Aussie rodent becomes first 'climate change extinction': EWN

The rat-like Bramble Cay melomys -- whose only known habitat was a small sandy island in far northern Australia -- has not been spotted in a decade. 

SYDNEY - Australia officially declared a Great Barrier Reef rodent extinct on Tuesday, making it the first mammal believed to have been killed off by human-induced climate change.

Climate Hackers - 'last ditch solutions to slow global warming': ABC

'Climate Hackers' on  ABC February 26, 2019

For years scientists have been quietly working on extreme, last ditch solutions to slow global warming - just in case governments worldwide don’t get their acts together.

Climate Hackers: The full episode 

Renewable economy & climate change: Australian Greens Policy

Renewable Energy - Wind

"Creating a renewable economy that tackles climate change, creates jobs, makes bills cheaper and energy more reliable.

As one of the sunniest countries on earth, Australia can lead the world by rapidly transitioning to renewable technology, protecting our planet from the threat of climate change and creating the jobs of the future. 

Scott Morrison to reboot Tony Abbott's emissions reduction fund with $2bn : The Guardian

Scott Morrison

Comment: Dodgy accounting and a huge expenditure of taxpayers money for a scheme not proven. A typical 'snow job' by the conservatives not yet fully convinced that climate change exists.

"But a chart released in advance of Monday’s speech makes it clear the looming abatement exercise will rely significantly on accounting measures as well as on practical emissions reduction.

According to projections done last December, the government will count a 367 megatonne abatement from carry-over credits (an accounting system that allows countries to count carbon credits from exceeding their targets under the soon-to-be-obsolete Kyoto protocol periods against their Paris commitment for 2030) to help meet the 2030 target.

It is also factoring in emissions reduction from Turnbull’s pet

There is no Planet B for our children

project, the Snowy 2.0 expansion (which the Morrison government has not yet formally signed off on); energy efficiency measures; an electric vehicle strategy (that it has not yet unveiled); the rebadged climate solutions fund; additional hydro projects and just under 100Mt of abatement from “technology solutions” (which aren’t specified) and “other sources of abatement” such as projects under development but not yet contracted."

Read The Guardian article 

See also

The Australian article which says,

"Labor climate change spokesman Mark Butler said last night the Abbott-era direct-action fund, which has been depleted from an initial $2.5bn to about $226 million, was an ineffective policy that charged taxpayers for carbon-emissions cuts that would have happened anyway.

“This is just another example of the government’s inability to deliver real climate policies,” he said.

“As Malcolm Turnbull famously said: “It is a fig leaf to cover a determination to do nothing.”

See also

Fact-checking Morrison on climate change  

The emissions reduction fund was deeply flawed – and no rebranding will change this

 

If the Coalition has had a climate epiphany, I'm Beyoncé

 

 

Climate Change Deniers have anti-science funding

Climate Science Denier says DESMOG

"In 2016, retired Princeton physicist Professor Will Happer accepted an invitation from conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin to give a keynote at his conference to talk about the “positive effects of CO2.”

Griffin thinks the science behind global warming is a scam. He also thinks there is “no such thing” as the HIV virus and that some plane contrails are part of a political plot to spray the population with poisons.

Climate actions in Greens NSW Forest Policy

Labor fails our forests too.

NSW Greens Forest Policy (Ratified)

Ratified at SDC Feb 23, 2019

Principles

The Greens believe:

1. Australia is globally significant for its biodiversity and forests are a key element in this biodiversity.

2.Wild forests, native forests, rainforests and multi-aged and old growth forests are significant in maintaining water quality and quantity, protecting threatened species and their habitat.

Check out Australian places, inundation projections.

Coffs Harbour, higher ground, after 10m sea rise

Click here to go to Coastal Risk Australia site

See also 

See article re James Hansen's predictions

 

Australian headlines are designed to scare people into not acting on climate change : The Guardian

Global Heating

"As we head into another cycle of climate change politics beware the economic doomsayers"

"Thirdly, because Australia exports a lot of coal and other emissions-intensive products to other countries, what they do matters an awful lot to the Australian economy. As other nations reduce emissions, demand for these products falls regardless of what we do. It has been established for some time that a significant part of the economic impacts of climate change on Australia comes from things we can’t control and this is generally presented in the results (see here for an example). While he does not report this, Brian Fisher knows this because he spearheaded economic analysis in the 1990s that was targeted at convincing Japan, one of our major coal markets, it would be too costly for them to reduce emissions."  .......
 

"Lastly, whenever these headlines are blasted across the papers one point is always lost: these results don’t include the cost of climate change itself. This summer, we have again seen a glimmer of what climate change will mean for Australia. Recent economic analysis indicates the benefits of limiting global warming far outweigh the cost of doing so, in one case by 70-1 (a good summary is here). (Again, this is something Fisher has considered in the past as he once said it would be cheaper to move people from the Pacific and put them in condos on the Gold Coast than act on climate change.)" ......

Read the complete 21/2/2019 The Guardian article

Coal, conservatives, and craziness: Financial Review

Coal Mining

Privately owned electricity generators in Australia don't want to invest billions of dollars in new coal-fired power plants for the simple reason that renewable power with storage is cheaper and quicker to build. The idea that it doesn't make sense to place a 50-year bet on coal-fired generation in Australia, but it does in developing countries, is simply bizarre.

If AGL, the largest consumer of coal in Australia, can't make coal-fired powered stations stack up financially — even with near zero coal transport costs — how can anyone believe that coal will make sense in developing countries that have to cover all of the costs of getting their coal from Australia to Asia?

Read the Financial Review article 

See also: Australia's biggest companies failing to plan for climate change risks: report: ABC NEWS

#coal  #coalmining  #coal mining  #economy  #australia  #energy production  #climate change

Australia's biggest companies failing to plan for climate change risks: report: ABC NEWS

"Australia's biggest companies are ignoring calls from regulators and investors to do more to mitigate the risks of climate change, with a new study finding that many of the nation's top 100 companies still do not identify climate change as a material business risk."

 ................................

 "In October, the Australian Institute of Company Directors' (AICD) survey of more than 1,200 company directors found they had for the first time nominated climate change as the number one issue they want the Federal Government to address in the long term.

Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA) chief

Climate Angel

executive Simon O'Connor said investors were increasingly setting decarbonisation targets for their investment portfolios.
"Many responsible investors are rightfully concerned about this low level of disclosure," he said.

"More and more responsible investors are considering divestment from fossil fuel companies as an option on the table."

Read the ABC News story 


#climate change economic impact    #climatechange  #climate activism   #Australia

Young people are about to utterly transform climate politics: Medium

Climate Justice

"Inter-generational justice demands bold, rapid climate action; real climate action demands a giant building boom."

"Young people have a massive self-interest in pushing that boom to happen as fast as possible — a self-interest every bit as strong (and far more ethical) as the self-interest that older people pursue through gradualism and delay.

As young people become more and more powerful in the climate movement, fault lines are going to open. Those cracks are visible now. Older leaders are just in the habit of ignoring them.

The climate movement of the 2020s will be fierce and focused on building the new world we need.

The conflict between old movement interest groups and that new call for action at scale and speed is going to be a — maybe the — major climate story in the coming decade."

Read the Medium article 

#YIMBYS  #climateaction   #building   #youth  #climateconflict   #youngpeople

Polar bears have invaded an island town. Locals are terrified of them and climate change

"The US Geological Survey warned in 2007 that two-thirds of the global population of polar bears could be wiped out by 2050 because of thinning sea ice.

That prediction has periodically found stark visual expression. In December 2017, the world's attention was briefly focused on a video of an emaciated polar bear, struggling to stand in the Canadian Arctic.

"This is what starvation looks like," Paul Nicklen, the photographer who captured the scene, wrote on social media. "The muscles atrophy. No energy. It's a slow, painful death. When scientists say polar bears will be extinct in the next 100 years, I think of the global population of 25,000 bears dying in this manner.""

Read the SMH article 

#polarbears  #polar bear   #human driven mass extinction  #extinction  #global heating

See also: New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a 'Risky Distraction': Desmog

'Climate-change refugees' quit mainland farming in search of greener pastures in Tasmania: ABC News

See ABC story

"This week, farmers in parts of western Queensland saw their stock drown and die from exposure in disastrous flood conditions which Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said will likely claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of cattle.

The floods come after an extended period of drought, when many paddocks across the region were reduced to dust.
But for some farmers, these hellish conditions are a distant dream.

Rob and Sally McCreath quit mainland Australia to farm in Tasmania in 2016, where they foresaw an easier life.
They call themselves "climate-change refugees"."

Read the ABC News Story

FUEL TO THE FIRE HOW GEOENGINEERING THREATENS TO ENTRENCH FOSSIL FUELS AND ACCELERATE THE CLIMATE CRISIS

climate action now

"Executive Summary 

The present report investigates the early, ongoing, and often surprising role of the fossil fuel industry in developing, patenting, and promoting key geoengineering technologies. 

It examines how the most heavily promoted strategies for carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification depend on the continued production and combustion of carbon-intensive fuels for their viability. 

It analyzes how the hypothetical promise of future geoengineering is already being used by major fossil fuel producers to justify the continued production and use of oil, gas, and coal for decades to come. 

It exposes the stark contrast between the emerging narrative that geoengineering is a morally necessary adjunct to dramatic climate action, and the commercial arguments of key proponents that geoengineering is simply a way of avoiding or reducing the need for true systemic change, even as converging science and technologies demonstrate that shift is both urgently needed and increasingly feasible. 

Finally, it highlights the growing incoherence of advocating for reliance on speculative and risky geoengineering technologies in the face of mounting evidence that addressing the climate crisis is less about technology than about political will."

Read the original CIEL document 

See also  New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a 'Risky Distraction': Desmog

climate change quote

" A new report makes the case that the fossil fuel industry prefers geoengineering as an approach for addressing climate change because it allows the industry to keep arguing for continued fossil fuel use.
 
In Fuel to the Fire: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis, the Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL) warns that geoengineering, which includes technologies to remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide and to shoot particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight, potentially offers more of a problem for the climate than a solution.

“Our research shows that nearly all proposed geoengineering strategies fail a fundamental test: do they reduce emissions and help end our reliance on fossil fuels?” said CIEL President Carroll Muffett, who co-authored the report with the support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation.

If you've ever wondered about geoengineering, @ciel_tweets has a new report–you should definitely read it, and then you should get to work repowering our planet with renewable energy!https://t.co/XoRXOW73ap

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) February 13, 2019"

Read the DeSmog Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science article

Read time: 7 mins

By Justin Mikulka • Wednesday, February 13, 2019

#Bill McKibbon  #geoengineering  #carbondioxide  #climatechange  #climate action  # fossilfuels

Global warming is increasing the chances of worldwide harvest failure on the scale of the tragic 19th century drought and famine that claimed 50 million lives.

Awaiting aid in drought-ravaged Somalia in 2011. Image: Stuart Price/UN Multimedia

"LONDON − Climate change driven by human-induced global warming could recreate the conditions for a re-run of one of the most tragic episodes in human history, the Great Drought and Global Famine of 1875 to 1878.

Those years were marked by widespread and prolonged droughts in Asia, Brazil and Africa, triggered by a coincidence of unusual conditions in the Pacific, Indian, and North Atlantic Oceans.

The famine – made more lethal by the political constraints linked to 19th-century colonial domination of three continents – is now thought to have claimed up to 50 million lives.

And the message contained in new research published in the Journal of Climate is stark: what happened before could happen again."

Read the Climate Change blog article

#foodshortages  #famine  #global heating  #climate action  #asia  #brazil  #africa  

See also  New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

Be a patriot, eat less beef: grist

click to enlarge

As Josh Harkinson noted this week, cows are the United States’ single biggest source of methane — a potent gas that has 105 times the heat-trapping ability of carbon dioxide. That’s one major reason why beef’s greenhouse gas footprint is far higher than that of most other sources of protein, according to an EWG study. (Though it’s consumed at a fraction of the rate of beef or chicken, lamb is by far the most carbon intensive of the major meats, according to EWG, since the animal’s smaller body produces meat less efficiently but still produces a lot of methane.)

And EWG’s estimate of beef’s impact may actually be on the conservative side: A study released this week found the greenhouse gases associated with beef to be even higher.



So what should you eat instead of beef? One answer: Chicken, which has a carbon footprint roughly a fifth the size of beef’s.
Read grist article 

#veganism  #vegetarianism  #carbon footprint  #greenhouse gases  #meat  #chicken  #methane 

See also New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

Ecocidal Maniacs: How Complacent, Fact-resistant Humans are Destroying the World: Fractal Enlightenment

Gas nozzle ecocide

"We all intuitively sense that there is something fundamentally unhealthy and unsustainable with the way our human cultures pollute and destroy the planet, but most of us do not have the moral courage to admit that we’re part of the problem. Cognitive dissonance too easily slips in and pacifies us against the discomfort. And so the vicious cycle continues.

This dissonance is so powerful that it compels people to remain ignorant to a great many things. The majority of us think we know the way the world works, when really we have forgotten that everything is connected. This can be extremely dangerous."

Read the original Fractal Enlightenment article

Image source:

Gas nozzle ecocide
Frantz Fanon quote
Brittany Jackson art

#ecocide  #climate change  #global heating  #cognitive dissonance  #climate change deniers

  See also: New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

How the Fossil Fuel Industry Got the Media to Think Climate Change Was Debatable: Medium

Business interests actively worked to make scientific facts seem like partisan opinions.

Read the Medium article

Does Climate Change Mean I Can’t Have Kids?

child

"Like a growing number of potential parents, I’m questioning the ethics of bringing children into a warming world."

 "Future children. The thought of them is why — when my mother made the comment about my grandfather — my satisfaction was tinged with sadness and worry.

This year, I’ve begun to question if I can have children.

I don’t mean “can” in the biological sense, but in the ethical

Climate Change and Childbearing

sense. I don’t know if I can have children in a world rapidly approaching unlivable temperatures, rising seas, and mass extinctions."

Read the Medium article

See also: New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '... 

NSW Greens launch plan for 1 million households to have solar in four years

The NSW Greens have today launched a $1.25 billion comprehensive plan to ensure at least one million extra households in NSW can either install solar panels or be part of community renewable energy schemes within four years.  The Household Solar Plan is part of the Greens Roadmap to 100% Renewable Energy by 2030 and involves:

• Mandatory solar plus batteries for all new dwellings - 350,000 in four years
• $2000 rebate for rooftop solar and batteries for 500,000 households
• Solar panels on all public housing and government buildings - 110,000 public housing tenants receive electricity rebates
• A community solar offset scheme for apartment owners and renters - 200,000 participants in four years
• A Fair Price for Solar - mandatory extra 4.4c/kW for avoided health and social costs

Research: Young people's burden: requirement of negative CO2 emissions: ESD

Global surface temperatures

"Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, implausible cleanup or growing deleterious climate impacts or both." 

A dire opportunity: rural communities in the face of climate change: CRA

Soil Health - Decarbonisation

"So, how far behind are we, and how much do these new reports change the conversation? In 2017, James Hansen, who is a native Iowan and one of the top climatologists in the world, published a report with some updated figures. We have already warmed the world beyond 1° C and have enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to commit ourselves to at least 1.3° C. To stay at or below 1.5° C would mean keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to 350 parts per million (ppm) or lower, hence the name of the activist group 350.org. We crossed the threshold of 400 ppm in 2013.

1.5°C = Zero Fossil Fuels: 350.org

1.5 degrees heating

It’s simple — to keep global warming below 1.5°C, coal, oil + gas needs to stay in the ground.

On October 8, 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report on keeping warming below 1.5°C. It was a wake-up call to the world that the window for avoiding runaway climate change is closing — fast.

To have any chance of staying under 1.5°C of warming, no new fossil fuel project can be allowed to go ahead.

The fossil fuel industry is knowingly causing the climate crisis. Every institution and every single level of government has a role to play in stopping this reckless industry before it’s too late.

We must demand that all institutions withdraw their support from the fossil fuel industry — be that investments, sponsorships, subsidies or permits — and stand up to the industry before it’s too late.

Go to original 350.org article

#fossil fuels  #divestment  #coal  #oil  #gas  #IPCC  #1.5degrees C  # global warming

From Medium: The Economics of Climate Change Explained

Increased coastal storms due to climate change are expected to cause significant economic damage.

"Climate change is well known for its destructive impacts — ranging from rising sea levels to more fierce natural disasters. There is increasing concern that some areas currently home to many people could become uninhabitable within only a few short decades. The world has come together in response, forming the Paris Agreement in an attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change.

A Huge Climate Change Movement Led By Teenage Girls Is Sweeping Europe: BuzzFeed

Climate action march Eric Lalmand / AFP / Getty Images

"LONDON — A huge student protest movement led almost exclusively by teenage girls and young women is sweeping Europe, and it's on the brink of breaking through in the US."


"The protests are injecting a new urgency into the debate around climate change, and calling attention to a lack of action by governments. They are also a sign of the new political power of young women, especially in Europe. 
Climate strikes have also been organized by students in Australia, and US organizers are planning to participate in an international day of action on March 15.
Jamie Margolin, the 17-year-old founder and executive director of Zero Hour, a group working on the March 15 protest in the US, told BuzzFeed News that climate activism has given young women like her a chance to be heard."

Read the BuzzFeed article 

Rolling Stone: What’s Another Way to Say ‘We’re F-cked’? One of the leading climate scientists of our time is warning of the horrifying possibility of 15-to-20 feet of sea-level rise

Climate Action Now

 #climateactionnow  #climate action now  #climate catastrophe  #climatecatastrophe

In A.C., farmers talk climate change Feb 8, 2018

Farmers talk Climate Change

The predicted effects of a warming planet on Garden State farmers are grim: crop failures, plant diseases and an influx of pests.

The topic was front and center at Harrah's Resort Atlantic City earlier this week, where hundreds of growers from the state's billion-dollar farming industry gathered for New Jersey's 104th State Agricultural Convention.

"There were people for years that denied there was climate change ... Now I think there's more acceptance because they can see it on their farms and fields," said Douglas Fisher, secretary of the Department of Agriculture.

Read the Science Nature article 

#farmers  #farming  # New Jersey  #food production  # Agriculture  #farms  #Atlantic City

Rolling Stone: What’s Another Way to Say ‘We’re F-cked’? One of the leading climate scientists of our time is warning of the horrifying possibility of 15-to-20 feet of sea-level rise

Australia can meet Paris targets if government doesn't hinder progress, report claims

climate action now

ANU research suggests net cost of achieving Paris targets is zero because renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels

New research finds Australia is installing renewable energy faster than any other country, a trend that will allow Australia to meet its economy-wide Paris targets five years ahead of schedule if politics doesn’t derail the trend, according to new research from the Australian National University.

Read The Guardian article

BUT

"Dr Teske said ANU's research focussed on the energy market and not the entire sector.

"We also need to take into account our emissions and transport [and] if we want to electrify our transport system, we need to take into account that the electricity demand in Australia will roughly double," he said.

"Even if we meet our, let's say, 2025 or 2030 targets, we need a long term target and we don't have long term energy policies in place right now."  From ABC NEWS


Rolling Stone: What’s Another Way to Say ‘We’re F-cked’? One of the leading climate scientists of our time is warning of the horrifying possibility of 15-to-20 feet of sea-level rise