Hughes: ‘safe’ COALition seat, interesting contest

William P. Hall on April 30, 2022

Held by science denying, coal loving Lib turncoat funded by Clive Palmer, Craig Kelly, contested by 2 teals, a Green, One Nation and the Libs

Georgia Steele is one of the independent candidates running in Hughes.(ABC News – from the article)

by Amy Greenbank, 16/04/2022 in ABC News – Federal Election 2022 – Australia Votes

Liberal candidate for Hughes in a ‘sprint’ against independents and Craig Kelly

Jenny Ware is upbeat as she walks around a picturesque waterfront park in Como, in Sydney’s south.

She’s on a mission to introduce herself to as many people as possible, but knows her time is short. 

“Hi, I’m Jenny Ware. I’m the Liberal candidate for Hughes,” she tells a handful of parents and grandparents supervising kids in a bustling playground.

Her reception is mixed, but she’s not daunted.

…

Two pro-climate independents are also running and sense an opportunity.

“I think people are seeing the internal party machinations as a debacle, but I won’t ever be subjected to internal party politics, so it is a bit of a bonus I think,” independent candidate Linda Seymour said.

“After the last 12 years [of Craig Kelly] I think this electorate is ready for change.”

Another independent candidate, Georgia Steele, is hoping to stage a Zali Steggall-style upset and snatch a safe seat.

Read the complete article….

Editor’s comments

This is a very interesting contest to see how a reasonably affluent urban fringe electorate dominated by lower tier professionals and tradies with moderately high level of home ownership and commuting requirements respond to the choice between three fossil-fueled spin merchants given the ‘red light’ by Vote Climate One, three climate emergency realists given the ‘green light’, and an ‘orange light’ Labor nominee with little to offer but the party line.

In Hughes, I doubt that any candidate will achieve an outright majority in the election. Thus, how voters in this electorate manage their preferences may be critically important in determining whether the type of candidate they want is elected. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System is designed to help you rank candidates by Traffic Light categories so your intent to vote for a climate friendly government isn’t accidentally lost to a fossil fuel puppet.

There are three red light candidates. As summarized in the featured article, the Liberal candidate, Jenny Ware, suffered a major loss in campaigning time in an epic preselection battle between the Liberal Party federal executive and the local branch that was only settled with a High Court ruling. Ware was nominated to replace the once popular ex-Liberal incumbent, Craig Kelly, who moved to the extreme right and is seeking re-election as ‘leader’ of multi-billionaire coal miner Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. The third red-light candidate is Narelle Seymour, representing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, is completely unknown to Google or even One Nation’s web site as at 29/04/2022. If this was the USA, I would say Narelle Seymour is probably a bogus candidate whose name was put up to draw votes away from Linda Seymour who is a credible teal independent running for the seat.

The Labor Party, that held the seat for most of its history prior to Kelly’s election as a Liberal, is represented by Riley Campbell, who, as a relative unknown with no obvious qualifications, seems to be nominated as a place holder.

Then there are three green light candidates: ● Peter Thompson – the Green – who grew up on the beaches, waterways and National Parks of the Southerland Shire (similar to my own childhood in Southern California), a science teacher for 24 years, and a strong environmentalist for 20 years; and two teal independents: ● Linda Seymour – Also home grown in the electorate, an environmentalist and high-level professional architect and communicator with experience on a number of major Australian and overseas projects; and ● Georgia Steele, born in Southerland, high school and uni in Canberra, a high-powered corporate lawyer and litigator across 4 continents, ‘obsessed with politics’ from her time in Canberra, and settled down back in Southerland to raise a family.

I quote Georgia Steele’s well expressed reasons for running because these seem typical for most of the ‘teal’ independents I have studied:

A few years ago, I started waking up in the early hours of the morning, worrying. Worrying about my kids. Not about their current lives, but about their future. Worrying that it’s only so long that they will continue to have the same opportunities that I had when I was growing up. That all the driving, coaching, cooking, will all be for nought.

This is because, if something doesn’t change – and fast – the world they’ll be living in in their 40s, will be unrecognisable from the world that we live in now. The waterline of the beautiful Wonnie will be who knows how far up the hill and the Royal National Park will have been so badly hit with bushfires that there will be almost nothing left of it.

What really kills me about this, what keeps me up at night, what frustrates the hell out of me, is that it’s a fixable problem.

Humans have got this. Humans have already invented, manufactured and commercialised all of the technology that we need to get the planet back on track. Remember what it was like to be a world leader at something? [Editor’s emphasis]

In those early morning sleepless hours, I’d ask myself whether I was doing enough. I had banned single-use plastics from the house, I had put solar panels on the roof, I’d bought a hybrid car. I’d even become a vegetarian. But somehow, it really didn’t seem enough.

Then it dawned on me. The problem is a political one. It requires a political solution. I’m a litigator. What great qualifications for being a politician! I can write. I can argue. I can persuade. I can negotiate. I can compromise. I can do that job. And surely that would be doing enough?

So, I said goodbye to the law. I put aside my dream of writing the great Australian novel, and I’ve decided to run for office. Because things need to change, and quickly. In 30 or 40 years’ time, when my kids come to me and say “Mum, how the hell did we let it get this bad?” I’ll genuinely be able to tell them that I did everything I could. With any luck, we won’t have to have that conversation at all.

From Georgia Steele’s Blog, 24/11/2021, Why I’m Running for the Seat of Hughes

Pundits think the seat will return to the Libs. I think otherwise [See post-election note below]

The demographics of Hughes suggests that the electorate is well populated by smart, practical, largely self-made people who are good at thinking for themselves. Such people are not so likely to sheepishly follow either the party-line blather and humbug of the COALition’s fossil fuel puppet brigade or Clive Palmer’s puppet Craig Kelly anti-scientific and anti-climate fairy tales. Any one of the three green light candidates is better qualified and more likely to develop and negotiate rational and effective responses to the growing climate emergency (and many other fraught issues as well) than are any of the other candidates in this electorate.

If voters consider the evidence and THINK before they vote, I have little doubt that the green light trio will gain the majority of first preferences amongst themselves. Whether one of them will win the seat in the end depends on how voters manage their remaining preferences. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System and its voting guides are designed to help people rank their preferences in such a way that if a green light candidate is given the first preference, and doesn’t win, the vote will still go to another green light climate friendly candidate as long as any remain in the running. Only if there are no more green or orange light candidates alive can the vote be given to a red light candidate.

Vote Climate One is also providing downloadable blank ballot formats so preferences can be decided at home, so the choices can easily be transferred to the formal ballot paper in the voting booth.

See Climate Sentinel News‘s Corrupt leaders, casual media, gullible believers for a different and sometimes humorous take on how use preferential voting to make the kind of humongous political transition we need to make to cleanse the Parliamentary stable of its many years accumulation of bulldust.

In any event, the IPCC tells us that this election is probably our last chance to change our current puppet government to one that will act in our behalf to resolve or at least mitigate the accelerating climate crisis.

Post election note

The pundits were right – from ABC:

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]”. Like Georgia Steele, people hope for their children’s futures. Greta 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: Boundaries of the Huges Electorate from Vote Climate One’s Hughes Electorate page. Click candidate names for more details.

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

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.

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.

True grimness of IPCC’s report still misunderstood

Climate News Links on April 18, 2022

Most media concluded that emissions could go on rising until 2025 and the world could still stay under 1.5C. A potentially lethal error.

photo by Mario Tama / from the article

by Matt McGrath, 16/03/2022 in BBC News

Climate change: Key UN finding widely misinterpreted: A key finding in the latest IPCC climate report has been widely misinterpreted, according to scientists involved in the study:

A major challenge in communicating complex messages about climate change is that the more simplified media reports of these events often have more influence than the science itself.

This worries observers who argue that giving countries the impression that emissions can continue to grow until 2025 would be a disaster for the world.

“We definitely don’t have the luxury of letting emissions grow for yet another three years,” said Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace.

“We have eight years to nearly halve global emissions. That’s an enormous task, but still doable, as the IPCC has just reminded us – but if people now start chasing emissions peak by 2025 as some kind of benchmark, we don’t have a chance.”

Read the complete article….

Editor’s note: Based on my rigorous evaluation of the IPCC’s scientific methodology and writing processes, even the corrected understanding of the IPCC report STILL UNDERSTATES the likelihood of the risk from, and the magnitude of consequences of failures or even delays in stopping the progress of global warming. In reality, the report says it is already too late to avoid global average temperatures rising more than 1.5 °C. By reaching net zero in 2030 AND extracting and sequestering most of the excess CO₂ already in the atmosphere we might be able to bring temperatures back down to 1.5 °C or less. Continuing with business as usual keeps us on the road to runaway warming to Earth’s Hothouse Hell and social collapse leading towards global mass extinction of humans and most other large and complex organisms on the planet.

Featured Image: A dried out reservoir in Chile where drought has forced the government to take emergency measures. / Getty Images / from the article.

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

Tells the truth about electing honest government

Climate News Links on April 16, 2022

Excuse the profanity, but Juice Media perfectly describes how Vote Climate One is trying to use preferential voting to get honest government.

Featured Image: Preferential voting in the House of Representatives. / Parliamentary Education Office licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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.

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.

Great govt. planning! Boost fossils not renewables

Climate News Links on April 1, 2022

COALition continues funding fossil fuel patrons while neglecting/cutting 21st Century green/ renewable growth industry sector. Who benefits?

Renewable energy generates 1.6 times the electricity used by Australian households, with 2021 the fifth year in a row of record new capacity. Photograph: SolStock/Getty Images / from the article

Australia’s renewables boom fading as investors lose confidence, energy council says: Clean Energy Council says Morrison government’s lack of ‘meaningful policies’ and leadership on climate could mark start of downturn

Australia’s boom in rooftop solar and large-scale renewables is fading as investors lose confidence, with the lack of coordination by the Morrison government partly to blame, according to the Clean Energy Council.

The warning comes as the industry marked its latest record year for household solar, wind and solar farms, and big batteries. Renewable energy’s share of the electricity supply reached 32.5%, doubling since 2017, the council said in its annual report.

Read the complete article….

Featured Image: Logo Renewable Energy by Melanie Maecker-Tursun V2 green. Melanie Maecker-Tursun Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

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