The title is courtesy of Laurie Oakes’s column. I’ll come back to that.
The ABC is live-blogging here, and The Guardian here. The Conversation has an Election 2016 heading, and an election policy explainer. The ABC also has an election site. Continue reading Misfiring PM grabs the starting gun
Midnight Oil, led by the former Hon. Peter Garrett, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Education, are returning to a high-ticket priced venue near you.
It’s too early to say whether the 2012 record for Arctic summer ice loss will be beaten, but it’s shaping up so that it could. The NSIDC satellite is broken, but robertscribbler has been looking at the Japanese satellite. This is what it shows: Continue reading Climate clippings 170
Scott Morrison’s 2016 budget got copious praise from Peter Martin, at least in terms of the processes used.
Not so much from his Fairfax mate, Ross Gittins, who said it looked as though it was pulled together with a checklist, but did next to nothing in terms of economics or reform. It was a political document. Continue reading What ScoMo didn’t tell us
Here’s a thread where you can vent about the budget, should you so desire.
Peter Martin has a handy list of what we already know, which is quite a lot.
The ABC does too.
Ross Gittins tells us what not to believe. He reckons they don’t use the appropriate accounting methods to add up the figures. He also says not to obsess so much about deficits. It is the government’s responsibility to borrow to spend on infrastructure and other good things. Continue reading Budget open thread
The ALP has put a lot of thought and work into it’s climate policy. A pity, therefore, that the links to the documentation are not better organised. Here to assist readers are the main links I’ve discovered:
The main policy document: Climate Change Action Plan Policy Paper (41 pages)
An 18-page factsheet: Labor’s Climate Change Action Plan Factsheet
A site Labor’s Climate Change Action Plan, where if you follow the links you can get to the Policy Paper and the Factsheet, but in the main you are directed to short summaries of the policy under six key areas. If, however, you follow the links in a way that is not immediately obvious, you get to the more adequate versions below: Continue reading Labor’s climate change policy
Cardinal Pell claimed to the royal commission that he wasn’t told about misbehaving priests. Now a number of former officers of the Melbourne Catholic Education Office have given evidence that Pell was in fact told about the somewhat unhinged priest Father Searson. Continue reading Saturday salon 30/4
The release of the Grattan Institute report Hot property: negative gearing and capital gains tax has raised the temperature of the scare campaign for a day or so on Labor’s Positive plan to help affordable housing, aka negative gearing.
Turnbull says Labor’s policy will drive down house prices:
Grattan found otherwise. Continue reading Negative gearing: the election scare campaign continues
Arguably the election campaign started on Sunday with Turnbull’s formal rejection of the ALP’s negative gearing campaign. With 68 days to go the polls are all square in the House of Representatives, and, intriguingly, look set to deliver a hung Senate, with the casting vote resting with pesky crossbenchers. Incredibly, Turnbull may win, but not have enough head room to pass legislation at a joint sitting without negotiating with some of the people he wanted to get rid of.
A few people have been looking at the likely Senate outcomes and the prospects are interesting. Continue reading All square and going nowhere?
NSW Greens Upper House politician Jeremy Buckingham set methane bubbling up in the Condamine River alight, making a video which went viral with 2.2m views from Friday to Sunday. The CSIRO had previously investigated the area and found the methane leakage was probably natural.
Buckingham knows better and accused the CSIRO of “making excuses” for the coal seam gas industry. Continue reading Condamine River CSG fire stunt goes viral
Four hundred years ago on April 1616, William Shakespeare, “widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist”, died apparently from partying too hard on his 52nd birthday. Arguably he is the world’s greatest writer. Continue reading Saturday salon 23/4
James Hansen worries that “we may be approaching a point of no return, a situation in which our children inherit a climate system undergoing changes that are out of their control, changes that will cause them irreparable harm”. He’s looked at the models, at current observations, and at what happened during the Eemian interglacial 118,000 years ago, and he doesn’t like what he sees.
During the Eemian, when global average temperatures were about 1°C more than now, sea level was about 3-4 metres higher than now for a considerable time. Then about 118,000 years ago, towards the end of the interglacial, it peaked at 6-9 meters, including a rise of 2-3 metres within several decades. A similar sea level rise of several metres now would see the inundation of many of the world’s major cities.
Also there were huge storms at mid-latitudes in the North Atlantic which would make Superstorm Sandy look mild. Hansen thinks that climate change may be entering a phase where similar events could occur this century. Continue reading Hansen worries that all hell will break loose
