In this pay particular attention to what is left out of the predictive models for future growth of emissions. The actual reality is likely to be even worse.

Finally, a lot of the discussion is based on the idea still common in 2020, that there is some kind of ’emissions budget’ that allows time to stop anthropogenic emissions. With more data, e.g., from the still conservative IPCC Sixth Assessment Report there is much less mention that there is no ‘safe’ emissions budget. Action to slow and reverse global warming is urgent! To be effective this will need global mobilization with cooperation at government levels as well as involving people. Here, our government in Australia has been quite hostile to any kind of action on global warming because of their apparently rusted-on allegiance to the fossil fuel industry and super-wealthy special interests associated with it.

In Scotty’s own words in one of his pet mediums – something to think about:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he supports Australia’s fossil fuel industry – and particularly coal, which he… says will be around for “decades to come”. “When it comes to the coal industry, it’s worth $35 billion to us every year in exports, and that’s money Australia needs to grow our economy,” Mr Morrison said. “What you need in today’s energy economy is you need to continue to run your coal-fired power stations for as long as you possibly can and that is our policy … we want them to run as long as they possibly can.” Coal-fired power stations will continue to run to back up renewable power sources, although Mr Morrison said gas would play a larger role in the energy mix in years to come. Mr Morrison added that building a new coal-fired power station would be difficult because of the state government planning powers, which would “probably never allow them to do it”. For the video see: The Australian, 14/03/2022, Commentary/coal-will-be-around-for-decades-to-come-scott-morrison/video. See also ‘We will keep mining’, says Australian prime minister Scott Morrison about the future of coal.

What can/must we do about this dreadful government and even worse situation?

We need to turn away from the the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with the kind of business as usual Scotty from Maketing and his fossil fuel puppets are spruiking!

It seems to take the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old autistic girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, wake up! smell the smoke! see the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment WG2 Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact they have expended considerable effort to deny the science, punish the institutions doing the science, misrepresent the facts, and try to divert interest to anything else but action on climate change. Beyond this they are continuing to support and subsidize continued expansion of the fossil fuel industry. Basically, all they doing is throwing coal on the fire and rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your preferential votes wisely on behalf of our offsprings’ future.

Our young ones are walking into an unknown future. Give them hope and not the Ukraine.

Featured image: Tundra fire burning on permafrost along a 30 km long front (with even more burning out of the frame, dated 20/07/2022, Picture centered on lat=71.50116, lng=145.43701 at zoom 10, well north of the Arctic circle in Russia’s Siberian Sakha Republic. Image downloaded from European Space Agency’s Sentinel Hub EO Browser using False color, urban with RGB tweaking to emphasize currently burning area and the reddish burn scar. Fire burned for over 3 months / uploaded here by William Hall.. See https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/?zoom=10&lat=71.49244&lng=145.43839&themeId=DEFAULT-THEME&visualizationUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fservices.sentinel-hub.com%2Fogc%2Fwms%2Fbd86bcc0-f318-402b-a145-015f85b9427e&datasetId=S2L2A&fromTime=2020-07-22T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&toTime=2020-07-22T23%3A59%3A59.999Z&layerId=4-FALSE-COLOR-URBAN&redRange=%5B0.01%2C1%5D&greenRange=%5B0.22%2C1%5D&blueRange=%5B0.18%2C0.83%5D

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Election day is close! Time to get serious about votes

William P. Hall on April 3, 2022

VC1’s viral Web campaign mainly runs on volunteer’s sweat, but many potential swinging voters respond best to physical paper that costs $$$

Vote Climate One has developed its Traffic Light voting system, voting guides, and the Climate Sentinel News service largely through the efforts of appropriately skilled volunteers. Similarly, we are promoting its use through viral marketing on the Web, again mainly with volunteer effort. However, to reach the substantial number of potentially swinging voters who distrust technology — or at least those in potentially marginal electorates, we also need to print and distribute our version of ‘how to vote” information on physical paper.

We are looking for sponsors and members interested in forming “Vote Climate One Tag Teams” in particular electorates. We also seek “climate heroes” to help fund paper versions of our Traffic Light Voting Guides targeting specific marginal electorates.

A new page on the Vote Climate One Web site explains in more detail how your donations and efforts as a Climate Hero can help replace existing LNP COALition Government fossil fuel puppets with people who are publicly motivated to put Climate Action at the tops of their to-do lists if elected to Parliament. Click the button below to find out.

Please tell me more about
Tag Teams and how
I can be a Climate Hero

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

See new Climate Council report on lost opportunities

William P. Hall on April 1, 2022

Eight years ago the LNP COALition govt. cancelled the national Climate Commission. But they kept on. Their report details lost opportunities.

Members of the Climate Commission would not lie down and die. They found their own funding and carried on.

Report summary, via Amanda McKenzie – Climate Council CEO, 01/04/2022:

The Lost Years: Counting the costs of climate inaction in Australia

Good factual, evidence-based reporting meticulously details the costs of 8 years LNP COALition Government denial and sabotage of science, blocking, disinformation, and downright malfeasance to prevent effective action on the growing climate emergency

The Climate Council’s full report can be downloaded from here.

Not counting front and end matter the Report provides 72 pages of well documented reportage on just what the government has done (1) to impede action on the global climate emergency that I have reported on extensively in Climate Sentinel News and (2) what the government has failed to do to help protect Australians from the worst impacts of climate change.

The analysis begins with an Introduction and Scorecard on Federal Government Climate Action that can be used to track progress into the future.

The real meat begins with Chapter 3 – Attacks on Science. What is documented here is a concerted attack to downsize and terrorize some of Australia’s world ranked scientific and technical institutions (e.g., CSIRO Climate Science Division) because the Government didn’t like the reality they reported. The cost of this denialism and threats is tracked through the remainder of the chapter (as well as through the rest of the Report).

Chapter 4 traces Australia’s dismal record, showing amongst other gems of mismanagement that:

In the thirty years since Australia first committed to tackling climate change, our emissions have increased by more than a quarter. [my emphasis]

p. 23

Chapter 5 – Setting the Record Straight, looks the physical cause of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and what can be done to reduce and stop them.

Chapter 6 – Reckless Conduct, looks at the LNP Government’s actions to promote fossil fuel industry growth at the expense of mitigating impacts of global warming induced climate change.

Chapter 7 explores the impacts of the LNP Government’s bad management of the climate emergency on Australia’s foreign policy and relationships.

The final chapter, saving the Conclusion of the Report surveys the Government’s program and policy decisions favoring its mates in the fossil fuel industry versus closing down or cutting programs addressing climate change.

…Australia can and should cut its emissions at an even faster rate than the required global average. The Climate Council recommends that to make a fair contribution to the required global effort, Australia should achieve net zero emissions by 2035, and reduce emissions by 75 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. As a first step, Australia should match its key allies and commit to at least halving emissions by 2030. We should aim high, and we should move fast in order to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks.

Embracing our natural advantages in clean energy, zero-carbon manufacturing and other climate solutions will ensure jobs and prosperity for Australians now and for generations to come. It will improve our health, and help protect our natural heritage. Bold and transformative action this decade is not only fundamental to protecting all of us, but can also secure Australia’s economic prosperity.

It’s crunch time. Another lost decade will put us on the precipice of climate catastrophe. The 2020s are our ‘Last-Chance Decade’ – a decade the next Federal Government cannot afford to squander.

pp. 65- 66

In Scotty’s own words in one of his pet mediums – something to think about:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he is supportive of Australia’s fossil fuel industry – and particularly coal, which he… says will be around for “decades to come”. “When it comes to the coal industry, it’s worth $35 billion to us every year in exports, and that’s money Australia needs to grow our economy,” Mr Morrison said. “What you need in today’s energy economy is you need to continue to run your coal-fired power stations for as long as you possibly can and that is our policy … we want them to run as long as they possibly can.” Coal-fired power stations will continue to run to back up renewable power sources, although Mr Morrison said gas would play a larger role in the energy mix in years to come. Mr Morrison added that building a new coal-fired power station would be difficult because of the state government planning powers, which would “probably never allow them to do it”. For the video see: The Australian, 14/03/2022, Commentary/coal-will-be-around-for-decades-to-come-scott-morrison/video. See also ‘We will keep mining’, says Australian prime minister Scott Morrison about the future of coal.

If that wasn’t enough, here’s a choice of some of Scotty’s thinking about stopping our slide down the slope to runaway global warming and possible near-term extinction

Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal, 15/02/17
via the Guardian:
We’ll keep mining!
09/09/2021 via the Guardian

We need to get the gas from under our feet. We’ve got to get the gas!
The future of power: What’s behind Australia’s push for gas-fired energy | ABC Four Corners

What can/must we do about this dreadful government and even worse situation?

We need to turn away from the the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with the kind of business as usual Scotty from Maketing and his fossil fuel puppets are spruiking!

It seems to taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, wake up! smell the smoke! see the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment WG2 Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact all they doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your preferential votes wisely on behalf of our offsprings’ future.

Our young ones are walking into an unknown future. Give them hope and not the Ukraine.

Featured image: Fig. 17 from the Climate Council Report, THE LOST YEARS: COUNTING THE COSTS OF CLIMATE INACTION IN AUSTRALIA

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.