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38 °C above normal for any day of any year is a Never Before (NB4) extreme temp for Antarctica. Increasing number of NB4s says worse to come!
Featured Image: Antarctic temperature anomalies on 17/03/2022. Generated by William Hall, on Climate Reanalyzer on 22/03/2022.
In the previous article I posted today, I showed how our current LNP COALition government’s cash splash on cosmetic repairs to the Great Barrier Reef was probably intended to distract people from the fact that they are supporting the continued growth of Australia’s fossil fuel interests by doing nothing concrete to slow and stop the global warming process that is killing the coral.
In the article here, the Australia Institute points out the devious and deliberate humbuggery around the Government’s “target” for net-zero emissions by 2050 is nothing less than a fraud to misrepresent and distract from its commitment to subsidize a massive increase in coal and gas production (see quote below). The technologies being promoted (and subsidized!), such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen made from gas and coal – “are overwhelmingly trojan horses” to promote the production and burning of yet more gas and coal. Again, following the Australia Institute, “The only thing CCS has successfully captured at scale in Australia is public money. Collectively, the Australian governments has committed more than four billion dollars in public money to CCS with nothing to show for it.” [my emphasis].
The article goes on, noting several more initiatives represented to be action on climate change that actually channel more $billions to the fossil fuel industry to help them continue increasing their profits from burning fossil carbon.
by Ben Oquist, 19/03/2022 in Australia Institute/Opinion
The era of the great carbon fraud is upon us: We are entering the great era of carbon fraud. Instead of rushing to end fossil fuels, there is going to be a gold rush for carbon offsets, dirty hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS), all designed not to stop climate change, but to actually drive up the consumption of coal, oil and gas.
Consider the evidence. Before the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow last year, Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor announced Australia’s official target of net zero emissions by 2050. The Australia Institute pointed out this commitment is a fraud while the government remains committed to its plans to massively increase coal and gas production. There are more than 100 gas and coal projects in the pipeline, that will result in around 1.7 billion tonnes of additional CO2-e each year.
Read the complete article….
Many posts on this site show how we are already suffering climate catastrophes as the climate emergency grows progressively more dangerous in its acceleration towards runaway global warming. Even the politically constrained and conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that If the warming process is not slowed, stopped and reversed while this is still possible, many species will go extinct and humanity will suffer greatly. Actually, exponentially rising temperatures from runaway warming will most likely lead to an abrupt, near-term global mass extinction of most life on Earth, along with our descendants. Many will argue the last bit is impossible, because it is too horrible to contemplate. So horrible that the IPCC is totally afraid to touch the topic – not mentioning human extinction in any context anywhere in the 3675 page Report (as confirmed by several electronic searches on the words and synonyms).
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.
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.
Featured Image: Don’t be fooled by the jargon used by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor. Picture: Getty Images. Source: Canberra Times publication of the the Australia Institute article by Ben Oquist linked here in the Australia Institute version. 19/03/2022.
Reef building tropical corals are adapted to live close to the maximum water temperature they can survive in order to grow fast. Raise this temperature another 2-3 °C and their metabolism begins to break down.
The first sign of trouble is when coral polyps expel their photosynthetic algal symbionts that capture carbon and turn it into carbonates for coral skeletons and carbohydrates that are the primary source of energy to drive coral metabolism. They turn white (hence the term bleaching), and this expulsion is lethal for the corals unless they soon cool down and can host new symbionts.
It takes several years for a coral to fully recover from bleaching. If another bleaching event overtakes the coral before it has fully recovered from the last, death is more likely.
Also, the dead corals offer good sites for the attachment growth of bacterial slimes and noxious algae that the reef’s normal inhabitants won’t/can’t eat. As the reef ecosystem collapses, what was once a vibrant community of hundreds of fish species and tens of thousands of invertebrate species becomes a largely uninhabitable wasteland, substantially reducing the overall productivity of the reef ecosystem.
Also, as the dead biomass from the once robustly living reef breaks down, it begins to release copious volumes of greenhouse gases and reduces the oxygen availability in the surrounding waters, resulting in die-offs of many other species in the reef ecosystem besides just the corals.
by Mike Foley, 18/03/2022 in The Age
Severe coral bleaching along 500 kilometres of Great Barrier Reef: The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has reported severe bleaching to 60 per cent of the corals along a 500-kilometre stretch of the Great Barrier Reef between Innisfail and Mackay. Surveys are ongoing on the southern section of the reef, but with reports of local bleaching, scientists cannot rule out widespread bleaching of similar severity.
by Georgie Moore | AAP, 28/01/2022 in The Kalgoorlie MinerGreat Barrier Reef: Questions over timing of PM’s $1 billion funding promise: Climate scientists have questioned the timing of a $1 billion Great Barrier Reef spending splash days out from Australia’s deadline to update UNESCO on how it is protecting the World Heritage site. … UNESCO had asked Australia to provide more information by next Tuesday about what’s being done to protect the reef.
by Nicholas Bugeja, 5 March 2022, in Independent Australia
The Coalition’s ‘dreadful’ legacy on the Great Barrier Reef: Ahead of the upcoming Federal Election, the Coalition Government has made another significant pledge to protect the Great Barrier Reef from further environmental harm and degradation.
On 28 January 2022, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, … announced a $1 billion package for the Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s seven natural wonders.
The Prime Minister claimed that the funding would bring the Government’s financial contribution to the Reef to an amount of over $3 billion since coming to power in 2013.
This announcement was made against a backdrop of years of catastrophic damage to the Great Barrier Reef, including mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, which impacted 90 per cent of the Reef and killed almost a quarter of its coral reefs.
Read the complete article…
In the face of a rising frequency and intensity of ocean heatwaves that are bound to kill most of the corals forming our Great Barrier Reef, the LNP COALition government has rushed to the rescue with what is estimated to be around $3 billion in grant funding. As nearly as I can determine, not one doller of these grants addresses global warming that is heating the ocean.
In fact, from its start under Tony Abbott and then Malcolm Turnbull, the LNP COALition government has worked assiduously to protect the interests of its patrons in the fossil fuel industry well ahead of doing anything significant to stop the carbon emissions driving global warming:
Quoting from Independent Australia’s article, #ReefGate: The latest dubious Turnbull ‘foundation’, 17/08/2018 by Michelle Pini, there are the following environmental “achievements” during his Prime Ministership:
And then Scotty from Marketing took over the show to further support his immensely wealthy fossil fuel patrons with humbug, disinformation and distraction to ensure nothing was done in Australia to impair their rights to continue emitting greenhouse gases from their mines and industries.
Today’s post here demonstrates just how he can earmark $3 BN of our money on cosmetics to repair and cover up damage caused by global warming to making his puppet government look like it is doing something about the emergency. Certainly, some of the money will support projects that would help the reef if it can survive being boiled in ocean heatwaves. But, I think more importantly for Capt. Humbugs patrons happy, he can cry poor when it comes to doing anything serious to stop carbon emissions causing the problem in the first place (because the money was allocated to cosmetics). This demonstrates the actions of a marketing guru at work using the “Don’t look up” ploy.
If we are to have any chance getting on top of the climate emergency, these kinds of governments have to be removed from office and be replaced by parliamentarians who have publicly committed themselves to putting action on climate change at the tops of their agendas in office.
Even a 16 year old school girl can see the imperative logic in this.
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 that will 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.
Featured Image: Thetford Reef near Cairns in 2017 after bleaching. In Climate Change, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (undated). “Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs worldwide. Climate change is caused by global emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), agriculture and land clearing.”
Australian technology developed at University of Wollongong and being commercialized by Hysata offers most efficient/cheapest energy conversion to date.
by Peter Hannam, 16/03/2022 in The Guardian
Australian researchers claim ‘giant leap’ in technology to produce affordable renewable hydrogen: Morrison government’s hydrogen stretch goal of $2 a kilogram to make the fuel competitive could be reached by 2025, Hysata says.
Featured Image: Capillary-fed electrolysis cell – Schematic depiction showing how the bipolar plate and conducting gas diffusion layer in the capillary-fed cell were combined into a single bipolar plate structure that comprised a sheet of Ni with many small holes to allow evolved gases to exit the electrode. The anode electrode was welded to its bipolar plate. The cathode was compressed against its bipolar plate and not welded / Source: A high-performance capillary-fed electrolysis cell promises more cost-competitive renewable hydrogen, by Hodges, et al. 15/02/2022 in Nature Communications..
Scott Morrison shows his hypocrisy and inconsistency in everything except his rusted on support of the fossil fuel industry. It is time for him and his wooden-headed puppets to go
by Van Badham, 17/03/2022 in The Guardian/Opinion
As his ‘fauxgan’ act wears thin, desperation is driving Scott Morrison deeper into the dress-up box: Serious times require serious leaders. You may not like Anthony Albanese but he’s telling you who he is
Featured Image: Cover picture from The Shot’s The long, long, long list of all the times that Scott Morrison has said ‘it’s not my job’, by Nadine von Cohen on 21/04/2021. The full article is a must read along with van Badham’s article here. It is so clear that Morrison should not have the job of leading an effective response to the climate emergency we must ensure that he doesn’t have the chance to say that isn’t his job either. Use Vote Climate One’s resources to elect people who have publicly affirmed that this is in fact the job they will undertake if elected to Parliament.
The respected science journal Nature highlights the question on the 50th anniversary of the controversial book: The Limits to Growth
by Editorial, 16/03/2022 in Nature
Are there limits to economic growth? It’s time to call time on a 50-year argument: Researchers must try to resolve a dispute on the best way to use and care for Earth’s resources
Featured Image: Meadows et al., 1972, The Limits to Growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. A scanned version of the complete book can be downloaded for free from The Club of Rome’s website.
We live with ever increasing anxiety about species extinction (possibly including our own), environmental degradation, catastrophic bushfires and floods, deaths from heat stroke and a government that fails to act on the emergency. To survive, we will probably have to actively remove and safely sequester a significant fraction of the existing greenhouse gas from the global atmosphere, and possibly also enhance Earth’s reflectivity enough to reduce the amount of heat it captures from solar radiation. These goals will be hard to achieve, but let’s begin with the comparatively easy task of completely stopping human generated greenhouse gas emissions, i.e., zero carbon emissions from human activities.
Zero carbon by 2030 is a reasonable aspiration, especially in Australia. We have the knowledge and the resources for a technological transition. All we need is the political will. If we can do this, then we’ll know whether we have to do the other things also, and by then we should have a government able and willing to take leadership on these jobs as well.
Big necessary decisions must be made to advance Australia’s part in the Paris Agreement, including withdrawing public money and government support from fracking the Beetaloo Basin; closing down the giant new offshore gas field of the Scarborough-Pluto LNG project in W.A. and stopping the Adani coal mine and others in the Galilee Basin in Qld. Serious social disruption will occur without a blueprint for future industries and jobs.
The declaration of a Climate Emergency and the contingencies that flow from this will guide an economic transformation. Just as radical change happened with the declaration of the war economy, shifting perspectives made the impossible seem possible. We cannot imagine how fast change can happen as we are used to the spin, obfuscation, rorting, incompetence, reliance on the market to find solutions and the privatisation of government decisions via outsourcing to big donors in contemporary government.
Setting aside the debate about the necessity of the limits to growth and a whole systems approach we need to elect a new Federal Government who can work with a cross bench to shift public opinion as fast as is politically possible.
Many industries and communities are writing blueprints for the future. One comprehensive plan that will inspire hope and creative action in people who seek election at the 2022 Federal Election is The Million Jobs Plan by Beyond Zero Emissions.
by Beyond Zero Emissions, June 2020
The Million Jobs Plan: A unique opportunity to demonstrate the growth and employment potential of investing in a low-carbon economy
The publisher, Beyond Zero Emissions is an internationally recognised energy think-tank, that shows through independent research and innovative solutions how Australia can thrive through a transition to a zero-emissions economy. The plan aims to create employment, modernise our infrastructure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It proposes nation-building, transformative projects that can upgrade the economy, modernise industry, reskill the workforce and deliver a different future – economically and socially. The Plan includes case studies for coal industry regions. The Plan aims to make Australia more prosperous, fairer and more resilient, with local jobs that are lasting, secure, well-paid and backed by safe and fair working conditions. Their research shows that this is entirely achievable.
Some of its key points include –
We applaud the many people who have put their hands up to stand for election in 2022 to collectively advance Australia’s contribution to solving the existential crisis we currently face.
For information on how to make your vote count to elect House and Senate representatives in your electorate who will put action on climate change at the top of their to do list, our Traffic Light Voting System will give you information about the various candidates and show you how to make the most of your vote.
Finally, a comprehensive analysis of the science of the state of the planetary emergency is essential reading.
Featured Image: Climate Sentinel Editor, based on an image by Kirsten Gillibrand from her campaign as a Democratic candidate in the primaries for the US Presidential Election in 2020. Source: via Wikimedia Commons.
The North American Coastal Plain loses nearly 700 km² of wetland forest a year (and more on the Pacific Coast) from rising salt water levels
by Rachel Duensing, 16/03/2022 in 17 News WNCN Raleigh
Sea-level rise creating ‘ghost forests’ in North Carolina: Imagine a forest the size of Raleigh and Durham. Now imagine a forest that size dying every single year.It’s an unfortunate reality that’s happening right now across the North American Coastal Plain, including part of our backyard here in North Carolina.
Featured Image: Atlantic white cedars dying near the banks of the Bass River in New Jersey.
Credit: Ted Blanco/Climate Central / https://assets.climatecentral.org/images/made/9_13_16_upton_BassRiver-27_720_404_s_c1_c_c.jpg / From: ‘Ghost Forests’ Appear As Rising Seas Kill Trees, by John Upton, Climate Central
France’s presidential election campaign highlights the dangerous absurdity of candidates’ reluctance to “look up” to see the global climate emergency
by Romain BRUNET Follow | Benjamin DODMAN Follow, 16/03/2022 in France 24
Climate can wait: French election campaign ignores ‘humanity’s greatest challenge’: It’s a key preoccupation of the French and the greatest challenge to our planet – and yet the subject of climate change has all but vanished from France’s presidential campaign, sidelined by the war in Ukraine, a lack of media exposure, and candidates’ own reluctance to broach the subject.
Featured image: Climate emergency – The oceans are risking. Melbourne was part of the global climate strike on March 15, 2019, drawing an enormous crowd estimated at 40,000 people, the vast majority school students. After welcome to country and some speeches at the Old Treasury Building the march wound it’s way through CBD streets, down Collins Street and up Bourke street, then down to Treasury Gardens. It was a highly energetic march with the roar of chanting calling for coal, don’t dig it, and for climate action now. . Attribution: Takver from Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons / https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/The_oceans_are_rising_and_so_are_we.Climate_emergency–Melbourne_climate_strike–IMG_4246%2833509327348%29.jpg/1200px-The_oceans_are_rising_and_so_are_we.Climate_emergency–Melbourne_climate_strike–IMG_4246%2833509327348%29.jpg?20190416115510
Although Joe Manchin claims to be a Democrat, because he holds a balance of power this wholly owned puppet can and does block most climate action
by Bill McKibben from The Crucial Years, 14/03/2022
The Senator from Fossil Fuel is ‘Beating Biden Badly’: Joe Manchin and the Case of the Closing Climate Window.
Featured Image: MRI scan showing Joe Manchin’s decision-making process. by John Deering | September 24, 2021 in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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