Australian MPs: Act now! Later may be too late!

Human activities are triggering self-reinforcing existential climate risks that are growing more lethal with time — our extinction is likely

Over the last 200 years prodigious amounts of carbon-based fossil fuels (coal, oil, methane) have been burned to produce waste gases (mostly CO₂) and useful energy to drive the Industrial Revolution, our affluence, our toys, our technologies, our wars, and everything that has followed. The fossil carbon humans have extracted from the Earth and burned in an instant of geological time took our planet millions of years to accumulate and store in the geosphere (i.e., rocks & soil). In the same geological instant, the waste gases released from the burning are fundamentally changing Earth’s atmosphere (the air we breathe, etc…). Because of the physical properties of CO₂ molecules and other atmospheric emissions, this has trapped enough additional solar heat in the atmosphere to significantly raise average temperatures around the world. In turn, the added heat is already causing unprecedented climatic disasters. These existential climate risks will only become more frequent and catastrophic as temperatures continue to rise. (See CO2: Past, Present, & Future – one of many dozens of articles covering the same facts, and Climate apocalypse).

However, natural regulatory processes in the climate system have kept the environment stable enough for more than 800,000 years up until the 20th Century – enough time for humans to evolve and develop the social systems, agriculture, technology, and cultural riches we benefit from today.

Image modified from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Atmospheric CO2 levels (blue line) and temperature (red line) from year 1,000 to 1978. Data for CO2 from Vostok ice core, Law Dome ice core, and Mauna Loa air samples. Data for temperature from Vostok ice core. CO2 measured here is in parts per million (ppm = by weight), which is similar to ppmv (by volume).

As shown in the graphs above, the shock to the composition of the atmosphere caused by these human generated changes is increasingly disrupting natural climate regulation. If we do not quickly stop and repair the damage we have done to the atmosphere, then over the next few decades increasingly extreme, frequent and extensive climate changes and catastrophes will be causing more death and destruction to our societies than we have the capacity to repair. In turn, this climate collapse will lead to agricultural, economic and social collapse followed by mass die-offs and probable human extinction within a century or two.

Business as usual cannot cope with a global systems breakdown. Nor can uncoordinated individual actions. However, at least for a few more years before systems breakdown has progressed too far, we should still be able to assemble the technology and knowledge to avoid this doom. Beginning with primitive Victorian era steam-punk technologies backed by a very limited scientific understanding of climate and geophysics, humans took over 150 years to burn enough fossil fuel to accidentally cause the present crisis. Today we have now developed a deep and detailed scientific understanding of how the world works and vastly more powerful technologies. With will, leadership, and cooperation at international, national, state, and local areas we should be able to locate, diagnose and repair aspects of the climate system we have broken to re-stabilize it in a state we can live with.

However, to do this we will have to revolutionise many of our governments. We need to change them from their usual businesses of representing and working for the special interests of their donors, patrons and puppet masters (many of them associated with fossil fuel industries), to a new business of truly representing the needs of the citizens they supposedly represent – – especially in the face of the growing climate crisis.

If you are an MP, you need to join this revolution!

The factual scientific evidence of the consequence we face if we fail to stop and reverse global warming is overwhelming. However, I recognize that a life in politics where almost everything can be ‘negotiated’ does not prepare most politicians to understand the difference between responding to non-negotiable facts of physical reality and the business-as-usual of getting elected/re-elected and trading influence.

In the remainder of this work I present some of the overwhelming evidence of the dangers we face from an increasingly destabilised climate system driven by unrestrained global warming, and why our governments must change and act if we are to have any hope of surviving the existential global crisis this is causing. Because this evidence is based on scientific laws developed over some 400 years of testing and practical use, it is totally independent of whatever people might want to ‘believe’ now about how the world works

Laws of physics, geology, chemistry and biology

The scientific laws of physics and chemistry describe how the universe we live in works, irrespective of anything we humans might want to believe. Because atoms and molecules work the way they do, burning carbon releases ‘greenhouse’ (i.e., heat trapping) gases into the atmosphere. Because the increased concentration of these gases in the atmosphere traps reduces the amount of solar energy leaving our planet, the world is growing warmer.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s (NOAA) Mauna Loa observatory’s records show the longest available continuous series of meticulous(!) measurements of important greenhouse gases. Variation in the two most important gases are shown below. The amount of these gases in the atmosphere increased every year since the recording began (except for methane which showed slight decreases in three out of 5 years beginning in 2000). More importantly, the rate of CO₂ increase has also increased in 5 of the 6 decades in the record (i.e., it’s getting worse even faster now than it was earlier!). These kinds of graphs are based on many discrete observations taken every day for many years at particular locations (in this case Mauna Loa, Hawaii) that are replicated by similar observations from other stable locations around the world (e.g., Cape Grim, Tasmania – see also CSIRO Atmospheric Composition and Chemistry).

NOAA Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases / Trends in CO₂ (carbon dioxide) / Trends in CH₄ (methane). The average amounts of gas are plotted (red dots) on a monthly basis. The average increase in the amounts of gas are plotted yearly.  Source gml.noaa.gov.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere act as a thermal blanket causing the Earth’s temperature to rise by reducing the amount of solar heat lost to space — same heat in, less heat out: inevitably everything covered by the blanket gets warmer. Just how much warmer is measured by the ‘temperature anomaly‘.

It should be no surprise that dumping millions of years worth of carbon accumulation into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases at an accelerating rate over 200 years or so has significantly affected global temperatures.

Berkeley Earth’s Global Temperature Report for 2022 – Posted on by Robert Rohde.
The global mean temperature in 2022 is estimated to have been 1.24 °C (2.24 °F) above the average temperature from 1850-1900, a period often used as a pre-industrial baseline for global temperature targets. This is ~0.03 °C (~0.05 °F) warmer than in 2021. As a result, 2021 is nominally the fifth warmest year to have been directly observed, though the years 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2022 all cluster closely together relative to their uncertainty estimates. In particular 2022 and 2015 are essentially tied, and 2022 could just as easily be regarded as the 6th warmest year. This global mean temperature in 2022 is equivalent to 0.91 °C (1.64 °F) above the 1951-1980 average, which is often used as a reference period for comparing global climate analyses. The last eight years stand out as the eight warmest years to have been directly observed. (Note: Berkeley Earth’s methodologies and their differences from other groups providing similar global temperature records are described here.)

Around ninety percent of the excess heat Earth absorbs is held in the oceans, and water in its three forms (gas, liquid and ice) is the main transporter for distributing that energy around the planet.

OCEAN HEAT CONTENT CHANGES SINCE 1955 (NOAA)
Data source: Observations from various ocean measurement devices, including conductivity-temperature-depth instruments (CTDs), Argo profiling floats, and eXpendable BathyThermographs (XBTs). Credit: NOAA/NCEI World Ocean Database. A more detailed graph including additional measurements from instrumented mooring arrays, and ice-tethered profilers (ITPs) covers the period 1992 – 2022. Credit NASA ECCO. Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, our global ocean has a very high heat capacity. It has absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases, and the top few meters of the ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere.
Note: If you want to grasp how many and what kinds of precision measurements – cross-checked across a variety of measurement platforms go into constructing these graphs, I suggest taking the time to go through one of ECCO’s presentations: ECCO: Integrating Ocean and Water.

Water (= H₂O) is a major component in the climate system and the main carrier of energy driving weather and climate change.

Each of water’s three physical states: water vapour (=gas), liquid water, and frozen water (=ice), together with transitions between the three states, all play important roles in the absorption, storage, transport, and release of heat around the planet. In its own right water vapour is also the most important and variable greenhouse gas.

Of all the natural materials forming the outer layers of the Earth, water has the second highest heat capacity of any known chemical compound. A lot of energy needs to be absorbed or released to warm or cool a quantity of water by even one degree — the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gm water by 1 °C at standard pressure and temperature has its own name, the calorie. (An old unit of measure, but the easiest to follow here.) This same amount of heat is released when the 1 gm cools by 1°. To raise the temperature of 1.3 sextillion litres just by 1° of the world’s oceans takes the absorption of a humongous amount of heat!

Water (Hydrosphere) and Air (Atmosphere)

Water in the world Ocean

At temperatures above 4 °C, water expands as it warms. In other words, a parcel of water composed of a given number of molecules occupying space expands in volume as it warms from 4 °C to boiling. Thus, as the ocean warms, sea levels rise. Water running off the land from melting glaciers and ice sheets causes sea levels to rise further and faster.

Warmer waters lying over cooler waters of the same salt content tend not to mix. However, as warm salt water evaporates, salt is left behind, making the remaining surface water denser, until it becomes heavier than cooler water below, allowing the warm water to sink and mix with the cooler water. This helps to suck in ocean currents to replace parcels of the cooling saltier water as they become denser and sink into the depths.

Thus, ocean currents are important engines for transporting heat around the globe.

Water in the atmosphere

Boiling or evaporating 1 gm of liquid water to gas (i.e., invisible steam) at one atmosphere of pressure takes approximately 540 calories of energy (= heat of vaporisation/evaporation)! Similarly, when H₂O gas condenses to form visible steam (i.e., a mist of liquid water) the same energy of vaporisation is released as heat.

When liquid water freezes to form solid ice it releases ~80 calories/gm, while 80 calories of energy needs to be extracted from the surrounding environment to freeze 1 gm of liquid water to ice.

The gas laws discovered in the 1800s through practical experience with the thermodynamics of steam and internal combustion engines govern the relationships between temperature, volume, and pressure of gases. As heat energy warms a parcel of gas at a standard pressure, the absorbed energy causes the gas molecules comprising the parcel to move faster – resulting in increased volume (lowering the density of the parcel compared to surrounding parcels that have not changed in temperature). Or, vice versa increasing pressure will cause the gas parcel to heat up. Similarly, cooling gas will shrink in volume (i.e., become more dense) as its temperature decreases, or warming gas will increase its volume becoming less dense as it is heated. This is why parcels of warm air tend to rise in generally cooler air and vice versa.

Finally, another set of laws describes the solubility of water vapour in Earth’s atmosphere, and the solubility of the various gases forming the atmosphere in water. A parcel carrying the maximum concentration of a dissolved material is said to be ‘saturated’. Normally any excess over the point of saturation is precipitated out of the solution. Where precipitation of water vapour in the atmosphere is concerned, the precipitated water is called dew (if it collects on a surface), mist (if the droplets are small enough to remain floating in the atmosphere), rain (if droplets are large enough to fall to the ground) or snow (if it is cold enough for the precipitation of solid water). Hail is precipitated as liquid droplets that coalesce and freeze on the way to the ground. Basically, the capacity for the atmosphere to carry water as dissolved water vapour and the rate at which the vapour evaporates from the liquid increases substantially with temperature.

Note that the process of evaporation absorbs a lot of energy (i.e., the vapour stores the energy that drove the evaporation as latent heat) which is released as sensible heat when the dissolved vapour condenses and precipitates. Warm air can hold a lot of water vapour while cold air can only hold a little vapour. Thus a warm air mass is often able to suck moisture out of vegetation and soils, but as that mass rises in elevation and cools a temperature may be reached where the air is saturated (this is called the ‘dew point‘) and possibly massive amounts of water are precipitated as rain or snow together with the release of huge amounts of latent heat as sensible heat causing the air mass to rise still higher (e.g., into towering anvil topped cumulonimbus clouds). The rising air is liable to suck in high speed winds and possibly even form small and large hail, cyclones, and tornadoes. The higher the temperature of the air mass is when the dew point is reached, the more precipitation, heat and wind is generated.

As global warming increases baseline and average temperatures around the world, the amount of energy contained in parcels of water vapour increases, and thus increases the total amount of energy available to drive extreme weather events.

Water on the land and in the biosphere

Liquid water is a powerful solvent for all kinds of minerals and flows downhill wherever it can. Flowing water is relatively dense, and therefore an important agent for the transport of solid materials ranging from particles of sand to potentially huge boulders and even buildings. Consequently, standing and flowing waters are the major agents of dissolution, erosion and storm damage: especially when combined with storm-force winds.

All living things on Earth are partially comprised of water, with humans being about 60% water and even trees 50% water. The water in and around living things acts a) as a solvent and as a medium of transport for the dissolved gases required for photosynthesis (where this exists) and respiration; b) as a medium of transport for the ions, molecular nutrients and waste products of cellular metabolism and growth; c) as a structural element in the three-dimensional folding of proteins and other macromolecules; and d) as a structural element in the maintenance of hydraulic rigidity of the shapes of cells and vesicles, and even whole organisms. 

Every type of living thing requires the availability of a minimum amount of water of a minimum quality to survive. Conversely, too much water and/or water of the wrong quality (i.e., it may be transporting harmful substances as particles or in solution) or wrong temperature (i.e., the shapes and activities of proteins involved in metabolism unavoidably change with changing temperature) may also kill.

Air in the water

Atmospheric gases (e.g., nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide) are more soluble in cold water than warm water. In other words, cold water can carry a lot more dissolved O₂ and CO₂ than warm water can.

CO₂ is relatively soluble in water because it readily forms carbonic acid. This is important for global warming because the oceans currently absorb about 30% of all global CO₂ emissions, thus slowing the rise of global temperatures due to the greenhouse effect. However, this is bad news for life on Planet Earth for three reasons: First, as the gas is increasingly absorbed into the water some of it turns into carbonic acid. This makes the water more acidic, dissolving calcium from shells and bones – contributing to the die off of plankton, corals, shellfish and bony fish. Secondly, given that CO₂ is the waste product of respiration it slows the respiration of all marine and aquatic organisms. Three, as water temperature rises CO₂ becomes substantially less soluble. This can be catastrophic for global warming because it acts like a time bomb. Rising temperatures drive significant amounts of CO₂ out of solution in the ocean, back into the atmosphere, where it acts as a positive feedback driving global temperatures still higher in a potentially vicious cycle.

O₂’s solubility in water is limited, but dissolved O₂ is critical to life for all complex organisms that respire water. This includes all aquatic or oceanic organisms: many bacteria, most protozoa, single-celled and multicellular algae (net O₂ producers by day, overnight they must extract O₂ at night for respiration) up to whole forests of giant kelp, giant squids, whale-sharks, and the largest whales. In the pre-industrial world O₂ levels in most waters were close to saturation. Any degree of warming beyond what species are adapted to live in reduces the amount of O₂ the water can carry. Species will begin dying when the O₂ levels fall below levels the different species have evolved to tolerate. For example, along the Southern California coast where I grew up, whole forests of giant kelp die off when the ocean temperature rises to around 23 °C. So do the myriad of other species living in those forests that may still be able to respire, because at some to many points in their lifecycles they required something the kelp provided. Other kelp forests around the world, and in Australia are also dying off, e.g., the once rich kelp forests of Tasmania – possibly even more comprehensively than they have in California (e.g., northern Tasmania).

And then there are the horrific die-off events in the rivers and lakes of Australia’s Murray-Darling region, where the combination of blistering heat combined with off-the-charts CO₂ levels is absolutely lethal to whole ecosystems. This year’s event even killed carp that can breathe air!

How will our Atmosphere, Hydro-/Cryo-sphere, Geosphere and Biosphere respond to global warming on the real Planet Earth?

Meteorology, climate science, earth systems science extend the basic laws of physics, chemistry and a little bit of biology into the real world. However, even a brief review of some of the basic laws of physics and chemistry above for water, oxygen, and CO₂ gives some hint of just how complex weather and climate change really are. Earth’s Climate System that generates weather and climate change in the world we live in is a complex dynamical system composed of probably hundreds of variables often interacting with one another in non-linear. Some of these interactions are poorly understood or even unrecognised even by the scientists studying them.

Even though the Earth System is absolutely and fundamentally governed by the physical laws of nature, trying to predict future weather and climate conditions is fraught with difficulties of two kinds. First, complex systems of many variables, where some of the variables have non-linear positive feedback relations with one another, often behave chaotically under some or even many conditions. (See also climate change feedback.) Second, is that some of the variables are probably still unknown to science or not well understood. Even the largest supercomputers in the world capable of performing more than 100 quadrillion calculations per second and working with millions of daily observations from around the world can only make usefully accurate weather predictions out to around 8 days before wandering off into random noise.

For these reasons, predicting the future trends of global warming with a high degree of accuracy and certainty is frankly impossible.  However, what is almost certain is that if we do not stop and reverse the process of global warming there will be major disruptions to all of these systems which will make much of the Earth uninhabitable for complex life.

How trustworthy are the sciences and the warnings?

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deals with the uncertainties by running large numbers of similar earth/climate system models (ensembles) with slightly varying inputs on supercomputers to forecast possible future trends and their likelihoods. These outputs are analysed statistically to determine frequent trends and the range of uncertainties around these trends. Thus, many believe that the models give us a relatively good idea of how changes in specific environmental variables are likely to change the climate.

Unfortunately, with regard to managing climate risks, the reality is that this approach is too conservative because:

  • It filters out some or all of the instances of chaotic extreme deviations from the likely results because these are usually considered to be consequences of “system breakdown” in what is assumed to be a bad model — even though system breaking ‘exponential blow-ups’ are to be expected in complex dynamical systems. In other words, the bad result where the model ‘breaks down’ may well be a realistically valid prediction of the model.
  • Most scientists agree that the RATE of climate change is increasing with time. However, the delays in knowledge flow between observation of reality and assessment and presentation of results mean that there is a lag built into the IPCC reports.  That is, the delays inherent in analysing and writing up the results, delays in conducting peer review and publishing the original research, conceiving and constructing and running the mathematical models based on those results to forecast the future, analysing and writing up the results of the modelling, delays in publishing these results; and then comes the added time cost to incorporate the published results in an IPCC Report. This IPCC process alone takes a minimum of 2-3 additional years of three drafts, two peer reviews, and a final sign-off by the political appointees of the 170 countries comprising the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. Thus, the years-old input data providing a baseline for the models’ predictions necessarily do not include the array of record-breaking temperature, greenhouse gas, and weather readings associated with the increasingly extreme weather events of the last few years.
  • Finally most IPCC scientists are associated with academic and research institutions funded by governments, where academic progress and promotions depend on not being too novel or controversial (i.e., exhibiting ‘scientific reticence‘). This leads to scientific self-censorship — downplaying alarming findings, reinforced by the need that IPCC Reports require political approvals by government appointees to be published.

The following graphic is the IPCC’s own depiction of their authoring and review process.

The graphic and a comprehensive description of IPCC’s writing and review processes are given in their document, Preparing Reports. In turn, even more detail on how each kind of document is prepared, reviewed and signed off is provided in the IPCC [Documentation] Procedures, according to the the Principles Governing IPCC Work that lay down the role, organisation and procedures of the IPCC. These guiding Principles establish comprehensiveness, objectivity, openness and transparency for all IPCC Work
.

Note, this and other issues with the IPCC’s predictions are examined 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.

Thus, when the formal IPCC reports publish their predictions for the future consequences: it follows that this is a gold-standard, scientifically correct but somewhat rose-tinted statement of the best possible outcomes we can hope for from the present state of the escalating climate emergency. The actual future is most likely to be worse, or even more worse. 

Given all of these factors, it is virtually impossible that the IPCC reports are in any way overstating the magnitude and dangers of the climate crisis.  Those who claim the IPCC reports are ‘alarmist’ are seriously misinformed or else aim to be deliberately misleading.

How do we know all of this?

There is a vast array of direct observational evidence from the real world (e.g., the graphs of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and rising global temperatures presented above) showing that our global climate is already deteriorating at historically and even geologically unprecedented rates. A few recent observations sample this kind of evidence.

Identifying, analysing, and managing climate risks

Most climate scientists have backgrounds in mathematics, physics or geology where they are used to working with well behaved regular systems — not complex dynamical systems with potentially chaotic and unknown variables where the models are inherently fallible in their predictions of the future. Although the mathematical theory of chaos emerged from early attempts to model climate, few have any formal grounding in complex systems or chaos theory. Consequently, they tend to believe their models can predict the future with some degree of statistical accuracy, rather than accepting that models are good for explaining what can happen but not what will or won’t happen.

Scientists (including a few climate scientists) who continue to deny that current climate change is mainly due to human activity are often used to dealing with changes over long periods of time, where natural and well understood processes are more or less adequate to explain how climate has changed in the past.  Many of today’s deniers formed their opinions years ago (e.g. 1980s) when even climate specialists actively debated the extent and causes of climate change.  In people prone to denial, ‘confirmation bias’ then begins to reinforce conclusions, where data fitting their belief is eagerly accepted, but seemingly contradictory data is critically scrutinised and rejected. 

Over time, with the overwhelming additional data supporting unnaturally accelerated climate temperatures on land, air and sea, almost all genuine climate scientists have come to conclude that human activities are in fact changing the climate.  The holdouts are usually in those other disciplines that have a default assumption that natural processes always explain changes in climate.

And then, there are those who have totally unscientific reasons for denying that humans cause climate change.Following on my career as an evolutionary biologist (PhD Harvard 1973) with strong backgrounds in geology, physics, systems sciences (systems ecology, genetic systems, cybernetics), I was employed for 17 years as a knowledge management systems analyst and designer with what became Tenix and then Tenix Defence through the life-cycle of “Australia’s most successful naval surface combatant project – by far” – the ANZAC ship project. I worked very closely with the company’s engineering systems analysts and risk managers (often the same people did both). The ANZAC Project was so successful because the prime contract was performance-based rather than specifications based. We were contracted to deliver for a fixed price certain capabilities and reliabilities in service rather than meticulously detailed products.

Large defence systems – especially like warships and aircraft with their multitudes of subsystems, assemblies and piece parts, are complex dynamical systems that are inherently but unpredictably fallible due to unanticipated dynamics, human errors, or unpredictable failures of critical parts. It was the job of contract analysts, systems engineers, design engineers and knowledge managers (me), to work out a ship design and construction process that could be trusted to meet the customers’ requirements within the negotiated fixed price.

Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA)

The critical analytical tool in Tenix’s success, apparently unknown to climate science, is application of the Military Standard, Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) within a risk analytical and management framework. Briefly, this involves (1) tabulating all conceivable failures and the potential consequence of the particular failure mode (i.e., its criticality) for every component of the system that might have a detrimental effect on the system’s safety or functionality, (2) preparing at least a matrix for every failure mode showing the approximate likelihood of failure, and (optionally) the likely consequences/costs to the system should the failure occur, and the costs to repair or mitigate the mode.

Applying FMECA to global warming

Should we ignore a risk because its consequences are so severe we fear accepting that it is real?

The following graphic plots an analytical matrix for the risk of human extinction from a failure to stop global warming at a safe global temperature for human survival. A serious analysis of this risk (that is unthinkable to many) demands examining the physical realities associated with each dimension of the matrix and looking for solutions to reduce consequences and likelihood of the risk happening, and to provide the maximum time possible to manage it; or alternatively, to entirely avoid the activities causing the risk. Unfortunately, given that the risk from global warming is associated with the project to power industrial, technological, and population growth by burning fossil fuels that began 150 years ago. Thus we have no choices but to live or die with the consequences arising from this project.

Slides 10 and 76 from Hall (2016). The angst of global warming – our species’ existential risk

Our planning to manage the risk must consider the third dimension — TIME. How much time do we have to manage the risk if we are to avoid its consequences? The possible consequences of the risk are existential – i.e., extinction of human society as we know it or even the entire species. The probability is likely to be certain if we do not stop and reverse global warming. The timescale is imminent, i.e., within the expected lifespan of today’s children.

Should we heed the science and the warnings?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established by the United Nations to research and provide the “best” scientific advice available to governments of the world regarding the science, trends, and likely progress of climate change. The Panel’s staff is selected and overseen by all the member states of the World Meteorological Organization. The peer review is exhaustive and intensive – probably more so than for any other scientific endeavour ever.

For reasons I have detailed it would be virtually impossible for any formal publication of the IPCC to overstate the dangers represented by climate change. Where the IPCC says that even the current trends will be catastrophic if realised, I would say that they are ‘existential’: A word the IPCC rarely uses and never defines.

Most dictionaries (e.g., see OneLook Dictionary Search) only define the word in terms of ‘existentialism’ – a branch of philosophy. In discussion of the climate crisis, in the framework of global catastrophic risk, “an existential danger threatens the very existence of something” (ref. Macmillan Dictionary).

The Wikipedia article on Global Catastrophic Risk defines “existential” in these terms:

Existential risks are defined as “risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential.” The instantiation of an existential risk (an existential catastrophe) would either cause outright human extinction or irreversibly lock in a drastically inferior state of affairs. Existential risks are a subclass of global catastrophic risks, where the damage is not only global but also terminal and permanent, preventing recovery and thereby affecting both current and all future generations.Note: This discussion of definitions may seem to be highly pedantic. It isn’t. It is deadly serious. Humanity faces a serious risk of triggering a global mass extinction event akin to the End Permian event that was “Earth’s most severe known extinction event,[11][12] with the extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species[13][14][15] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.[16] It is the largest known mass extinction of insects.[17]If you are declaring a state of emergency, it does not help to describe the emergency in soothing terms.

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

A warming ocean will take its revenge on us

Around 90% of the extra heat trapped by the greenhouse layer warms our Ocean to slow rising temperatures. We’ll pay the price.

The climate scientist, Bill McKibben reminded me of this fact in his regular newsletter, The Crucial Years, in his 18 May post, Maybe we should have called this planet ‘Ocean’. His post on ocean warming begins with an earlier version of the graphic here from ClimateReanalizer. These are updated daily, so the record here is only a day or two behind the current reality:

The page provides time series and map visualizations of daily mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from the NOAA Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) dataset version 2.1. OISST is a 0.25°x0.25° gridded dataset that estimates temperatures based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations. The OISST data product includes SST anomalies based on 1971–2000 climatology from NOAA. The datset spans 1 January 1982 to present with a 1 to 2-day lag from the current day. OISST files are preliminary for about two weeks until a finalized product file is posted by NOAA. This status is identified on the maps with “[preliminary]” showing in the title, and applies to the time series as well. The time series chart displays area-weighted means of the selected domain. For example, if World 60S-60N is selected, then the SST values shown are area-wieghted means for all ocean gridcells between 60°S and 60°N across all longitudes.

Something very troubling is happening on and under the 70 percent of the planet’s surface covered by salt water. We pay far more attention to the air temperature, because we can feel it (and there’s lots to pay attention to, with record temps across Asia, Canada and the Pacific Northwest) but the truly scary numbers from this spring are showing up in the ocean.

If you look at the top chart above , you can see “anomaly” defined. [His chart was for 11 May. Mine, here, is the temperature on 19 May.]That’s the averaged surface temperature of the earth’s oceans, and beginning in mid-March it was suddenly very much hotter than we’ve measured before. In big datasets for big phenomena, change should be small—that’s how statistics work, and that’s why the rest of the graph looks like a plate of spaghetti. That big wide open gap up there between 2023 and the next hottest year (2016) is the kind of thing that freaks scientists out because they’re not quite sure what it means. Except trouble. [My emphasis]

… A little-noticed [but quite important] recent study headed by Katrina von Schuckmann found that “over the past 15 years, the Earth has accumulated almost as much heat as it did in the previous 45 years,” and that 89 percent of that heat has ended up in the seas. That would be terrifying on its own, but coming right now it’s even scarier. That’s because, after six years dipping in and out of La Nina cooling cycles, the earth seems about to enter a strong El Nino phase, with hot water in the Pacific. El Nino heat on top of already record warm oceans will equal—well, havoc, but of exactly what variety can’t be predicted.

Read the complete article….

McKibben’s second graphic (the up to date version is my “Featured Image”) shows a global plot of temperature anomalies (also compared to the same 1971-1980 baseline) for every ¼° – ¼° square of ocean surface. “Area weighting” is applied because ¼° of latitude (the width of the ‘square) becomes much narrower as either pole is approached, reducing the physical surface area encompassed by the lines on the globe.

Earth’s oceans cover around 70% of the globe’s surface. Despite the 2nd or 3rd week of record breaking heat, wildfires and drought in western North America extending from California through the western 2/5ths of North America into the Arctic Ocean and a second belt in northern Eurasia extending from Scandinavia and Finland to western Siberia, the ocean temperatures are relatively even more extreme. And, in fact, the crazy heat in the warming oceans may be the driving force behind the record land temperatures — and may well be triggering what is likely to be the most extreme El Niño event yet in the climate change record.

In any event, this data doesn’t just freak me out. It suggests that the door to Earth’s Hothouse Hell is beginning to open to suck us in.


Is this data reliable enough to support action?

Where the climate record is concerned, From the beginning of the satellite era, our oceanic temperature record is very good indeed, and not just because satellite remote sensing measures virtually every square degree of most of the globe every day, but the satellites’ measurements are calibrated every day against the ‘ground truth’ measurements from many hundreds of Argo floats surfacing each day from their 9-10 days probing the ocean depths. The graphic below shows the physical locations sampled by Argo floats over the previous month. Added to these are more detailed measurements collected by fleets of oceanographic ships and a few special moored buoys that continuously record measurements from the ocean surface to the abyssal ocean bottom.

Supercomputers amalgamate the raw input data and assemble the kinds of human readable outputs that you and I can understand at a glance. Thanks to the exponential growth of measuring technologies and data processing power the accuracy and detail of our scientific understanding of climate and weather extends far beyond anything we could know in past decades.


How is all the additional heat in the warming ocean likely to affect the planet we live on?

Melting ice

As the atmosphere and oceans absorb more solar energy, some of this excess energy will inevitably be absorbed melting ice in the cooler regions of the planet where ice has existed more-or-less in an equilibrium state, e.g., in the form of glaciers, ice sheets, and sea ice. The energy drives the equilibrium states towards more water and less ice.

One very obvious measure of ice melting is the rapidly shrinking area of the Earth’s surface covered by sea ice around the N and S Poles. Since the beginning of the satellite era this has been able to be measured accurately. The Australian Antarctic Program Partnership and the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science’s 2023 Science Briefing: On Thin Ice explains what is happening around our local polar ocean

The graphics below show the daily extents of sea ice over both polar oceans since the beginning of the satellite era in 1979 as plotted by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center‘s interactive Charctic application.

Record minimums or maximums are updated annually. Therefore, a newly-set record may not be reflected in the chart until after the annual update.
View additional years by clicking the dates in the legend.
Roll your cursor over the line to see daily sea ice extent values.
Zoom in to any area on the chart by clicking and dragging your mouse.
To see a corresponding daily sea ice concentration image, click on a line in the chart. Sea ice extent is derived from sea ice concentration. Images are not available for the average or standard deviation.
When reusing Charctic images or data, please credit “National Snow and Ice Data Center.”
Currently, some functions do not work in Internet Explorer. We recommend using a different browser.
For more information about the data, see About Charctic data.
If you have questions or problems, please contact NSIDC User Services at [email protected].

What is currently happening in the Antarctic Ocean is also freakish and worrisome!

Rising sea levels

Of course, all the melt water released by melting ice has to go somewhere — i.e., adding to the volume of the World Ocean. As this wasn’t enough, as water warms it also expands to raise the sea levels even more. The graph below from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, plots the rising tide of the swelling ocean since 1993 through June 2022. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate.Gov site’s Climate Change: Global Sea Level also plots the rise, and considers its implications in more detail.

The Conversation’s May 17 article, Global warming to bring record hot year by 2028 – probably our first above 1.5°C limit, looks at these facts and warns us that the time to act is NOW! CSIRO’s State of the Climate/Oceans covers most of the trends I have discussed here and more…

Daily change in global mean sea level, as measured by satellite altimetry, from January 1993 to June 2022 (solid line), the associated uncertainty at 90% confidence level (shading) and the trend (dashed line). The data have been adjusted for glacial isostatic adjustment and have been corrected for the TOPEX-A instrumental drift during 1993–1998. Data source: CMEMS Ocean Monitoring Indicator based on the C3S sea level product. Credit: C3S/ECMWF/CMEMS. 
https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-indicators/sea-level

Help! We’re sliding down the slope to Earth’s Hothouse Hell! Sound the sirens and mobilize for WW III against global warming and the existential climate crisis!


As is usual for the UN’s climate pronouncements driven by the UN’s IPCC findings that absolutely establish the dangers we face from global warming/heating, even this klaxon warning understates and downplays the magnitude of the crisis we face.

If we fail to mobilize genuinely effective action over the next decade to stop and reverse the warming crisis, our families will have their lives shortened due to increasing climate catastrophes and we will have condemned our entire species to death in Earth’s 6th global mass extinction within a century or two. We don’t have time to take more election cycles to elect new governments. Our existing governments must wake up, smell the smoke, and immediately begin acting to put out the fire before it destroys us all. If you are in government, read Guterres’ message in mind. YOU must act now!

Press Release

SG/SM/21799

16 May 2023

Planet Hurtling towards Hell of Global Heating, Secretary-General Warns Austrian World Summit, Urging Immediate Emissions Cuts, Fair Climate Funding

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the seventh Austrian World Summit, in Vienna today:

I thank the Austrian Government and Arnold Schwarzenegger for this opportunity.  The climate crisis can feel overwhelming.  Disasters and dangers are already mounting, with the poor and marginalized suffering the most, as we hurtle towards the hell of 2.8°C of global heating by the end of the century.

But, amidst all this, I urge you to remember one vital fact:  limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C remains possible.  That is the clear message from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  But, it requires a quantum leap in climate action around the world.

To achieve this, I have proposed an Acceleration Agenda.  This urges all Governments to hit fast-forward on their net-zero deadlines, in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in the light of national circumstances.  It asks leaders of developed countries to commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2040 — as Austria has done.  And leaders in emerging economies to do so as close as possible to 2050.

The Acceleration Agenda also urges all countries to step up their climate action, now.  The road map is clear:  phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries and 2040 in all others; net-zero electricity generation by 2035 in developed countries, and 2040 elsewhere; no more licensing or funding of new fossil-fuel projects; no more subsidizing fossil fuels; and no more fake offsets, which do nothing to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, but which are still being used to justify fossil-fuel expansion today.

We can only reach net zero if we make real and immediate emissions cuts.  If we embrace transparency and accountability.  Relying on carbon credits, shadow markets, or murky accounting means one thing:  failure.  That is why I have asked CEOs to present clear net-zero transition plans, in line with the credibility standard presented by my high-level expert group on net-zero pledges.

And the Acceleration Agenda urges business and Governments to work together to decarbonize vital sectors — from shipping, aviation and steel, to cement, aluminium and agriculture.  This should include interim targets for each sector to pave the way to net zero by 2050.

The Acceleration Agenda also calls for climate justice, including overhauling the priorities and business models of multilateral development banks, so that trillions of dollars in private finance flow to the green economy.

Developed countries must also make good on their financial commitments to developing countries.  And they must operationalize the loss and damage fund, and replenish the Green Climate Fund.  I commend Austria for increasing its pledge to the Green Climate Fund by 23 per cent and urge others to deliver their fair share.

On climate, we have all the tools we need to get the job done. But, if we waste time, we will be out of time.  Let’s accelerate action, now.  Thank you.

Featured Image

Note that about half the surface of Earth’s Ocean is a good 2 °C hotter than the baseline average temperature for this day of the year

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

Utter insanity: they’ll outlaw gravity next

As if a planetary system is going to pay an iota of attention to what Iowa thinks. New law says state regulations must ignore climate change!

The only people who will suffer will be those harmed by and dying from increasingly extreme weather events as a consequence of global warming from the fossil fuel industry’s continued contributions to Earth’s greenhouse layer.

Blind stupidity driven by boundless greed! You have to read the article to understand just how stupid and greedy some American legislators can be…

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

Puppet politics: Majority governments work for themselves

Labor puppets will work to benefit fossil fuel industries’ continued hyper-profitable exploitation come hothouse hell or high water flooding! How do we know this?

In the feature article here, Fake Reform: Jim Chalmers’ itsy-bitsy tax “hit” is a gift for foreign fossil fuel giants, Michael West Media compares the Australian experience with fossil fuel exploitation with the way Norway has managed their resources.

Gas giants are grinning too. Image: Jim Chalmers, AAP / from the article

Michael West – 07/05/2023, Michael West Media

Fake Reform: Jim Chalmers’ itsy-bitsy tax “hit” is a gift for foreign fossil fuel giants

Jim Chalmers’ long-awaited tweaks to the PRRT are the itsy-bitsyest “reforms” about, the equivalent of recycling old Christmas presents with a fancy new bow. Michael West reports on how the Treasurer is merely returning a couple of billion in gas sector subsidies, and only for a while.

“Chalmers slaps $2.4bn tax hit on oil and gas,” cried Murdoch’s The Australian. “$2.4bn gas tax hit on energy giants,” declared the AFR. Santos chief Kevin Gallagher was nowhere to be heard with his “Soviet-style” scaremongering. Is Australia still going the way of Venezuela and Nigeria, Kevin? 

Not on your Nelly. The foreign gas giants are profiteering from Australia’s resources like there is no tomorrow, and paying pocket fluff in tax to boot. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ long-awaited tweaks to the PRRT are itsy-bitsy, the equivalent of recycling old Christmas presents with a bright new bow, really just “up-fronting” a piddling amount of gas revenue for the next few years, a clawing back of subsidies for a while. 

You know it’s a fake “hit” when the fossil media talks it up as a “hit” but the gas lobbyists from APPEA say it gets “the balance right”. Reality is there is no balance, just ongoing pillage.

Clearly our Government is receiving or expecting to receive some kind of quid pro quo that they think will help them stay in power. Staying in power is clearly more important to the party that has the majority in government than doing whatever is necessary to stop and reverse the carbon emissions currently forcing us all down the road to hothouse hell and global mass extinction.

How else could the robber barons of the FF industries count on our Government helping them to rip off such extraordinary profits from their pillaging of so many Australian non-renewable resources?

In Michael West’s article also see the linked video, “Another year of record fossil fuel subsidies. What’s the scam?“, and the more detailed article, “A tale of two fossil superpowers: what Australia can learn from Norway“.

Following this theme a little further, see the news from Alberta, Canada, that is currently burning to a crisp. This gives some of the evidence demonstrating how FF puppetry works through its ‘influence’ on the media:

The stark reality is that the successful puppetry of the fossil fuel industry to protect and possibly even enhance next year’s earnings is driving us ever faster down the global warming road that leads to human oblivion in the 6th global mass extinction. Even if the heating doesn’t kill us directly, the die-offs of increasing numbers of keystone species, will cause whole ecosystems (including human agricultural systems) to collapse, taking our species along as well.

The weather causing the fires in Alberta today is a sign of the times:

Note: The normal progression of waves in the Jet Stream is from west to east. In this time series, the Jet Stream is so disordered that the eddy is actually moving the heat dome from east to west!

What we are seeing here is the operation of a positive feedback look driven by increasing global temperatures. As the Arctic grows warmer, temperature differences driving the jet streams diminish. This change allows the streams separating frigid polar air from much temperate zone air to slow and meander both far north and south of their normal paths. As demonstrated above, this is how the monster heat dome causing the Alberta fires formed. Amongst other things, slow overall warming accompanied by periodic heatwaves like this over most of the world’s boreal forests has allowed bark beetles, normally killed off every year by winter freezing, to proliferate to the point that they are killing vast numbers of trees. This increases the forests’ vulnerabilities to fires and the ferocity of the fires themselves. Not only does this turn the carbon content of the trees into greenhouse gases, but the fires are often hot enough to ignite the peaty soil to release that carbon as greenhouse gases as well.

The feedback loop is further extended as underlying permafrost exposed by burning off of the insulating layers of vegetation and peat begins to release the vast accumulations of greenhouse gases held as icy gas hydrates.

In sum, fossil fuel interests have convinced (1) our government to protect and even extend fossil fuel’s profits from producing and burning Earth’s carbon stores into energy and greenhouse gases, and (2) our press from advertising the facts of this pillage to the people whose futures will be destroyed by the consequent global warming.

Governments controlled by political parties in majority are easy targets for special interests, especially when the parties operate on the basis that the only issue that matters is to retain control of the government. They will represent the special interests of any person/group/industry they think can help them keep that control before the interests of the people in their electorates or people in general.

To mobilize and coordinate the necessary forces to turn off the downhill road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell, our governments need to work for us humans, not vested interests:

  1. we need to convince our elected and candidate representatives that we will absolutely not vote for them if they put a vested interest before our interests;
  2. that we need to elect enough independents from our own communities who will represent us to ensure that no major political party can form a majority government in its own right.

Item 2 ensures that community interests can veto legislation favoring special interests put up by the party in power.


Featured Image:

A protest against the US government’s decision to exit the Paris climate deal in 2017. ‘Ignorance-building strategies’ by fossil fuel companies have bred climate change scepticism among conservatives in the US and Australia. Photograph: Anthony Anex/EPA | from the Guardian article by Graham Readfearn (08/05/2018), “It’s all about vested interests’: untangling conspiracy, conservatism and climate scepticism“)

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

Political revolution has begun in Australia!

The climate emergency needs a revolution: from governments supporting dogmas and special interests to supporting citizens.

Vote Climate One is working to inform Australians of the scientific facts relating to the ever growing climate emergency and what can be done politically to ensure that our governments actively join the battle to solve the emergency. We hope this will help drive a political revolution enabling this to happen.

Due to humans’ alteration of Earth’s atmosphere, the physical world we live in is generating a climate emergency

Scientific evidence shows this is the case

Black Summer fire illustrates need for political revolution in Australia
This image of a burning home in Lake Conjola in New South Wales, Australia, was taken in the middle of the day on New Year’s Eve. Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York Times. Our Black Summer Bushfires should be more than enough to convince every Australian that we are facing a very real and very dangerous climate emergency.

Where scientifically validated facts are concerned, two weeks ago on the 20th of March the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) controlled by 195 nations of the world forming the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published their dire forecast for our future climate. This report’s Summary for Policy Makers was signed off by the delegated representatives of every one of the WMO member nations. This summary report crossing many different scientific disciplines concludes some 6 years of some of the most stringently peer-reviewed scientific research ever published. In other words, the forecast is based on a vast array of solid and tested evidence, not just anecdotes and beliefs.

For a more detailed presentation of the IPCC’s research and writing process see Politics vs physical dangers and real death and Some fundamental issues relating to the science underlying climate policy: The IPCC and COP26 couldn’t help but get it wrong. The second article explains why the IPCC cannot avoid downplaying the extent and magnitude of the consequences from continuing global warming.

In other words, where the IPCC says our future is dire if we don’t stop global warming, the actual reality is likely to be even worse, i.e., involving social collapse and even possible/likely human extinction within a century or two. Hence, our warning on Vote Climate One’s cover page:

The reality we face

Humans triggered the climate emergency over a little more than 100 years. In this geological instant of time we burned prodigious quantities of safely sequestered fossil carbon accumulated over millions of years to produce and release the greenhouse gas CO₂ and, even more potent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This was done more-or-less accidentally with the invention of primitive, Victorian era-based steam- technologies. However, even the low tech used and applied by billions of people significantly changed the composition of an entire planet’s worth of atmosphere so it traps more solar energy to significantly warm the whole planet. Today, we are continuing to dump still more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, heating the planet even more.

Given that humans only took a century to accidentally create the climate emergency using steampunk technology, surely, by working together and using our most up to date science and technologies, we should be able to solve the emergency. Unfortunately dogma and selfish greed promoted by special interests controlling the planet’s resources are working against stopping greenhouse gas emitting activities. This, unavoidably, becomes fraught with politics: internationally, nationally, state, and even at local council levels. Political revolutions will be required at all levels to favor climate action.

Before we can work together to solve the climate emergency in the physical world, we must revolutionize our current political world working to protect special interests by keeping us divided

Puppet governments

Where politics is concerned, for several decades at least, Australian Governments (federal, state, and even many local councils) have governed primarily to serve entrenched party-political dogmas and vested special interests. Parliamentary parties have worked to impose their dogmas on the nation’s citizens rather than listening to them. Special interests influencing the governments include multinational companies in the resource and fossil fuel industries, super-wealthy individuals, land-developers and religious groupings. Parties (and party discipline) tends to support the interests who support their campaigns and provide them with favorable media. Our Climate Sentinel News article provides a case study of Liberal government in NSW: Is Premier Perrottet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?

Unfortunately, the uncoordinated actions of people alone, no matter how well motivated, cannot possibly organize, marshal, and control all the resources and technologies needed for effective action on the climate emergency. This requires the tools of and coordination by government. Effective action to stop global warming requires stopping industrial carbon emissions. This just isn’t going to happen as long as puppet governments guided by fossil fuel industries continue subsidizing their puppet masters and jailing protesters campaigning to stop emissions. Several Climate Sentinel News posts document such cases under the search term “puppet master“.

Revolutionary political change is the solution

Vote Climate One concludes that the critical first steps in mobilizing effective climate action must be to: (1) inform citizens of the genuine reality of the climate crisis (i.e., via Climate Sentinel News); and (2) provide knowledge and tools to influence or replace parliamentary puppets of the special interests with MPs who will place citizens’ interests first (i.e., “Traffic Light Voting” and “Voting Guides“).

In other words, we aim to facilitate fundamental political revolutions in Australian parliaments: From ‘democracies’ guided by the greed of large special interests for profits and power; To a genuine democracies representing their citizens and being concerned with their health and well being.

In Australia’s political environment we think the best governments will be Labor in a minority (with labor more progressive than the usual opposition parties) where Greens and a diversity of greenish community independents hold the balance of power to prevent Labor from catering to vested interests.

This revolution has begun! Current state of the political revolution in Australia

Australian Parliament

In last year’s Federal election, the COALition majority government was decimated: replaced by a Labor government with a razor thin margin and a large cross bench with 14 green-light candidates.

House of Representatives Elections

COALition

Aust. Labor Party

Centre Alliance

Katter’s Australian

Australian Greens

Ind (Teal)

Ind (other)

2022

58

77

1

1

4

9

2

2019

77

68

1

1

1

3

1

-18

+11

(Sharkie)

(Katter)

+3

+6

(Gee + Dai Le)

(Majority ≥ 75): Labor 77 + Aston = 78; Red lights 61 – Aston = 60; Green lights = 15

Green lights include (Greens: 1 carryover and 3 new ones – replacing Libs in metro Brisbane) plus a swag of greenish community independents from 4 other states; Labor controls the lower house in majority but with a narrow margin. Several seats could easily go to independents in by elections.

In the 1 April (April Fool’s day!) by-election in Aston (Ferntree Gully – Rowville in eastern Melbourne), in a 6.44% swing, Labor gained another ex-safe Liberal seat. This is the first time since 1920(!) that any party in power has won a seat in a Federal by-election anywhere in Australia. Only 3 out of 32 booths in the once safely Liberal Aston had a majority of Liberal votes.

Liberals are left holding only 2 of 23 seats in Inner Metro Melbourne (Deakin and Menzies), 3 of 7 Outer Metro (Casey, LaTrobe and Flinders), and 0 of 3 Regional Metro areas (Bendigo, Ballarat, and Geelong).


Senate Elections

COALition

Aust. Labor Party

Greens

Pauline Hanson’s

Jacqui Lambie

United Australia

David Pocock

Lidia Thorpe

2022 Election

15

15

6

1

1

1

1

Total Senate 2022

31

26

11

2

2

1

1

1

Majority > 38: Labor 26; Red lights 36; Green lights 13(Labor + green lights) = 39

Where Labor has only 26 seats compared to 36 seats for the red lights, the green lights clearly hold the balance of power in the Senate. David Pocock (community independent) and Lidia Thorpe (elected as a Green) must be included along with the Greens party to give Labor a majority. David Pocock’s vote is critical in decisions where the red lights are unanimously against.

In our analysis of the results, Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Election Guide was accessed hundreds of thousands of times during the pre poll and election day voting period – which might have helped some candidates over the line to either second place (allowing preferences to be distributed to them) to pass the 50% two party preferred winning position. In the ACT Vote Climate One funded distribution of paper versions of the Guide in a few of the suburbs — where Pocock did statistically better than in suburbs we didn’t cover. This may have been a significant component in the winning margin.

Since the Federal Election we have had state elections in Victoria and NSW.

Victorian State Parliament

The Victorian Parliament has more resistant to revolutionary change because of the many barriers to Greens, minor parties and independents crafted into the electoral laws designed to favor the major parties. Victoria allows ‘group voting tickets’ for election to the Legislative Council and secretive backroom ‘preference trading’ among the mobs. Combined with this, Victoria’s heavyweight restrictions on campaign contributions and funding gravely hamper independents and minor parties’ abilities to campaign compared to major parties’ major funding.

Legislative Assembly

The Assembly (lower house) ended up with Labor holding 56 seats, Liberals with 19, Nationals 9 (red lights = 38), and Greens 4; where a majority is < 45. None of the 120 independents or candidates from 16 minor parties won a single seat. Labor’s 11 seat majority in the lower house combined with party discipline does little to hinder autocratic government from the Labor side.

On the other hand voting for the Legislative Council turned out well for green-light candidates. MLCs serve for 4 year terms, with all seats contested in each state election.

Legislative Council

For Legislative Council Elections in Victoria, the state is divided into 8 geographically defined electoral regions, with 5 members representing each region, for a total of 40 members. Elections are determined by ‘optional preferential voting‘. Voters have a ‘single transferable vote‘, which may be used either

  • ‘above the line’, to vote one party’s group voting ticket listing all candidates for the region in the party’s preferred order, or
  • ‘below the line’, where you must number at least 5 candidates in your preferred order, and may number all candidates for the region in your preferred order. If you number less than 5 or give more than one candidate the same number this invalidates your ballot.

The use of group voting tickets enables upper house elections allows voters’ intentions to be rorted in many ways as described by Glen Druery, the ‘Preference Whisperer’. However, despite all of this, after the 2022 election, green-light MLC’s on the cross-bench with 7 votes hold the balance of power.

Victorian Legislative Council Elections

Labor

COALition

Greens

Animal Justice

Derryn Hinch’s

Fiona Patten’s

Labor DLP

Legalize Cannabis

Liberal Democrats

Pauline Hanson’s

Shooters, Fishers, F

Sustainable Aust.

Transport Matters

2022

15

14

4

1

0

0

1

2

1

1

1

0

0

2018

18

13

1

1

3

1

0

0

2

0

1

1

1

change

-3

+1

+3

-3

-1

+1

+2

-1

+1

-1

-1

Labor 15, Greens 4, Cannabis 2, Animal Justice 1 (22); vs red-lights:  Libs 8, Nat 6, Lab DLP 1, Lib Dem 1, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation 1, Shooters & Fishers 1 (18). With 21 needed for a majority in the upper house, Greens are clearly in the balance of power.

Way ahead for Victorian voters

Given that Labor is already relatively progressive on climate action, a green light majority on the cross bench may be in a position to block favorable treatment of Labor’s fossil fuel special interests, and to encourage strong action to shut down fossil fuel emissions. Victorians need to keep a close watch on their representatives and make sure via letter bombing, phone calls, and personal visits to electorate offices that they stay on the job to stop global warming!

New South Wales State Parliament

The NSW State election was held a week ago (1 April), but like Victoria the NSW’s election laws work against minor parties and independents. However, Vote Climate One may have had a bit more influence here. Liberal/Nationals were soundly defeated and Labor is in, but with a definite minority government. Labor is two short of a majority pending possible recounts. (The Liberals held the seat of Ryde by only 50 votes when the last of the postal votes were counted on 8 May).

NSW State Legislative Assembly Election

On the Labor/green-light side, Labor 45; Greens 3 (Ballina – thanks to the repeated extreme flooding events, plus Sydney electorates of Balmain & Newtown); and 3 green-light independents – one of them backed by Climate200, for a total of 51; where 47 votes are required to pass legislation.

There are also 2 orange-light incumbent independents with significant green credentials.

Note, for the count here I have reclassified Michael Regan (Wakehurst), listed orange light before the election. Due to time constraints our analysis missed his strong record of climate actions as Mayor of Northern Beaches Council and the fact that he was supported by Federal teal MPs, Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Sophie Scamps (Mackellar).

On the Lib/Nat red-light side there are 25 Libs; 11 Nationals and 4 independents (1 ex Lib and 3 ex shooters/fishers/farmers) for a total of 40.

This leaves NSW with a Labor minority government with Greens + green-light independents with a strong hold in the balance of power.

NSW State Legislative Council Election

The NSW Legislative Council has 42 members, elected by proportional representation in which the whole state is a single electorate. Members serve eight-year terms, which are staggered, with half the Council (21) being elected every four years. 22 votes are required for a majority.

From ABC News’s Legislative Council Preview – NSW Election 2023:

All registered parties are listed ‘above the line’ on the ballot paper. All candidates running in the election for a party (as listed above the line) are listed for that party in preference order below the line. Unaffiliated independent candidates are only listed below the line.

A single ‘1’ above the line is formal and counts for the chosen party but has no preferences for other parties. If they wish, a voter may show a second, third and so on preference for other parties above the line. These preferences are implied to be preferences for candidate of each group as printed on the ballot paper.

If a voter wants to re-order a party’s candidates, pick candidates from different parties, or vote for candidates in any group without a voting square above the line, they must vote ‘below the line’ by numbering boxes for candidates. Electors must complete 15 preferences below the line for a formal vote. DO NOT number a sequences that crosses the ballot paper line.

NSW Legislative Council Election

Coalition

Labor

Greens

Pauline Hanson’s

Shooters, Fishers, +

Animal Justice

Cannabis

Lib Democrats

2023 election

7

8

2

1

1

0

1

1

Total Council 2023

15

15

4

3

2

1

1

1

In the Legislative Council 22 votes form a majority, and there are now 15 Labor, 6 green lights (4 Greens, 1 AJP, 1 Cannabis), totaling 21 votes, versus 21 red light votes (Coalition 15, Pauline Hansons’s 3, SFF 2, Lib Dems 1).

Note: According to the ABC on 9/04/2023, as this is being written:

  • There are still some uncertainties in the count. Four seats are still not finalized, but are likely to be filled by a seventh Liberal member and one each representing Legalise Cannabis, the Liberal Democrats and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. These are included in the above table.
  • “The Legislative Council consists of 42 members. Traditionally one of the government’s members is elected President. The President only has a casting vote meaning votes are determined by the 41 members on the floor with a government needing 21 members to pass legislation. After appointing the President, Labor will have only 14 members, which means the new government will need votes from seven of the 12 crossbench members to pass legislation.”

Based on trends in the present count, only 6 on the cross bench will be green lights. In other words, Vested interests working through normally cooperative red lights in the upper house, may still have some ability to block important legislation on climate action.

Way ahead for NSW voters

Noting that the Liberal Democrats and Shooters, Fishers are farther to the right and dogmatic on energy policy and climate action than the Liberal Party, we must hope that the Liberals in the upper house will follow the lead of green lights in the lower house on climate legislation.

Voters concerned to see serious action on climate need to stay alert to what their representatives in both houses are saying and doing. Make sure they know via letter bombing, phone calls, and personal visits to electorate offices that they must stay on the job to stop global warming!

What will Vote Climate One do to help?

Insofar as our limited resources allow, we will endeavor to keep Australian voters up to date with the latest news on the still growing climate emergency (i.e., why we need action) and what our governments are doing to solve it. Towards this end, we will be establishing an email service you can subscribe to, and publish contact details for all federal and state parliamentarians so you can send them hearts and flowers or brick bats depending on how well they are addressing needs for climate action.

Is this all worth the effort?

We have 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, then a 16 year-old school 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 what 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 truly the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment Report that makes it clear we are headed for an existential climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

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 all of our offspring can have some hope for their future.

In our present situation where most governments still support and even fund fossil fuel production and use, the most effective actions we can take as individuals is to revolutionize our governments to prioritize action on climate change above all other things. Nothing else matters if we have no future….

If we can get climate savvy governments in power soon enough, we may be able to mobilize enough action to survive our accidental disruption of Earth’s Climate System so our kids and grandkids inherit a world they can live in…

This is who we are working for! Think of your families’ futures.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

NSW: If you haven’t voted, please THINK first

Unwelcome reality is that we face an extremely dangerous climate emergency. Politicians must shift from business as usual to emergency mode.

Anyone who pays attention to weather and climate will know that lethally dangerous extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, wildfires have been growing increasingly more extreme, widespread, and frequent. These will keep getting more and more lethal as long as our planet keeps getting warmer. This is an emergency!

The scientific evidence as summarized in the 8000 page report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a United Nations organization comprised of the representatives of the 180 nations involved in the World Meteorological Organization) is so overwhelmingly comprehensive and complete that is no longer contestable. The Australian Climate Council explains it. Our own Climate Sentinel News blog surveys the vast array of evidence and considers its implications and government’s reactions in more depth. Three major articles focus on NSW (click the image to open the article):

David Spratt, of the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration is one of many sources documenting the causes and naturse of the dangers we face. Spratt posted 7 articles detailing major tipping points towards catastrophes likely to be crossed as the world continues to warm. His latest article, Reclaiming ‘Climate Emergency’ considers the kinds of political shifts required to move from business as usual’s ignoring crisis situations to actively managing them. Spratt summarizes the shifts in the table replicated from the article replicated here:

Before you fill in your ballot papers, please think about which candidates/parties on the ballots have the willingness, ability, or capacity to deal with the genuine emergencies we face. Will wishful thinking, party dogma or denial or reality be enough? I.e., usiness as usual – the normal mode for the major political parties, and some of the minor parties or independents. If you can vote in your electorate for someone who seems ready, willing and able to deal with climate emergency issues, please do so.

Vote Climate One can make it quick and easy for you to choose.

Use our VOTING GUIDES: NSW State Election 2023 to learn more about what the the parties and independent candidates in your electorate offer. How we thoroughly assessed parties and independents is described in Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment.

Those we found to be generally tied to vested interests and/or unrealistic party or personal dogmas; or deniers of the climate crisis are flagged with red lights without any detailed justification. We use the orange light for those individuals and parties we thought might help or at least not impede required climate action, but could not fine enough evidence they would actually drive climate action.

Green lights were granted only where we found enough good evidence that a candidate or party could be trusted to put action on the climate emergency high on their priorities in Parliament. In these cases we also provide voters with links to some of the information justifying our ranking.

All this is distilled in our easy and quick to use voting guide for each electorate showing our ranking of all the candidates you can vote for. Grandad Rob, with a little help from a couple of youngsters in his tribe, demonstrates:

With a lot of work, our species and families may just might be able to survive the 21st Century.

Featured image:

From Lismore City News: 16/03/2022 – Flooding on February 28 was the worst Lismore had ever experienced, reachning 14.4m and leaving devastation in its wake.

For that matter following the horrific bushfires of the Black Summer of 2020-2021 and extensive droughts catastrophic floods began soon after with a rare sequence of La Niñas when vitually all areas of NSW experienced major flooding at least once, if not several time since.

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

Politics vs physical dangers and real death

IPCC warns we have only a few years left when climate action can reverse human caused global warming to avoid a crescendo of climate catastrophes

Unfortunately, we are living in a world where the greedy self-interests of billionaires and multi-national corporations tend to control media and politics. These special interests are threatened by things that must be done to slow and stop global warming. They use their power over the media and politicians to deny the need for and to prevent critically important climate action. However, the real-world understanding reported in the concluding summary of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report on Climate Change (published this week) documents and explains the very real dangers and even mass deaths society faces if global warming is not stopped by 2030. We genuinely face a climate emergency that threatens human survival. To have any hope of organizing and implementing the kinds of statewide and national actions needed to stop the warming process citizens have to replace the parliamentary puppets of special interests with MPs who will genuinely work for the citizens who elected them. In New South Wales, how you vote this week is a life-and-death matter!

The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change formed by the World Meterological Organization and the United Nations in 1988 to study and advise world governments on climate change. The IPCC’s Summary for Policy Makers published this week was unanimously agreed to and signed off by the politically appointed representatives of all 195(!) member governments of the United Nations that form the World Meteorological Organization (normally only 170-180 governments participate in IPCC reviews). This unusual approval process required for IPCCs “summary reports” is intended to ensure that governments accept its findings as authoritative advice on which to base their actions (a 1:30 minute IPCC video explains).

I have explained that this approval process is highly conservative and cannot avoid downplaying the extent and dangers of climate change. In reality, the actual dangers to humanity are likely to be a lot worse than described by the IPCC. New South Wales residents who are currently voting on their state government (polls close on 25 March) should note that all the modeling and predictions discussed in the Report are based on weather and climate data collected only up to 2020. The models and predictions do not include evidence on or predict how extreme climate events have actually been: e.g.,Black Summer bushfires, more than two years of unprecedented and widespread flooding, extreme heatwaves and drought, etc. If you are living on the land or close to Nature, you will know that the reality you are living with is already significantly worse than anticipated by the IPCC.

At nearly 8,000 pages, the full report is virtually unreadable. Every statement is documented, justified, and qualified. Fortunately, the World Resources Institute has done an admirable job of highlighting critical content in a readable way:

Cover Image by: Anirut Thailand/Shutterstock (from the article)

by Sophie Boehm and Clea Schumer, 20/03/2024 in World Resources Institute – Insights

10 Big Findings from the 2023 IPCC Report on Climate Change

Today marks the release of the final installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), an eight-year long undertaking from the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change. Drawing on the findings of 234 scientists on the physical science of climate change, 270 scientists on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change, and 278 scientists on climate change mitigation, this IPCC synthesis report provides the most comprehensive, best available scientific assessment of climate change.

It also makes for grim reading. Across nearly 8,000 pages, the AR6 details the devastating consequences of rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions around the world — the destruction of homes, the loss of livelihoods and the fragmentation of communities, for example — as well as the increasingly dangerous and irreversible risks should we fail to change course.

But the IPCC also offers hope, highlighting pathways to avoid these intensifying risks. It identifies readily available, and in some cases, highly cost-effective actions that can be undertaken now to reduce GHG emissions, scale up carbon removal and build resilience. While the window to address the climate crisis is rapidly closing, the IPCC affirms that we can still secure a safe, livable future.

Looking Ahead

The IPCC’s AR6 makes clear that risks of inaction on climate are immense and the way ahead requires change at a scale not seen before. However, this report also serves as a reminder that we have never had more information about the gravity of the climate emergency and its cascading impacts — or about what needs to be done to reduce intensifying risks.

Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) is still possible, but only if we act immediately. As the IPCC makes clear, the world needs to peak GHG emissions before 2025 at the very latest, nearly halve GHG emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero CO2 emissions around mid-century, while also ensuring a just and equitable transition. We’ll also need an all-hands-on-deck approach to guarantee that communities experiencing increasingly harmful impacts of the climate crisis have the resources they need to adapt to this new world. Governments, the private sector, civil society and individuals must all step up to keep the future we desire in sight. A narrow window of opportunity is still open, but there’s not one second to waste. [my emphasis]

Read the complete article….

Think about what this means!

As reported extensively in all Australian media today (21 May) the agreed IPCC summary says that near-term (i.e., ASAP!) climate action is urgent because the window is closing for us to secure a livable and sustainable future, and that: “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years”. These and many other critically important points are clearly summarized in the Headline Statements, which are the overarching conclusions of the approved Summary for Policymakers. Taken together these provide a concise narrative as to why effective action on the climate emergency is so urgent.

If you care for your future and the future of your family and society, you need to take the IPCC’s cautions and warnings seriously. And consider what this means in a world where your political representatives are likely to be more concerned to satisfy the wants of their big donors and special interests rather than you or other citizens of their electorates. These big donors are developers, fossil fuel industries, miners, etc., who are more concerned about immediate profit rather than future survival.

Think: if you are a “rusted-on” voter who can be counted on to vote for the incumbent or party you have always voted for, especially in a ‘safe’ seat, your ‘representative’ has no reason to consider your future in any way, and can work full time for the special interests.

However, in Australia, we still live in a democracy where your considered vote can actually work to throw the bastards out, by electing someone you can reasonably trust to work for the community of those who vote rather than those who pay…. Given the nature and reality of the climate emergency, you should consider Vote Climate One’s motto:

We need to treat the climate emergency as a global war we are on track to lose unless we can focus our efforts on the only task that matters — reversing global warming. If we fail here no other tasks matter — our species will soon end up extinct no matter how we arrange the deck chairs on the burning ship.

How Vote Climate One can help

Science and politics

If you need more evidence that we need to change our governments, there is plenty on our Climate Sentinel News blog covering both science and politics.

How to vote

We don’t tell you how to vote. We work to help you achieve the results you want when you vote.

In Australia, Vote Climate One works to assess and rank how we think every party and independent candidate on the ballot in Federal and all State elections will respond to the climate crisis. Thanks to modern computer technology this is actually do-able. How we rank candidates is explained in our Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment process. Sometimes, we’ll even get on the phone to find out more. The undeniable task of the climate lens is to prioritise the protection of everything we hold dear. The hubris of our species needs a dose of the reduction perspective tranquilizer encapsulated in this painting by Peter Trusler.

Peter Trusler – from his book, Thrice Told

Our conclusions are presented via downloadable and printer-friendly voting guides for each and every electorate in NSW. You can find the guide for your electorate here (in this case, Lismore). The electorate screen tells you how we can help. Parties and candidates we think will work for climate action are designated with green lights. Those who we think won’t or who haven’t given us much to go on, are designated with red lights, Those we think are better than the worst, but not fully trustworthy are designated orange.

If you are concerned to see action on climate change, number all the green-light independents and parties first. Thus, even if your number [1] selection doesn’t win, you still maximize the chances that someone else with good climate credentials will be elected. If you want detail to help you decide how to rank green-light candidates, the Research Tools provide links to candidate websites and other information about them.

As Rob and his grandchildren explain in the video, the printable voting guides make it easy for you to transfer your preferences to the ballot paper in the voting booth:

Remember, we are voting in hopes of leaving a happy future for our families and society.

About the featured image: Figure SPM.6 from Summary for Policymakers, AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023

There is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. There are a multitude of political choices that need to be made during this window. If we make good ones we can go on living in a world with a sustainable future. Bad choices will rapidly constrain our future to pathways that are likely to lead to societal collapse and eventual human extinction in a still rapidly warming world.

Figure caption: The illustrative development pathways (red to green) and associated outcomes (right panel) show that there is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. Climate resilient development is the process of implementing greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation measures to support sustainable development. Diverging pathways illustrate that interacting choices and actions made by diverse government, private sector and civil society actors can advance climate resilient development, shift pathways towards sustainability, and enable lower emissions and adaptation. Diverse knowledge and values include cultural values, Indigenous Knowledge, local knowledge, and scientific knowledge. Climatic and non-climatic events, such as droughts, floods or pandemics, pose more severe shocks to pathways with lower climate resilient development (red to yellow) than to pathways with higher climate resilient development (green). There are limits to adaptation and adaptive capacity for some human and natural systems at global warming of 1.5°C, and with every increment of warming, losses and damages will increase. The development pathways taken by countries at all stages of economic development impact GHG emissions and mitigation challenges and opportunities, which vary across countries and regions. Pathways and opportunities for action are shaped by previous actions (or inactions and opportunities missed; dashed pathway) and enabling and constraining conditions (left panel), and take place in the context of climate risks, adaptation limits and development gaps. The longer emissions reductions are delayed, the fewer effective adaptation options.

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

NSW: Finally, a district court judge rules out Perrottet government’s “fascist” anti-protest sentence

Reason, truth, and proportionality have triumphed over the Perrottet government’s fascist desires to stop climate protests and the police’s compliant fake evidence.

As I discuss further below, the judge’s finding in the Violet CoCo case raises the hope that people are beginning to realize how undemocratically oppressive New South Wales governments have become — because voters have allowed them to remain in office.

My featured article from the Saturday Paper reports the results of serial protester Violet CoCo’s District Court appeal against her brutally totalitarian jail sentence (15 months, 8 months minimum) under the new anti-protest law for protesting government inaction on climate change. Her crime was blocking a one-lane on-ramp to the Sydney Harbour Bridge for less than a half hour to raise public awareness of the climate crisis that threatens all of humanity with mass extinction from global warming due to fossil fuel emissions.

In 2022, the law was rammed through Parliament in less than a week with with Labor’s support, despite calls from a coalition of almost 40 civil society organizations to scrap it. Premier Perrottet and Labor’s leader, Chris Minns, (both members of their parties’ religious right wing factions) both expressed to the press how pleased they were with the draconian nature of the sentence.

Are these the kind of leaders you want to follow in NSW?

Climate activist Violet CoCo. Credit: Isabella Moore / from the article

by Royce Kurmelovs, 18/02/2023 in The Saturday Paper

Climate activist Violet CoCo and protest laws

In an exclusive interview, climate activist Violet CoCo, who won her appeal against a jail sentence this week, details what she has learnt about the ‘theatre’ of politics:

…District Court judge Mark Williams read his ruling this week on whether or not Violet CoCo would serve a 15-month prison sentence for blocking the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a protest…

Four months earlier, Magistrate Allison Hawkins described CoCo as “childish” and “emotional”. In sentencing her, she relied particularly on submissions by police that alleged CoCo’s protest had blocked an ambulance.

“You have halted an ambulance under light and siren,” Hawkins said. “What about the person in there? What about that person and their family? What do they think of you and your cause?”

Only, the ambulance never existed. New South Wales Police Force had been so eager to make their case, they had embellished their account with what Williams described as a “false fact”. Reviewing the evidence, he said: “How did that find its way in?” [my emphasis]

Footage recorded by Channel Seven of the protest, played for the court by Crown prosecutor Isabella Maxwell-Williams, was set aside. An assertion that CoCo had been motivated more by scorn at the treatment of her partner in a separate protest rather than climate change was also rejected. So, too, was any suggestion the protest was “not peaceful” or that CoCo should be punished harshly based on her “criminal history”.

Williams upheld CoCo’s appeal. Convictions were recorded for blocking the bridge, resisting arrest and using a flare, but no jail time was imposed. CoCo was given a 12-month conditional release order.

Read the complete article….

The red-back spiderweb controlling the NSW Liberal Party

A couple of weeks ago my article, “Is Premier Perrettet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?“, detailed evidence on the public record showing how Dominic Perrottet’s current “Liberal” government represents the culmination of an infiltration of the NSW Liberal Party started more than 40 years ago by a Slovenian Nazi fascist propagandist by the name of Lyenko Urbanchich (wanted after WWII by Yugoslavia as a war criminal deserving the death sentence).

Lyenko successfully planted, co-opted and mentored helpers in the Ethnic Branch and Young Liberals, including David Clarke (MLC 2003-2019). Together Lyenko and Clarke also established themselves in the State Executive of the Party.

Clarke added hard-right Opus Dei Catholicism (Clarke became a “Co-operator”) to Urbanchich’s fascism. In turn they recruited several of the Perrottet brothers who had been immersed from birth in this sect. Their parents John and Ann were/are both self-acknowledged “supernumerary” members of Opus Dei). Some of the brothers, including Dom were schooled at Redfield College (overseen by Opus Dei pastors); and even through their Law/Commerce degrees at Sydney University the brothers lived in UNSW’s Warrane College, also established by Opus Dei. Dominic is now state Premier and brothers Charles and Jean Claude (at least) came through the Young Liberals are still involved in the nefarious branch stacking and other highly dubious politicking by hard-right Liberals.

Damien Tudehope was first elected to Parliament in 2015 after playing musical chairs in the seats of Baulkham Hills, Ryde, and Epping, sometimes as an apparent placeholder for Perrottet. One of his tasks on being elected for the first time was to Chair the Parliamentary Committee on the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

In 2018 Tudehope surrendered his lower house seat of Epping to Perrottet (because Perrottet wanted to shift there because it was “closer to home”), and was given a safe upper house position in return. In this repetition of musical chairs, David Clarke retired from Parliament to free the winnable space on the upper house ticket for Tudehope).

Alex Hawke is another David Clarke protege (MP from Mitchell, NSW, in the Australian Parliament 2007-present) from a strong Anglican background. Hawke’s presidency of the Young Liberals was one of the things being celebrated at Dominic Perrottet’s infamous 21st birthday party where Perrottet costumed himself as a uniformed Nazi. Hawke defected to Morrison’s Hillsong crowd around 2009 and is now considered to be a traitor by the Opus Dei religiofascists. The resulting Hillsong vs Opus Dei holy war for control of the NSW Liberal Party and government continues until today.

Do you want to be governed by these kinds of people and their ideals?

These masters of the spiderweb are only a dark corner of NSW’s overall political corruption

Today’s Saturday Paper’ also features “A brief history of Liberal Party scandals“. This outlines the incredibly long list of voluntary and forced resignations of Liberal premiers(!) and other politicians driven by ICAC investigations. “By sheer number of resignations, the NSW Coalition government goes to next weekend’s election as one of the most scandal prone in history.”

However, even this isn’t the whole story of Coalition government. The corrupt Liberal/Coalition government followed a scandalous Labor government: and then, there is the extensive “‘Fraud, money laundering’: Inside the Hillsong papers“, where a cache of leaked financial documents appears to document staggering misconduct and outrageous spending by leaders of the ‘church’ backing Scott Morrison’s motley crew.

What is the fundamental problem here, and what do we do about it?

The big issue here is that political parties who impose party discipline on elected members almost unavoidably end up reflecting party dogma and beliefs rather than working towards considered solutions to real-world problems. Where one party has a majority to govern in its own right, this makes it easy for leaders controlling the dogma and belief to become quite authoritarian and autocratic.

In states where unelected party apparatchiks and organizers (‘storm troopers’) beholden to a charismatic leader can gain control over nominations to safe seats (e.g., like in NSW), such thugs can control who can be elected, and continue controlling them after they are elected. Depending on the ‘Leader’s’ motivations and sanity, this control can easily lead to authoritarianism and outright despotism. Given that most charismatic leaders are psychopathic narcissists lusting for power, dictatorship is the common outcome. Basically this is how Adolf Hitler took over Germany, Vladimir Lenin took over the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Putin took over Russia (again) after Perestroika and Glasnost, Xi Jinping is taking over of China from what was a slightly democratic Communist Party; and how Donald Trump has been trying so hard to take over America by outright insurrection and rebellion.

In Australia our democracy is still strong enough to block and remove potentially fascist leaders and their political followers from our governments and political parties. We do this by ensuring that no one party has enough parliamentarians to govern in its own right. Both Liberal and Labor need to be downsized to the point that the balance of power is held by community independents genuinely working to represent the communities that have elected them rather than by sheepish puppets of a major party controlled by a charismatic leader supported by a cadre of thugs.

Where party MPs in ‘Safe seats’ can count on being reelected by ‘rusted on’ members of the Party they have no motivation to do anything for their electorates. Their positions are not risked if they work to force party dogma down everyone’s throats. Only where the seat is genuinely marginal do incumbents pay much attention to what their electorates actually want.

Only if you vote for someone else to actually win the seat (e.g., a community independent) can you count on replacing the party puppet with someone committed to listen to your needs and wants.

In the following election, if you still want to vote for your old party, you are far more likely to be presented with someone who knows that they will have to work for you – rather than the party leader – if they want to be elected, and then stay in office.

How can Vote Climate One help you do this?

Vote Climate One is driven by the ever-increasing flood of solid scientific evidence that humans are totally altering our planet’s atmosphere and ecosystems in ways that is triggering a global emergency that will lead to planet-wide economic and ecological collapses and our possible/probable extinction over the next century or so. Some of the rapidly growing evidence for this is documented in our Climate Sentinel News. Failed states, dying coral reefs, and towns that remain unrepaired following climate disasters show these collapses are already beginning….

“We need to treat the climate emergency as a global war we are on track to lose unless we can focus our efforts on the only task that matters — reversing global warming. If we fail here no other tasks matter — our species will soon end up extinct no matter how we arrange the deck chairs on the burning ship.”

For this reason Vote Climate One is working to encourage and help voters replace dud and corrupt parliamentarians (who ignore our daily realities to serve their own greed and the desires of their leaders and special interest puppet masters) by electing others who place the evidence-based needs of their local communities first. These needs may range from working to bring climate change under control, to the often related issues of emergency management, water, transport infrastructure, telecommunications, better health services, or even just integrity in government.

Our Traffic Light Voting System seeks to assess every candidate in every electorate of your state as to how they are likely to respond effectively to the climate emergency — or your local needs…. We have only given our green-light ranking to candidates where we have found good evidence that they can be trusted to work for your community rather than their own or others’ greed and special interests. We provide a lot of detail on many of these candidates so you can make up your own mind how you want to preference them.

Our Convenor, Rob Bakes, explains in his home-made video how easy it will be to use our election guide when it comes time to fill in your ballot papers.

Daggy Grand-Dad explains how easy our voting guide is to use to help give our children and grand children some hope for the future.

Featured Image

“The protest in April 2022 saw an entire citybound lane [actually a one-lane on-ramp] shut down on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the peak rush hour. (9News)” Wow! The evidence from this photo actually shows that traffic on 7 lanes of the Bridge is flowing normally. Perrottet’s implication in justifying the outrageous sentence, that the whole City was in gridlock, was a bare-faced lie – fake news supporting the application of autocratic power.

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

How the NSW hard-right Lib’s spiderweb works

4 Corners’ “War Within” explores the holywar between Federal Senator Alex Hawke’s Pentecostals and Clarke/Perrettet religio-fascist Catholics

This article presented here follows on from, Is Premier Perrettet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?, on the still active spiderweb of branch stacking, influence and probable thuggery by right-wing factions of the NSW Liberal Party. In writing this article I missed including ABC Four Corners’ report of “The War Within” broadcast on 04/07/2022.

The Slovenian Nazi sympathizer, Lyenko Urbanchich started building the web within the NSW Liberal Party more than 40 years ago. From around 2000, Lyenko’s protege` state MLC David Clarke nurtured Federal Senator Alex Hawke, several of the Perrottet brothers, and Damian Tudehope amongst others before retiring in 2019. Dominic Perrottet appears to be the heir apparent webmaster….

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Tonight on Four Corners, we expose the factional infighting being blamed for fomenting the Coalition’s devastating election loss … with Liberal party insiders speaking out [not] for the first time. We investigate extraordinary allegations about backroom party operatives and how they tried to wield their power. And reveal how, on the brink of a federal election, the internal warfare was deliberately escalated, driven by deep-set hatred and a hunger for revenge. 
TITLE: THE WAR WITHIN 

What does this have to do with the climate emergency?

ABC did establish that Charles Perrottet (one of Dominic’s several brothers) did meet with the dodgy developer Jean Nassif who planed to build several new tower apartment buildings in the Hills Council district. They could not confirm that the dossier correctly presented what was discussed at that meeting.

From the plethora of evidence accumulated over more than 40 years, faction fighting by – and even among — the ‘holy warriors’ on the dogmatic right of the NSW Liberal Party comes closer to what the ABC styled as mafia turf wars than any reasonable political process working to implement the democratically decided will of people. The winners’ goals seem to enhance their power in government to impose their ‘holy’ dogmas more widely on the populace, and to increase their funding from special interests who will support their campaigns in return for being allowed to do what they want to do with minimal government interference. The battle ground has largely been to control enough of admin and leadership roles in the Party’s political apparatus to be able to the candidates allowed to run under the party banner in each electorate – especially in those seats that are ‘safe’. In such safe seats, voters effectively have no say over the appointed candidate if they are ‘rusted on’ voters for the party.

History shows that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi’s used these kinds of tactics (combined with extreme thuggery) to take control of the German state prior to WWII to impose his ‘final solution‘ on the Jews and ‘Lebensraum‘. Similarly Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks followed a similar path to replace/exterminate the Russian monarchy and impose ‘dictatorship of the proletariat‘ on the people.

Also, and actually a lot more importantly where our future is concerned, physical reality (aside from power) rarely plays much of a role in dogmatic holy wars. From what I can see, none of the hard-right factions are concerned about our deteriorating climate. They certainly aren’t much concerned about mitigation or remediation of the damages already taking place. This makes them ready cooperators with special interests who will covertly and overtly fund their electoral campaigns, e.g.,

  • 21/02/2023 – The Guardian: NSW could invest in coalmines if companies can’t raise the cash, Dominic Perrottet told gathering
  • 05/12/2022 – Financial Review: It’s not just Albanese who’s stuck in an energy price mess. “…Perrottet waited until Kean was out of the country at COP 27, pushing NSW’s credentials in the energy transition, to call in departmental chiefs and insist that the approvals for Narrabri be speeded up rather than continue at a snail’s pace. Even more pointedly, Perrottet also appointed Paul Broad as his special adviser on energy – without Kean’s approval or knowledge – leaving the minister feeling blindsided. The gas industry takes this as evidence that Perrottet is equally determined to have an alternative voice on energy – and one with strongly different views to those regularly espoused by Kean.”
  • 30/01/2023 – Lock the Gate: Perrottet Government mulls approval for coal project that would produce 8 times NSW yearly greenhouse emissions. “… [I]f the Perrottet Government is serious about reducing emissions, projects like Glencore and Yancoal’s HVO coal project must not stand a chance of being approved,” he said. “Unfortunately, the NSW Government has a track record of backing new and expanded coal mining, and has failed to adopt policies to prevent coal mines from blowing NSW’s 2030 and 2050 emission targets. “This year, the NSW Government looks set to consider the most new and expanded coal mining capacity in the state since the Paris Agreement. This is an absurd position for a government that claims to have good climate credentials. “Considering such a carbon polluting bomb makes a mockery of any commitments our governments have to reduce emissions and puts Australian communities at risk from severe weather.  “Offsets are essentially a giant con, but the idea that 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions could be offset is beyond laughable.”

It’s time to cleanse NSW and Australia of this filthy and dangerous web!

How Can the election help?

VoteClimateOne recommends that if you vote in a ‘safe’ electorate and are concerned about the NSW Government’s intent to deal with the reality of the climate emergency or the Government’s lack of political integrity, think seriously about not voting for your Liberal candidate. This may help remove a puppet from Parliament, or at least turn your previously safe electorate into one where there is a chance to democratically preselect a candidate who will actually be concerned about your interests.

We won’t tell you how to vote, but we do suggest that you check our VOTING GUIDES – NSW for your electorate before you vote for our rankings to see how we rank all candidates in relation to their likely actions on the climate and ecological emergency. We will also flag candidates that we think are puppets or players in the Urbanchich/Clarke/Perrottet or Hawke spiderwebs. Note: our Guides won’t be finalized until we see the formal ballots for each electorate. Hopefully, we will be able to publish our rankings before the polls open. The guides are designed to help you make your selections at home, so all you have to do is transfer them to the formal ballot paper when you reach the polling place.

Featured image:

Concetta Fieravanti-Wells giving her valedictory speech on the end of her 17 years loyal service as Senator for NSW where she blew the whistle on corrupt practices in the NSW Liberal Party. From the Guardian

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

Earth’s annual healthcheck — and our future

A compendium of graphs plots key indicators of our changing climate. Unless trends are reversed today’s lethal extremes will be lethal new normals’.

Climate scientist Zach Labe shows us in a collection of simple graphs from his WordPress page how many of Planet Earth’s vital signs have been changing over recent decades. He plots the best available data, and lets the plots tell the story without adding his redundant commentary.

However, If you want, you can still follow links that explains how the data was collected and analyzed. Click on Climate Visualizations at the top of the screen to open a pull-down menu, and then on FAQ and my methods at the bottom of that menu.

Plotting the reality

Four critical variables (the three critical greenhouse gases and global average temperature) show us how our changing climate is progressing.

The collection of graphs shows completely unambiguously that ever more heat energy is being loaded into our planetary climate system to make it hotter and more humid — where heat and humidity are the drivers for all kinds of extreme weather events.

If you look at the most recent years of Rising Temperature (beginning with 2020) you might think temperatures have stopped rising. However, this is almost certainly dangerously wrong. We have just finished an unusual three successive periods of La Niña conditions that result in below average global temperatures. GIven the generally increasing rate of temperature rise, the next El Niño periods are likely to be substantially hotter than the last ones (2014-2019) when Australia suffered the record-breaking bushfires of our Black Summer that even burned temperate rainforests that survived previous fires for many hundreds of years.

What do the graphs tell us?

In the past VoteClimateOne’s Climate Sentinel News has posted many articles attesting to the increasing frequency, extent and ferocity of extreme weather and the increasing chaos and costs these cause.

As the energy in the climate system continues to rise, catastrophes will increasingly overlap such that more damage and chaos will be caused by following events before recovery from earlier ones is complete. We are already seeing examples of this in NSW’s Northern Rivers and southwestern areas. At some point (in the not distant future — if global warming is not reversed) the still growing social and physical costs will lead to social and physical collapse of society.

Can you do something to change the picture?

At this point both major political parties in the NSW government are still defending and even subsidizing the fossil fuel industry’s (coal and gas) continuing increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.

It is time for you to help elect a government able to act effectively against the climate emergency by ensuring neither party has a majority to do things without people’s support. Hard-right members in either party who will do deals with anyone to stay in power to enforce their religiofascist dogmas tend to ignore even stark objective realities such as the climate crisis shown by Earth’s vital sighs. Such people need to be replaced by electing teals, other community-oriented independents and Greens who accept the reality of the climate emergency and are willing to prioritize acting on it.

My Climate Sentinel News article, Is Premier Perrettet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?, documents and explains how the kind of ultra dogmatic hard-right politicians got into power that most need to be replaced by parliamentarians who will represent and work for the voters’ benefits. As the now deceased Lyenko Urbanchich, ex MLC David Clarke, federal Senator Alex Hawke, the Tudehope family and the Perrottet family have shown on the far right of the NSW Liberal Party, if your faction can fill key positions in party and factional organizations with collaborators who can organize cadres of ‘storm troops’, it is easy to put whoever the faction ‘leader(s)’ may want into Parliament. The party’s ‘safest’ seats are taken over by using the cadres to subvert preselections by branch stacking and simple thuggery or by bypassing preselection entirely with direct appointments (as has been demonstrated many times over the 40 years of history covered in my article).

Here I focused on the Liberal hard-right. But it should be recognized that Labor also has had and probably still has a very similar hard-right. This was made most evident in the impact Bob Santamaria had on the Labor Party in the 1950’s that led to it a near-lethal split to form the Democratic Labor Party. I have not had the time to adequately research the NSW Labor Party, but its leader, Chris Minns shares many characteristics with Dominic Perrottet, and has even backed and defended him over the treatment of climate protester Violet Coco. Like the Liberals, Labor also safe seats giving factions many opportunities to subvert real democracy. To me this is more than enough reason for VoteClimateOne to advise voters in such seats not to vote for factional puppets in hopes of making the seat marginal. Even if you don’t get rid of the puppet this time, you may be given a real opportunity in the next election to preselect someone actually representing you (rather than someone dogma) in the next election.

How to vote?

We won’t suggest who you should vote for. However we try to show you in our NSW voting guides where we think each candidate in your electorate stands relative to action on the climate emergency and whether we think there are reasons a particular candidate might be considered to be a puppet or less trustworthy on issues than others in the electorate. These recommendations won’t be complete or final until we have had a chance to work our way through those on the ballots provided by the Electoral Commission.

Featured image

Featured image from Dettre, M., (18/08/2022). Lismore City News, Questions over NSW flood victims’ buyback / More than a thousand people lost homes in the NSW Northern Rivers floods. (Darren England/AAP PHOTOS).

Health Minister Minster Mark Butler says ongoing trauma can manifest in increased rates of anxiety, post-traumatic stress and domestic and family violence: “Mental health is one of the government’s highest priorities and I recognise that these flooding events have been hugely traumatic for many people,” he said…. For some of these communities, this has been their fourth flood in 18 months.”

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