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PGTS Humble BlogThread: Global Warming/Bio-Security |
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Dan Byrnes. Poet, historian, raconteur |
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Climate Change Stuff No. 4a |
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Chronogical Blog Entries: |
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Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 02:09:02 +1000May Climate Update |
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Submitted by Dan Byrnes ...
Note: Another post was received by Dan Byrnes, Internet poet, historian, archivist and raconteur on the 10th of May. It included several items dated before the 28th of May, which have been included in the last post for May 2021 (dated 27th of May). Other items posted after the 28th have been included in the May update (below). - Ed.
2021-04-29: Progressive populism has transformed Australia before. It could do it again - Liam McLoughlin (Jacobin): In 2012, twenty-one past winners of the Blue Planet Prize - awarded for research that improves the global environment - Released a landmark report. It stated that ... "In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization." A year later, the deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Kevin Anderson, went one step further, arguing that "Revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony" would be needed to prevent the planet warming by more than 2 degrees C. crikey.com.
Clive Palmer coalmine next to Great Barrier Reef rejected by Queensland government. crikey.com.
World's glaciers melting at an accelerating rate. BBC Headlines.
2021-04-30: A major test for Shell's massive multi-purpose greenwashing juggernaut. Ketan Joshi (LobbyWatch): Shell's climate plans, which it released in February, have been recently formalised into an 'energy transition plan', which it plans to present to its board at the company's Annual General Meeting in May. It is the first real test of whether badly insufficient climate plans will be welcomed or criticised. There won't be another update until 2024. ACCR was one of several major groups, including Greenpeace and Oil Change International, to sign a letter urging investors to vote against Shell's problematic climate plans. It's an advisory vote, not a binding one, but Shell have not exposed their climate attitudes to this style of scrutiny before, and so this is a vital decision. crikey.com.
2021-05-01: Canberra in NSW gas plant push. Why change must come to the nation's energy market. ASX pulls back as energy hit. Creating a new economy. The Weekend Australian.
Where plastic waste in oceans is coming from. BBC Headlines.
2021-05-03: More of Greta Thunberg. ABC TV.
US carbon tariff offers opportunity for Australia This year is seeing a rapid realignment of economies around efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change. On March 10, the European Union approved in principle the adoption of 'carbon border adjustment mechanisms' for goods imported into the EU, and in June will vote on their implementation - The Biden administration is looking on with interest, calling the proposed levies a 'carbon adjustment fee against countries that are failing to meet their climate and environmental obligations'. Japan has recently begun to investigate a similar scheme, and Britain is moving swiftly to adopt a similar fee. Australia, some of whose goods could face penalties, should have seen this coming. The Saturday Paper / Schwartz Media - The Monthly today.
Prescribed burn devastates one of WA's last two endangered numbat habitats crikey.com.
Better ways now exist for rural businesses to measure their carbon footprint. ABC TV - Landline story.
How calls for climate justice are shaking the world. BBC Headlines.
2021-05-04: GOOD OPINION Please lead - I faithfully urge you to make a humble and generous immediate announcement as to how Australia will help ensure UN COP26 is the success it must be. - Guardian Australia
Bishop Philip Huggins, the president of the National Council of Churches, has written to the PM calling for him to "make vivid" the commitment to net-zero emissions, and asking him to be an "inspirational leader" on climate change. Schwartz Media/The Monthly today.
How rising sea levels are threatening my home. (South Pacific.) BBC Headlines.
2021-05-05: The Policy (NSW) Road to ruin? NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance has proposed subsidising car parks, waiving stamp duty and giving access to transit lanes for drivers of electric cars before the government imposes any distance- based tax on the vehicles. Nine Media.
The NSW minister says Australia risks becoming the "laughing stock of the world" if state governments impose electric vehicle taxes too early. The Monthly Today/Schwartz Media.
2021-05-05: New South Wales: A parliamentary inquiry will examine
management of the Murray Darling Basin Plan. crikey.com
'Solar garden' schemes to make renewables available to apartments.
crikey.com
PS: In the latest in climate change news, The Guardian reports that new
climate targets announced by the US and other rich nations in recent weeks
have seen climate forecasts by the Climate Action Tracker fall 0.2C to about
2.4C by the end of the century. Also, a new video by RenewEconomy explains
how, at Australia's current rates of emissions cuts, Australia won't reach net
zero for at least another 200 years. crikey.com.
2021-05-05: Does East Africa need another oil pipeline? Story by Alan Kasujja BBC Africa Daily podcast, BBCCopyright: BBC: East Africa is not done with oil - not quite yet. A major oil pipeline will soon be built across Uganda and Tanzania: the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. This could mean good money for both countries, as well as new jobs for people there. "We will need 13,000 to 15,000 directly employed workers in the Albertine area," says Tony Otoa, an oil and energy commentator who used to work for Total, one of the future owners of the pipeline. But activists worry about the impact the project will have on the environment. Amid a global climate emergency, they also say it's misguided to invest in fossil fuels.
2021-05-06: German chancellor Angela Merkel participates in Petersberg Climate Summit. Late-night ABC News/DW German TV News.
2021-05-06: $40M EARMARKED FOR GAS PROJECTS. Following recommendations for a gas-led recovery from a National COVID-19 Commission coincidentally stacked with gas executives. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Morrison government will hand out nearly $40 million in next week's budget to fast-track pipelines, storage projects, and Andrew Forrest's proposed LNG import terminal. The news comes after Resources Minister Keith Pitt deployed rarely-used ministerial powers in March to quash a $280 million loan from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility for the Kaban green energy hub. Guardian Australia reports the wind farm and battery project had been projected to reduce Queensland's electricity prices by $461 million over its lifespan and create over 250 new jobs. Pitt, who has quite a history advocating for coal, argued that despite the well-established economics of renewables he "is not convinced that the project will lower energy prices" and that it is "inconsistent with the objectives and policies of the Commonwealth" i.e. supporting dispatchable and firm sources such as coal, gas, and hydro. PS: As RenewEconomy explained in March, proposed changes to the NAIF would further empower the minister to, say, fund a bunch more gas projects proposed by gas executives on the National COVID-19 Commission. crikey.com.
2021-05-07: The World replay: 4.26 am. ABC TV: ABC TV. Vietnam's Mekong Delta area, where rice production is being turned over to prawn farming. The region used to be a ricebowl area but is now suffering salination due to rising sea levels.
2021-05-07: China's emmissions. China's emissions (27% of the global count) top all developed nations combined.
2021-05-07: The Policy - Step on the gas! The Morrison government will allocate another $58.6m to 'gas-fired recovery' measures in Tuesday's budget and is continuing to hold out the prospect of building a new power plant in the Hunter Valley despite experts questioning the need for it. Guardian Australia.
The budget will include new funding to support multiple gas infrastructure projects, following on from the $52.9 million allocated to gas in the last budget. The Monthly Today, /Schwartz Media.
UN report finds cutting methane emissions becomes the quickest way to stem global warming. 12 Noon, ABC TV news.
2021-05-08: Bank's big bet on green energy. Price on carbon is the key. The Weekend Australian, business review. (Is Rupert Murdoch at last changing his tune on world climate change but hiding the new melody in Finance pages?)
2021-05-08: Bitcoin's dirty little secret. It's not easy being green. (It takes a good deal of electricity to run Bitcoin because of the number of computers required to run its blockchain! On which its security is much-vaunted!) SMH, p. 22.
2021-05-08: G7 Turn up the heat. The Group of Seven countries (G7) put the heat on Payne to set zero emission target for 2050 (which is only 29 years away, Ok, so let's get some perspective here. 2030 is only 9 years anyway. 2040 is only 19 years away. How old is your son just now? Did you say? So when will he be 30?) SMH, p. 22.
2021-05-10: Opinion from Dan Byrnes RE: Another bizarre, half-page ad on the ridiculousness of "climate change catastrophe" in The Weekend Australian (Published 17th and 18th of April 2021) and featuring reassuring quotes from an alarmingly unnamed UK scientist; and like guff from (wait for it, now) The Climate Study Group, membership of which allegedly involves NO climatologists at all. Like a lot of "denialist literature", it involves the views of almost no one who actually knows what they are talking about! But just between us, if one place (like Australia) is warming, then it is very likely that another place (like US or UK or India or China) is warming too. This is precisely why they call it "global" and not merely local, as weather tends to be.
BTW, wouldn't it to be funny if folk (with enough spare money to put half-page ads in major newspapers) were still confusing weather and climate, when climate produces weather, not the other way round.
But anyway, according to the Internet, The Climate Study Group was been worrying the life out of eg crikey.com since 2015-2017-2019 with its silly ads and is said to be a political arm of the Australian Liberal Party and is also known as Desmog. It has, for example, been gravely concerned about the dread waste of public money spent on "renewables". Doubtless like Joe Hockey this group feels strongly that wind farms are downright ugly, just as if electricity towers all over Eastern Australia, coal-fired power stations and unlaked, open-cut coal mines are pretty to look at! Get wise and in your spare time, get a life!
It is led by two former directors of the portentously-named Institute for Public Affairs (said to be a political arm of the Liberal Party), Tom Quirk and Bob Officer. Quirk has also been a director of Australian Environment Foundation (an IPA-founded think tank) which has toyed with the likes of global change luminaries such as Don Burke.
Imagine: if members of The Climate Study Group have been studying climate for years now, but still have learned nothing? Would this reflect on their ability to learn, or not, do you think?
(Note: this entry was written entirely without the aid of sarcasm tags - ain't it like, so good!?)
From Dan Byrnes, poet and historian, Unit 4, 145 Marsh Street, Armidale. E-mail: dan@danbyrnes.com.au or danbyrnes@westnet.com.au. Website: http://www.danbyrnes.com.au. Phone mobile (in Aust): 0478 644 736.