CO2 emissions continued to increase in 2023 with now little chance of global warming staying under 1.5oC. Planting trees is part of the solution but only in the longer term. Even Hollywood is getting the message.
Category: Climate
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Environment: Expert calls Australia’s carbon offset scheme a scam
Australia’s carbon offset scheme costs a lot and captures almost no carbon but provides a fig leaf for continuing emissions. Technology-based Carbon Dioxide Removal is still a distant dream. Distributed energy resources can be the Swiss Army knife of the electricity system.
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Coral catastrophe signals our own undoing
Five times in the history of life on Earth the corals have perished, swept from the board by conditions hostile to nearly all life. Each time, it has taken them millions of years to evolve anew. Each mass death of corals has been accompanied by the mass deaths of most other species, on land and at sea. (more…)
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Environment: Oil and gas producers underreport methane emissions
How accurately are methane emissions reported and whose estimates can you believe? Who should be the last producers of oil and gas? What are Australia’s commonest birds?
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‘Worst I have seen’: 75% of Great Barrier Reef suffers coral bleaching
“We are really running out of time. We need to reduce our emissions immediately,” one expert warned. “We cannot expect to save the Great Barrier Reef and be opening new fossil fuel developments.” (more…)
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Peter Dutton’s nuclear power policy is a ‘suicide note’
Peter Dutton thinks the Coalition is on a winner by promoting nuclear power but unbiased opinion polls find that support for nuclear power in Australia falls short of a majority, that Australians much prefer renewables, and most do not want nuclear reactors built near where they live. (more…)
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China’s quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy
There is now a policy dispute about the roles of nuclear and renewable energy in future Australian low emission energy systems. The experience of China over more than a decade provides compelling evidence on how this debate will be resolved. In December 2011 China’s National Energy Administration announced that China would make nuclear energy the foundation of its electricity generation system in the next “10 to 20 years”. Just over a decade later China has wound back those ambitious targets and reoriented its low emission energy strategy around the rapid deployment of renewable solar and wind energy at unprecedented rates. (more…)
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Environment: Fossil fuel company profits are delaying grid decarbonisation
Securing a liveable planet and the retail price of electricity are important but current fossil fuel profit margins are slowing grid decarbonisation. Water temperature in the Pacific is influencing methane emissions in the sub-Arctic. Enjoy nature this Easter.
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Environment: Booming oil and gas profits mainly benefit shareholders
The oil market is twice as large as all ten largest metal markets combined. Most oil and gas profits go to shareholders, not reinvestment in the industry. Since 2001 only 5 months have been cooler than the average for 1981-2010. Extinction Rebellion perform at the National Gallery of Victoria.
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Environment: Oil and gas making massive profits now but stormy waters ahead
Shrinking demand signifies rocky times ahead for many individual oil and gas producers but the industry will survive for decades yet. Emissions from farming and forestry aside, Australia’s emissions have been stagnant for 20 years. Feral pigs are destroying our wetlands and rivers.
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Transforming for human survival: a challenge to ACT Legislators
It is not difficult to understand, nor to agree, with the growing numbers of thoughtful people who argue that humanity is on the brink of extinction. And that, without transformational change in the way, we think, and live, our descendants are doomed. (more…)
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Environment: Cryptocurrency using as much electricity as Sub-Saharan Africa
Renewables are about to supply the annual increase in electricity usage globally but cryptocurrency’s power demands are surging. Most industrial fishing vessels are untracked, including those around Australia. Climate change has already caused 4 million deaths. (more…)
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Environment: Putting a price on carbon: is it worth all the trouble?
Economic theory supports a price on carbon but implemented schemes struggle to deliver emissions reductions. China firmly in the EV driving seat. Climate action is failing to meet its targets globally.
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Environment: The wealthy cause climate change; the poor suffer its consequences
Richest 1% produce as many greenhouse gases as the poorest 66%. Climate denialists have a new lyric: ‘sure, it’s happening – so what?’ but Australians are concerned about climate change and want action. No, it’s not OK to shoot a hippo.
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Leading oil and gas producers plan to keep pumping
USA plans to maintain high levels of oil and gas production until at least 2050 – so it can export freedom. Healthy ecosystems require integrity, not just biodiversity. Endangered slug runs circles around arty rivals.
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Environment: Humans don’t make history – we play host
How germs made history. Greenhouse gas emissions keep rising but USA and Europe are still the major causes of global warming.
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Environment: Government inaction is killing our parrots
Australia’s parrots are increasingly threatened. Coal, gas, wind and solar supply the world’s surging demand for electricity. Methane emissions must be reduced rapidly.
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Humanity’s new era of “global boiling”: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis
For climate change, 2023 was an “unprecedented” year, “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” and “scary” and “frightening”. And that was what climate scientists said! The UN Secretary General called it the year in which humanity crossed into a new climate era — an age of “global boiling”. (more…)
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Failure after failure: the first chapter in the sad history of the attempts to introduce a broad-based carbon price in Australia
The January release of the Cabinet papers for 2003 reminds us of the failure of the second attempt to introduce an economy wide carbon price in Australia through an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). It marks the ascendancy of the energy and resource sectors in influencing the Coalitions climate change policies. This decision to reject emission trading set the pattern for the failure to develop a bipartisan consensus on the best way to manage climate change. (more…)
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Environment: 2023 – increased GHG emissions, increased atmospheric GHG levels and record high temperatures
Despite what we have we seen and learnt during 2023, the COP meeting failed again to take strong action on fossil fuels. Is nature for nature or only for humans?
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Abject failure: COP28 is sealing the globe into climate armageddon
Chris Bowen would have us believe that actually mentioning the words ‘fossil fuels’ and a transition away from them was a “turning point” in the history of COP negotiations. What is he smoking? (more…)
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Environment: Not much environmental cheer in the season of goodwill
Exmouth Gulf threatened with industrial development. Africa being forgotten as global economies develop. Australia’s emissions reductions likely to stall long before we get to net zero. Read on for the weekly environment update.
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Environment: Health, budgets and the environment, all damaged by food and plastic waste
Food loss and waste harm the environment, human health and wallets. Chemical recycling of plastic not living up to its promise. Concerns about dead solar modules are unfounded.
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What does climate denialist Abbott think of the monarchy now?
Now what on earth will those staunch monarchists and climate denialists – John Howard and Tony Abbott – say about their new king, Charles III, and his very strongly held environmental views? (more…)
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Amendment of the Climate Change Act will offer a future for young people
Since the industrial revolution, the health damage done to young people by fossil fuels, from the boy chimney sweeps to the household gas cooker amounts to negligence. Do we care? (more…)
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Breakthrough deal on Loss and Damage: What next for COP28?
The Global Stocktake, the report card on climate action for parties (countries), is shaping up to be the fight of COP28.
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Environment: Rich investors make profits from killing leopards, tigers and rhinos
Western financial institutions are funding the extinction of threatened species. Many EV batteries make lights work.
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Analysis exposes big oil disinformation efforts ahead of COP28
“Digital platforms continue to provide vested fossil fuel actors with a cheap and easy way to disinform the public about climate change,” said one campaigner. (more…)
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Environment: 1.5 degrees of warming in 10 years
Not long ago it looked like we’d exceed 1.5oC in 20 years, now it looks like 10. Maybe sooner if politicians keep approving new fossil fuel mines and fields and the logging of native forests. Particulate air pollution kills 9 million a year. (more…)
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What was Parliament doing as the earth boiled?
On the day on which the Earth recorded a global average surface temperature of more than 2 degrees centigrade for the first time since records began what was the Australian Parliament and media doing? (more…)