Australia bushfires factcheck: are this year's fires unprecedented? : The Guardian

Australia has suffered a devastating early bushfire season with fires across several states burning through hundreds of thousands of hectares and destroying hundreds of properties with the loss of six lives.

New South Wales has been the most severely hit, with more than 1.65m hectares razed, an area significantly larger than suburban Sydney. All six deaths occurred in there and more than 600 homes were destroyed. At one point firefighters were battling a fire front about 6,000km long, equivalent to a return trip between Sydney and Perth.

In Queensland, 20 homes have been lost and about 180,000ha burned. In Victoria, where the bushfire season usually starts later, 100km/h winds fanned more than 60 blazes during an unprecedented heatwave on Thursday. The most extreme warning, a code red, was issued for the north-western and central regions. The state’s emergency services minister, Lisa Neville, compared it to “the worst conditions you’d see in February or March”.

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Scott Morrison and the big lie about climate change: does he think we're that stupid? : The Guardian

‘War against nature must stop’: UN chief

The United Nations has slammed the world’s efforts to stop climate change as “utterly inadequate”, as it pleaded for countries to stop humanity’s “war against nature”.

 

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said global warming could pass the “point of no return” and called for the world to find more political will to combat climate change.

“Our war against nature must stop, and we know that it is possible,” Mr Guterres said on Sunday ahead of the two-week global climate summit in Madrid.

Insisting that his message was “one of hope, not of despair”, the UN chief said the world has the scientific knowledge and the technical means to limit global warming.“We simply have to stop digging and drilling and take advantage of the vast possibilities offered by renewable energy and nature-based solutions,” Mr Guterres said.

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When someone tells you, “The climate is always changing,” show them this cartoon: GRIST

We’ve all heard it before: “Yeah, but the climate has ALWAYS changed.”

Oh, really? Well, this timeline of Earth’s average temperature shows just how much we’ve influenced the climate. This epic webcomic was created by Randall Munroe, the artist behind xkcd, one of our favorite places for simplifying complicated scientific concepts.

It’s pretty long, but bear with us.

 Go to the original GRIST article to see the cartoon.

Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans: The New Yorker

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Scott Morrison and the big lie about climate change: does he think we're that stupid? : The Guardian

"Of all the horrors that might befall the burnt-out, the flooded, the cyclone-ravaged and the drought-stricken Australian this summer, perhaps none could be viewed with more dread than turning from their devastated home to see advancing on them a bubble of media in which enwombed is our prime minister, Scott Morrison, arriving, as ever, too late with a cuddle.
It’s fair to say that Morrison has pulled off other roles with more conviction – the shouty Commandant of the Pacific camps perhaps his most heartfelt to date, the Gaslighter-in-Chief his most audacious, his Mini-Me to Donald Trump’s Dr Evil not without tragicomic charge – but sorrowful Father of the Nation has begun to feel a firebreak too far.
In Australia we are all now being treated as children, quietened Australians, most especially on the climate crisis. While the climate crisis has become Australians’ number one concern, both major parties play determinedly deaf and dumb on the issue while action and protest about the climate crisis is increasingly subject to prosecution and heavy sentencing."

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"All this theatre hides a deeply cynical calculation: that Australians will keep on buying the big lie, a lie given historic expression last Thursday morning when on national radio the prime minister declared that Australia’s unprecedented bushfires were unconnected to climate change."

Read the complete The Guardian article 

Student organised climate action in Coffs Harbour, NSW, November 29

Folk gathered outside the office of the local National Party MP.

Year 4 student reads his speech

Election 2019: Boris Johnson Top Beneficiary of Donations from Supporters of Climate Science Denial: DESMOG

"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. "

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