Posts on aspects of climate science, climate action and climate policy & planning.
At a mid-year meeting of UNFCCC in Bonn this year in June a small group of countries led by Saudi Arabia have put the kybosh on any formal consideration of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C in the UNFCCC forum. Continue reading Saudis throw a spanner
Greta Thunberg, the girl who can’t quit, said:
This is what was shown for July 01, 2019 at Muana Loa:
Continue reading Four graphs that matter in the climate emergency
With France breaking heat records by nearly 2°C and 1.5 metres of hail fall on Guadalajara in Mexico, Australian blog Lethal Heating has been blogging a storm on the climate emergency. LH selects and republishes three articles per day, adding value by making some available that may be paywalled, and adding a list of links to relevant previously published articles.
Below I’ve linked to some recent articles. Continue reading Climate clippings 232: climate emergency edition
Greta Thunberg, the girl who can’t quit, was asked to talk to the billionaire entrepreneurs in Davos:
She also said:
Continue reading Climate emergency – the next (political) step
Time to declare a climate emergency is now. Arguably we should have done so when James Hansen addressed the US senate in 1988. Twenty years later he was judged to have got it right.
This post started as life a new Climate clippings, so it follows that format. It looks at scientific reticence in relation to mainstream climate science, how the real urgency of the climate situation is moving to the centre from the periphery in climate science, and where we find ourselves now especially in relation to emissions, temperature and sea level rise. Continue reading Climate emergency – an existential risk requiring action
I pinched that cartoon from the Townsville Bulletin from Facebook, where it was doing the rounds. I think it’s tragic rather than funny, but may go some way to explain why Labor, in Queensland and federally, is over-reacting to the ‘message’ that was sent on Adani, and the prospect of jobs flowing from the resources industry as against climate change and saving the planet. Both Queensland and federal Labor appear to be caving in to coal interests, and both appear to be clueless about the urgency of the climate emergency. Continue reading Labor needs to rethink the climate emergency
The latest Newspoll, according to Twitter, so it must be right, was Federal Primary Votes: L/NP 38 (-1) ALP 37 (0) GRN 9 (0) UAP 4 (0) ON 3 (-1). Seriously, Kevin Bonham said on Twitter, that with those numbers, Labor would be unlucky to lose. The Newspoll site has Labor in front 51.5-48.5.
Bludger Track has Labor gaining 11 since 2016 to land on 80, with the LNP on 65 and Others on 6.
The suggestion is that the LNP’s primary vote of 38 going into the election is the lowest ever on Newspoll.
I think we should wait for the count. Continue reading Election follies 6: home run
– The Liberal party is releasing its costings tomorrow, two days before the election
– Supporters of Liberal senator Jim Molan are causing waves within the Coalition as he tries to overcome his unfavourable position on the party ticket
– Bob Hawke has written a letter praising Bill Shorten’s leadership and saying he is ready to be prime minister
– The Clive Palmer advertising blitz continues as the ad blackout looms
– Around three million people have already voted.
(Emphasis added)Clive Palmer wants balance of power in the senate. Why? He wants a future for coal mining, and the development of his Galilee Basin tenement. Simple as that.
So I’ll take a look at Palmer’s impact on the campaign and how the senate is likely to turn out.
Continue reading What does Clive Palmer want? – Election 2019 follies 3
Thailand is happy about being the least miserable country in the world in the in the Bloomberg Misery Index, which is an economic indicator devised by Arthur Okun, and is derived by simply adding the forecasts of unemployment and inflation for the following year.
However, Thailand’s performance in the index is due to the Thai government’s unique way of tallying unemployment. More noteworthy are the performances of Switzerland, Japan and Singapore. For what it’s worth, here are the 10 least miserable: Continue reading Weekly salon 4/5
The Grattan Institute found that providing tax cuts in the never-never while reducing government expenditure from 24.9% of GDP in 2018-19 to 23.6% during the next decade will necessitate cutting existing programs by more than A$40 billion a year in 2029-30. That should have been the story of the week, but somehow it wasn’t.
That’s Scott Morrison saying the claim is “absolute complete rubbish”. I’ll come back to that. Worse was to come. By the end of the week Bill Shorten was accusing the Liberal Party of running a “low-rent, American-style fake news” campaign on a “ridiculous death tax scare”. Continue reading Election 2019: follies 1
While Labor’s 2019 Climate Acton Plan has been completely rewritten compared to the plan they took to the 2016 election the target of 45% emissions reductions (from 2005) by 2030 remains the same. I can’t recall whether they espoused zero emissions by 2050, as they do now, I think it may have been 90%. Their overall strategy is, I think, based on six considerations.
Firstly, Labor acknowledges the cost of doing nothing:
Secondly, they say:
Continue reading Labor’s climate action plan 2019 – a “dog’s breakfast?”
