Threats to human existence – not what you might expect. The lightly tapped potential of energy efficiency (turning off your computer camera helps) and the heavily exploited pangolins. Cormann’s Pauline conversion to climate action on the plane to Paris undermined by sceptics.
Category: Climate
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Exporting hydrogen the last throw of the dice for brown coal
Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor’s backing for the Victorian-based hydrogen export plan, which he described as a “significant project”, defies financial credibility.
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Climate war’s Catch 22: We need targets before we can deploy technology
There is a terrible circularity about saying we will only commit to a target when we know the technological path to reaching it. This is because the development of new technologies and their actual deployment, depends on governments having goals (aka targets) and signalling their firm intention to stick to them.
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The Australian newspaper: Decades of disservice to climate science, education
In the penultimate paragraph of my 2020 essay 40 Years of Climate Warnings ignored by Australian politicians, I presented a “rogue’s gallery” which included the Murdoch media for waging war against climate science over more than two decades. This article explores a rather extraordinary, decade-old episode in the climate wars involving the Australian newspaper which has received less attention than it deserves.
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Sunday environmental round up, 7 March 2021
UK’s and Canada’s ‘Powering Past Coal’ promises look hollow, as do many companies’ ‘net zero’ commitments. Ecosystems already collapsing globally and in Australia. EVs and loose leaf tea are better for the environment. And a historical quiz.
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Sunday environmental round up, 28 February 2021
Australia’s rooftop solar is burying coal while chilly Texas provides lessons about the energy transition. Four storey buildings with a courtyard provide the most energy efficient homes. Extinction in six minutes (the facts not the event), and native snails coming back from near extinction on Lord Howe.
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‘Existential threat to our survival’: 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing
This is not a warning but a dire wake-up call. Current changes across the continent, and their potential outcomes, pose an existential threat to our survival. But there are actions we can take to help protect or restore ecosystems.
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Snow storms in North America and Europe: real-time consequences of climate change
Snow storms in North America and Europe may give the impression that “global cooling” is taking place. Nothing is further from the truth. The cooling is a consequence of the weakening of the Arctic jet stream boundary, allowing freezing air masses to flow out of the Arctic circle.
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Australia’s plans for a $2 billion airstrip in the Antarctic is environmental vandalism
While Australia criticises other countries for their supposed expansionist policies, Australia is the most brazen of any country in asserting ownership of territory that doesn’t belong to it. And while Australia claims to be staunchly committed to the environmental protection of the Antarctic, its actions belie such a claim, with its proposal to build a $2 billion concrete aerodrome at its Davis base.
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The light on the hill could soon be solar powered
Global warming runs amok thanks to our coal, cities are unsustainable, more roads means more trucks, more anti-China Cold War rhetoric, and all undoing the many positive features of Australia and its diverse population. (more…)
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The frightening cost of Morrison’s climate inaction
Scott Morrison loves saying he won’t take action on climate change without knowing what it will cost. Joel Fitzgibbon takes the same tack when defending his coal mining constituents. But now we have a clear idea of the cost of not taking action. (more…)
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Sunday environmental round up, 21 February 2021
Stories from Guyana, USA and south west Africa illustrate the local dangers of oil and gas developments, while oil companies globally are struggling. Stories from Nicaragua, Cambodia, India and Lizard Island about the effects of climate change on communities and nature.
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Santos changes tack: rugby charm offensive replaces lobbying efforts
The issue of gas extraction in the Pilliga, in north-west NSW, has caused conflict. Early this month, mining company Santos tried to win hearts and minds in the town of Narrabri by sponsoring a rugby carnival. This charm offensive was a change in tack from lobbying governments and enlisting police and courts against protestors.
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The pandemic is climate change on fast forward
The think tank idea that the world can still make a gradual transition to a low-carbon world by tweaking neoliberalism is totally unrealistic. We need to undertake a massive risk management task, the first step of which must be a brutally frank assessment of the challenge we face. It is something that business, finance and politics continues to avoid. Achieving net zero emissions by 2050, is totally inadequate. It must be reached as soon as possible, ideally by 2030.
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National water policy: outdated, unfair and not fit for climate challenges
The findings of a report by the Productivity Commission National Water Reform 2020 matter to all Australians, whether you live in a city or a drought-ravaged town. If governments don’t manage water better then entire communities may disappear. Agriculture will suffer and nature will continue to degrade. (more…)
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Peter Garrett gives Labor a free pass on climate action
Peter Garrett’s essay in ‘Upturn: A better normal’, edited by Tanya Plibersek, rightly castigates the federal government’s continuing support for fossil fuels and its failure to implement effective climate mitigation policies. But he doesn’t address Labor’s reluctance to take the strong action demanded by climate science or identify the policies needed. (more…)
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Sunday environmental round up, 14 February 2021
Australian coal causes at least 320,000 premature deaths globally every year – six times more people than the industry employs. Coal from a fully operational Galilee Basin will cause approximately 200,000 premature deaths per year. Australia’s whole fossil fuel industry employs only 133,000 people. Electric vehicle prices falling. Sawfish severely threatened.
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Does the desire for power over-ride saving lives by acting on climate change adaptation?
A key role of government is to save lives. It has done this admirably for Covid-19 at huge expense. It will need to do the same regarding climate change adaptation if we are to protect human health and lives.
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Just a sliver of a chance: the uncomfortable truth of insufficient climate action
We must stop celebrating trivial wins in this war of cataclysmic consequences. The pretence that we are making a significant difference may make us feel better but it lets us settle into the complacent delusion that one day someone will sort it out in time.
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Sunday environmental round up. The bells are tolling for coal. Is Fitzgibbon deaf?
Lots about Australia this week: sharks in greater peril from humans than vice versa; bells tolling, albeit still distantly, for coking coal and more loudly for thermal coal; gas industry captures the WA government; evidence that last year’s bushfires were linked to climate change.
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Coalition government’s climate change policy too successful for its deniers?
Scott Morrison’s rationale for using the market to keep power costs as low as possible should make him a devotee of renewable energy. Meanwhile, the Nationals denialism is so absurd that it is pushing for a coal-fired power plant whose electricity would cost eight times that from a renewable plant.
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Death by a thousand cuts – EPBC Act needs a powerful cop on the beat
A bill to change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conversation Act focuses on streamlining the approvals process and devolving federal powers to the states and territories. But the Act already fails to capture most impacts of development because it doesn’t consider them holistically. (more…)
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Taxpayers’ $50m gift to gas in Beetaloo Basin sums up the crisis: Environmental round-up Jan 31
Heat causes climate change and climate change causes humans to produce reports: reports documenting the worsening problem and its causes; reports about the actions needed but not being taken; and reports about actions that should be avoided but are taken any way. And through it all, we keep burning coal.
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Coalition’s political games don’t mix well with existential threat
We could secure a spectacular future for ourselves and help the planet. Instead the federal government dodges the hard decisions; passes the buck. Fortunately, state and territory governments are stepping up to the plate.
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A “gas-led recovery” leads to dangerous atmospheric methane
A US study showed that children born within a mile or two of a gas well were likely to be smaller and less healthy. High levels of methane reduce the amount of oxygen breathed from the air, with health consequences. And still the Coalition pushes its fracking plans for the nation. (more…)
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Sunday environmental round up, 24 January 2021
The land this week: strategies to reduce agricultural land and habitat loss, and improve human health, even as the global population increases; the massive carbon footprint of dairy products; problems in Asia – slow-onset impacts of climate change to displace millions and dodgy deforestation practices harm the environment and communities; biochar promises much but many unanswered questions; rains help Australian birds breed up.
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Sunday environmental round up, 17 January 2021
Some good and some bad news about climate change from 2020, with a focus on the rapidly warming Arctic. Different starting points and scopes for two plans to keep warming under 1.5oC but their strategies share many commonalities. Three-quarters of Australia’s threatened species are plants and their numbers are declining. Some heart-warming and some heart stopping wildlife photos.
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Simple illustration of how our climate has changed
Climate change sceptics and doubters might be beyond persuasion but the Bureau of Meteorology has a plain bar chart that shows how our climate has changed
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Research reveals shocking detail on how Australia’s environmental scientists are being silenced
Ecologists and conservation experts in government, industry and universities are routinely constrained in communicating scientific evidence on threatened species, mining, logging and other threats to the environment, our new research has found. (more…)
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Governments everywhere are ignoring the fact that climate change is just one of 10 human-made threats to our survival
Human extinction in coming decades looks increasingly certain, unless we can somehow, quickly engineer, radical transformative change in the way humans everywhere, live and relate to the planet.