Video report: Arctic warming and scientific conservatism

A personal story on Arctic climate change filled with facts together with discussion of how ‘conservative science’ nobbles urgency of action.

What Arctic climate tells us – It’s worse than we are told: Why science communication is conservative.

by Jason Box, 08/01/2022 on YouTube

Greenland ice melt – why climate communication is conservative – personal story

Featured image: 2100 years of summer Arctic air temperatures under different IPCC climate models. / From the video.

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

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.

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

History: First real evidence for abrupt climate change

1969 Greenland ice cores provide convincingly accurately timed evidence for abrupt major changes in Earth temperatures and global warming.

Wally Broecker, shown here in 1997, proposed that the shutdown of a major ocean circulation pattern could lead to abrupt climate change. Jean-Louis Atlan/Paris Match via Getty Images / from the Article

by Alexandra Witze, 29/03/2022 in Science News

Wally Broecker divined how the climate could suddenly shift: The shutdown of an ocean conveyor belt could cause abrupt climate change

It was the mid-1980s, at a meeting in Switzerland, when Wally Broecker’s ears perked up. Scientist Hans Oeschger was describing an ice core drilled at a military radar station in southern Greenland. Layer by layer, the 2-kilometer-long core revealed what the climate there was like thousands of years ago. Climate shifts, inferred from the amounts of carbon dioxide and of a form of oxygen in the core, played out surprisingly quickly — within just a few decades. It seemed almost too fast to be true.

Read the complete article….

Editor’s note: See Broecker’s 1975 paper, Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming? in Science, that gave us early warning 47 years ago on what might be happening. How different our future might have been if humanity took that warning seriously.

Leland_McInnes at en.wikipedia(red) GRIP data: http://www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk/data/grip-ss09sea-cl-50yr.stp (blue) NGRIP data:http://www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk/data/NGRIP_d18O_50yrs.txt / License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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

Rising crescendos: clusters of climate catastrophes

In a warming climate extreme weather events may encourage other extreme events to closely follow, e.g., fires followed by floods & landslides

Debris from a mudslide covers a home on January 10, 2018 in Montecito, California. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / from the article.

by Andrea Thompson, on 01/04/2022 in Scientific American

Double Disaster: Wildfires Followed by Extreme Rainfall Are More Likely with Climate Change: These events can cause devastating landslides and flash floods

At 3:30 A.M. on January 9, 2018, half an inch of rain poured down on the charred slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains in coastal southern California. The flames of the Thomas Fire—at the time the largest wildfire in state history—had swept through the previous month, leaving the soil and vegetation scorched and unable to soak up the onslaught of water. The destabilized ground gave way in a devastating landslide. Boulders crashed into houses in the town of Montecito, Calif., and a highway was buried under several feet of mud. The disaster killed 23 people and caused an estimate of around $200 million in damage.

Read the complete article….

See the scientific report that is the source of this article: Touma et al., 01/04/2022, Climate change increases risk of extreme rainfall following wildfire in the western United States in Science Advances

Featured Image: This image from a rescue helicopter records the burn scar from the Thomas Fire, as well as the path of a deadly mudslide in Montecito, Calif., in January 2018. Credit: California National Guard, CC BY 2.0 / from No Relief from Rain: Climate Change Fuels Compound Disasters: Climate change is increasing the risk of fire-rain events, raising mudslide concerns in fire-prone communities. by Leah Campbell, 12/12/2021 in EOS.

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

CO₂: If you can measure it, you can control it

A new satellite system and atmospheric modelling can separate changes in anthropogenic CO₂ emissions from natural environmental variability.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain via the Article

by Jessica Merzdorf Evans, 01/04/2022 in Phys.org

First-of-its-kind detection of reduced human carbon dioxide emissions

For the first time, researchers have spotted short-term, regional fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) around the globe due to emissions from human activities.

Using a combination of NASA satellites and atmospheric modeling, the scientists performed a first-of-its-kind detection of human CO2 emissions changes. The new study uses data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) to measure drops in CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic from space. With daily and monthly data products now available to the public, this opens new possibilities for tracking the collective effects of human activities on CO2 concentrations in near real-time.

Read the complete article….

Read the source report: Brad Weir et al, Regional impacts of COVID-19 on carbon dioxide detected worldwide from space, Science Advances (2021)

Featured image: Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa, Hawaii since 1958. Source Delorme – Data from Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL and Dr. Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography via Wikipedia (which see for more details) / License: licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.

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

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:

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

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

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.

Floods and then more floods! Can we expect more yet?

Multiple floods in La Niña years are not unknown in Australia, but global warming can supply more water that makes extreme flooding even worse.

Jason O’Brien/AAP Image from the article

by Margaret Cook, 31/03/2022 in the Conversation

Why can floods like those in the Northern Rivers come in clusters?

Right now, Lismore residents are going through their second major flood in a month.

On February 28th, the devastating first flood peaked at 14.4 metres, fully two metres higher than the previous record of 12.27 metres in 1954, and well above the town’s 10-metre-high levee wall, constructed in 2005. Four people died, with 2000 homes destroyed or unlivable of the city’s 19,000.

Even as Lismore and Northern Rivers residents struggle to recover from the first flood, the floods are coming again. On March 29th, more heavy rain began falling onto the soaked catchment feeding into Wilsons River.

Read the complete article….

Featured Image: Lismore locals are still cleaning up after February’s floods – now they are being hit again. Darren England/AAP Image / from the article.

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

We ignore those who know most about land we occupy

The world’s first nations people have been surviving since the ice ages on lands we occupy. We ignore their knowledge at our perils.

Calgardup Bushfire burning in Margaret River. DFES Incident Photographer Sean Blocksidge/AAP Image/ / from the Article.

by Janine Mohamed, et al., 29/03/2022 in The Conversation

Indigenous peoples across the globe are uniquely equipped to deal with the climate crisis – so why are we being left out of these conversations?

The urgency of tackling climate change is even greater for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and other First Nation peoples across the globe. First Nations people will be disproportionately affected and are already experiencing existential threats from climate change.

The unfolding disaster in the Northern Rivers regions of New South Wales is no exception, with Aboriginal communities completely inundated or cut off from essential supplies.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have protected Country for millennia and have survived dramatic climatic shifts. We are intimately connected to Country, and our knowledge and cultural practices hold solutions to the climate crisis….

Read the complete article….

Castlemaine (Vic.) author Lynne Kelly explains how Aboriginal song lines and similar tools in other primary oral cultures accurately preserve and transmit survival knowledge down through hundreds of generations.

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

What ‘Mr Doesn’t Hold a Hose’ thinks of Global Warming

Budget papers show Morrison government plans to cut climate spending if it wins election: Reduction in spending across clean energy agencies represents a 35% annual cut over four years.
By Adam Morton, 29/03/2022 in The Guardian

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