"This election cycle has seen an unprecedented number of announcements
from all parties on renewable energy, reforestation, and other items
generally reserved for only the greenest on the political spectrum. So
much so that some are calling this the ‘climate election’.
But elections are expensive things, and politicians rarely turn down a
cheque. So if climate change really is going to be a vote decider, it
makes sense to take a look at who is funding our politicians. In
particular, where have those known to support climate science denial
campaigns in the UK put their cash?
DeSmog has analysed donations registered on The Electoral Commission database
and found that — by a very long distance — supporters of climate
science denial have donated predominantly to the Conservative Party and
Tory politicians. "
New research
from Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson questions the
climate and health benefits of carbon capture technology against simply
switching to renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Carbon
capture technology is premised on two possible approaches to reducing
climate pollution: removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere anywhere
in the world, an approach generally known as direct air capture, or
removing it directly from the emissions source, such as the smoke
stack of a fossil fuel power plant.
In summary: emails from the University of East Anglia in the UK were hacked, and many journalists assumed that where there was smoke, there must be fire. Even the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart
jumped on the bandwagon, accusing climate scientists of trying to
“trick you” based on a few selective, out-of-context quotes from the
hacked emails (though he also later ripped the media
for not covering the debunking of the Climategate myth). Commentators
at the time were divided over whether this was a media storm, or just a
storm in a very British teacup. Nonetheless, the Copenhagen climate summit a few weeks later was widely considered a failure.
That wasn’t only because of the hacked emails, just as another cache of
emails aren’t the sole reason for the words “President Donald Trump” —
but in both cases the media-amplified story played a significant role in
shaping subsequent events.
Nine separate inquiries
into the email hack exonerated the climate scientists, but came well
after the damage had been done. And a decade on, many of the climate
science denial myths that emerged from the email hack are still in play.
So, on the 10th anniversary of what came to be known as
‘Climategate’, let’s examine three of the key email quotes that so
captured the media’s attention, and how the associated science has
since evolved.
Unprecedented
bushfires in eastern Australia have turbocharged demands the country's
conservative government do more to tackle climate change, and have
rekindled an ideological fight over the science behind the blazes.
The
huge fires have touched communities up and down the east coast, killing
four people and affecting millions of Australians threatening homes and
blanketing major cities in hazardous smoke.
For
many, the scale and intensity of the conflagrations, weeks before the
Australian summer, have brought the dangers of climate change home.
"The
whole east coast is on fire," said Julie Jones, who almost lost her
house in the Blue Mountains. "I think it's climate change."
A
group of ex-fire chiefs on Thursday warned climate change is
"supercharging" the bushfire problem and they challenged Prime Minister
Scott Morrison over his failure to confront the issue.
"I am fundamentally concerned about the impact and the damage coming from climate change," former fire chief Lee Johnson said.
"The word 'unprecedented' has been used a lot, but it's correct."
For
days Morrison has refused to address the link between climate and
bushfires, arguing the focus should be on victims despite being heckled
about climate change while touring fire-ravaged areas.
Photo Credit : AFP / Laurence CHU
Morrison
has made no secret of his support for the country's lucrative mining
industry, which accounts for more than 70 percent of exports and was
worth a record Aus$264 billion ($180 billion) in the last financial
year.
He
once carried a lump of coal onto the floor of the Australian parliament
and recently proposed banning environmental boycotts of businesses.
His
government insists Australia will meet its Paris climate agreement
target of reducing emissions by 26-28 percent on 2005 levels by 2030.
But
the approval of vast coal mines like the controversial Adani project
which will ship most of its product overseas to be burned make global
targets of keeping warming below 1.5 Celsius more difficult.
'Woke greenies'
Until
now that has been good politics for the Liberal leader. His party
unexpectedly won re-election in May, in part by framing the climate
debate as a choice between jobs and higher energy costs in places like
coal-rich Queensland. Morrison's allies have also deployed the issue as a potent wedge issue to divide the electorate.
Photo Credit : AFP / Jonathan WALTER
When
the Australian Greens attacked the government response to the bushfires
this week, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack went on the
offensive. "We
don't need the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital
cities greenies at this time, when (people) are trying to save their
homes," he said.
But
the scale of the bushfire crisis has made it more difficult for
Morrison to dismiss his political foes as out-of-touch lefty city
slickers.
And
after several exhausting days of spearheading crisis response,
commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said Wednesday the New South Wales Rural
Fire Service acknowledged the new reality.
"We are mindful that the science is suggesting that fire seasons are starting earlier, and extending longer," he said.
Politicians who refuse to discuss climate change
have been heckled as they tour areas destroyed by fire Photo Credit :
AFP / WILLIAM WEST
The
government's own Bureau of Meteorology has acknowledged human-caused
climate change is "influencing the frequency and severity of dangerous
bushfire conditions".
Scientists say the link between climate change and bush fires is complex, but undeniable.
Wind
movements around Antarctica and sea surface temperatures in the Indian
Ocean can also help determine fire-friendly conditions in Australia.
But warming provides key ingredients for fires to thrive: high temperatures, low humidity, strong winds and drought.
"Bushfires
are not directly attributable to climate change," said Janet Stanley of
the University of Melbourne. "However, the fast-warming climate is
making bushfires more frequent and intense."
"The
mountain of irrefutable evidence linking global warming to bushfires
makes the federal government's failure to act or even talk about the
problem extremely hard to explain," she said.
Away from the political bickering, a growing number of Australians appear to agree.
A
2019 survey by think tank The Australia Institute found 81 percent of
people are concerned climate change will cause more droughts and
flooding, while 64 percent want the government to set a target of
net-zero emissions by 2050.
Claire
Pontin, a deputy mayor in badly-hit northern New South Wales, told the
ABC it was "always" the right time to discuss climate change.
"It's not going to go away if we bury our heads in the sand."
Politicians who fail to act on climate change should be held
responsible. At the very least they are guilty of dereliction of duty
and very likely the day will come when they are charged with ecocide.
Governments large and small are making irrational decisions that fly in
the face of both science and common sense. This is clearly evident in
Italy, Australia and the U.S. All three countries are experiencing the
effects of climate change in real time yet are opting to do nothing
about it.
Just after the Veneto regional council in Italy voted down climate
action, the chamber in which the vote took place was flooded. The
council chamber in Ferro Fini Palace began to take on water a couple of
minutes after the climate amendments were shot down on Tuesday November
12. This is the worst flooding Venice has seen in more than five decades
and it is the first time Venice's Grand Canal has flooded. The council
rejected funding for renewable energy, replacing diesel buses and highly
polluting stoves.
As wildfires rage in Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison vowed to
outlaw environmental boycott campaigns. Four people are known to have
died in these fires and crews are still battling over 120 fires in NSW
and Queensland. More than one million hectares have been burnt across
NSW since September and both Sydney and port city of Geraldton are
threatened by these fires. Morrison has refused to acknowledge the link
to climate change despite the spike in heat, drought and wildfires.
Nowhere is the situation worse than in the United States. In the face of
unprecedented heat, wildfires and extreme weather, President Donald
Trump has unleashed an orgy of deregulation.
In the three years that Trump has been in power he has eradicated more
than 70 rules and regulations designed to combat climate change,
conserve the environment and protect the health of Americans. This
includes killing the clean power plan and cleaner car standards. As part of an insane energy strategy he opposes renewables while supporting fossil fuels (including subsidies). Likewise, his actions on
efficiency, the Arctic, and plastic oppose common sense. He has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for science. This includes gutting the ESA and his war on wildlife which threatens the survival of a number of species from the top to the bottom of the foodweb.
Besides being stupid and greedy, we are
genetically handicapped to deal with this situation. We simply don’t
live long enough to plan ahead. By “planning ahead” I don’t mean
decades. I mean centuries. The reason is that people with money and
power, the people with the means to do something, just don’t care. They
would have to give up some of that money and power to change things.
They figure they won’t be around to suffer the consequences of climate
change anyway, so they just don’t give a damn. It would require
Biblically long lifetimes to plan ahead for the human race. For now and
the near future we can, at most, hope to live to a hundred, not the 969
years of Methuselah. If you were going to be around for the consequence of your actions or inaction for as long as he was, you would care."
Aug 25, 2019 "Africa's Forest is Burning more than the Amazon But Nobody Cares. More Fires are Now Burning in Angola, DR Congo Than Amazon.
Blazes burning in the Amazon have put the World on notice, but Brazil is
actually 3rd in the world in wildfires over the last 48 hours,
according to MODIS satellite data analyzed by Weather Source.
Weather Source has recorded 6,902 fires in Angola over the past 48
hours, compared to 3,395 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 2,127
in Brazil. But it seems nobody cares about the fires burning in Africa
right now."
Thanks for watching 2nacheki the biggest African channel on Youtube from #Africa . All our videos are aimed at Educating, Informing, Reporting, Reviewing, Criticizing & Ranking everything #African.
The following excerpt is taken from a new Climate Council briefing paper titled This Is Not Normal, which finds the catastrophic bushfire conditions affecting NSW and Queensland have been aggravated by climate change. To read the briefing paper in full, click here.
This is not normal. As we write, New South Wales and
Queensland have declared a state of emergency. There are also fires in
South Australia and Western Australia. For the first time catastrophic
bushfire conditions have been declared for Greater Sydney. Climate
change has worsened the catastrophic bushfire conditions. The nature of
bushfires in Australia has changed. Bushfire conditions are now more dangerous than in the past, and the risk to people and property has increased.
For well over 20 years, scientists have warned that climate change
would increase the risk of extreme bushfires in Australia. This warning
was accurate. Scientists expect extreme fire weather will continue to
become more frequent and severe without substantial and rapid action to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Key Findings
The catastrophic, unprecedented fire conditions currently affecting NSW and Queensland have been aggravated by climate change. Bushfire risk was exacerbated by record breaking drought, very dry fuels and soils, and record breaking heat. Bushfire conditions are now more dangerous than in the past.
The risks to people and property have increased and fire seasons have
lengthened. It is becoming more dangerous to fight fires in Australia.
The fire season has lengthened so substantially that it has already reduced opportunities for fuel reduction burning. This means it is harder to prepare for worsening conditions.
The costs of fighting fires are increasing.
Australia relies on resource sharing arrangements between countries and
states and territories within Australia. As seasons overlap and fires
become more destructive, governments will be increasingly constrained in
their ability to share resources and the costs of tackling fires will
increase.
The government must develop an urgent plan to (1)
prepare Australian communities, health and emergency services for
escalating fire danger; and (2) rapidly phase out the burning of coal
oil and gas which is driving more dangerous fires.
It's only Tuesday, but more than 11,000 scientists around the world have come together to declare a climate emergency. Their paper, published
Tuesday in the journal Bioscience, lays out the science behind this
emergency and solutions for how we can deal with it.
In the U.S., members of Congress have pushed
the government to do the same, but y’know, they got Donald Trump. Ain’t
shit happening with that fool in office. Anyway, this proclamation from
scientists is significant because they’re not doing it out of a
political agenda or as an emotional outcry. They’re declaring a climate
emergency because the science supports it.
Last
week, in a historic first, the former CEO of a major oil company took
the witness stand in a New York City courtroom and spent four hours
defending his company against charges that it misled investors about the
potential impact of global warming on its viability as a business.
Rex
Tillerson, who led ExxonMobil from 2006 until the end of 2016 when he
became U.S. secretary of state, was grilled by an attorney for the New
York State attorney general for allegedly participating in a
“longstanding fraudulent scheme” by Exxon to fool investors. More
specifically, the company is charged with exaggerating the stringency of
its financial safeguards in pricing risks from regulations restricting
greenhouse gas emissions, according to
the complaint filed last year in New York state court.
The
key finding of this report? That just twenty fossil fuel companies are
responsible for 35% of the global total greenhouse gas emissions since
1965.
These
companies are a mixture of investor-owned, private companies, and
state-owned companies. Top of the list comes Saudi Aramco, a state-owned
company in Saudi Arabia which is responsible for 4.38% of the global
total emissions since 1965. In terms of private companies, Chevron, an
American energy company active in 180 countries, is the worst offender,
responsible for 3.2% of global total emissions since 1965. You probably
recognise Exxon, BP, and Shell who are also up there in the list.
Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than
previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but
erase some of the world’s great coastal cities.
The authors of a paper published Tuesday developed a more accurate way
of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard
way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and
found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new
research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that
will be below the high-tide line by midcentury.
Politicians who fail to act on climate change should be held
responsible. At the very least they are guilty of dereliction of duty
and very likely the day will come when they are charged with ecocide.
Governments large and small are making irrational decisions that fly in
the face of both science and common sense. This is clearly evident in
Italy, Australia and the U.S. All three countries are experiencing the
effects of climate change in real time yet are opting to do nothing
about it. 
An analysis of the size of the US green economy shows that despite the subsidies to the oil and coal industry
by the world’s most vocal denier of the climate emergency, sales and
employment figures for the 24 economic subsectors that make up renewable
energies, environmental protection and the provision of low-carbon
goods and services, represent more than $1.3 trillion dollars in turnover, and is growing by around 20% annually, and employs some 9.5 million people, giving it a much greater economic impact than the entire fossil fuel industry.
