Posts on aspects of climate science, climate action and climate policy & planning.
The first Brexit happened a very long time ago. According to Richard Webb in Brexit, 10,000 BC: The untold story of how Britain first left Europe (New Scientist), the white cliffs of Dover did not exist 450,000 years ago, just rolling hills. However, as usual, there was an ice age, and a glacial lake was formed in what is now the North Sea:
Commonly 2°C has been seen as the threshold for dangerous climate change, although last year the IPCC report on 1.5°C revealed that at that lower level we enter a zone where tipping points may take us to 4°C and beyond.
Levels of 4°C threaten civilisation as we know it. At 6°C we worry about the survival of the human race. However, at that point Tapio Schneider and his team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, have found that there may be a further tipping point which heats the planet another 8°C to make it 14°C above pre-industrial levels (New Scientist, so probably pay-walled.)
How is this so? Continue reading Cloud tipping point could yield a cataclysmic 14°C warming
Photo and story from The Guardian.
She was asked to talk to the billionaire entrepreneurs in Davos.
Continue reading What would give hope to Greta Thunberg, the girl who can’t quit?
That image is from the School strike 4 climate Facebook page. On Friday the School Strike 4 Climate website invites people to Join school students to strike for a safe climate!. It’s part of a Global #ClimateStrike which will involve action in over 90 countries.
According to Sharon Kelly at Desmog, that is a quote from a speech in 1965:
The speaker was concerned that by the year 2000 the heat balance would be so modified as to possibly cause marked changes in the climate. Continue reading Climate clippings 231
After a summer of record heat and wildfires, the Australian people along with business and industry are looking for concrete, responsible climate policies.
The headline is that oil giant BP sees global demand for coal continuing for decades in the face of dynamic growth of renewable energy.
That is what BP thinks will happen on the basis of projecting forward what we are doing to date. However, in what they see as a Rapid Transition Scenario, BP still sees around half of our energy needs in 2040 coming from fossil fuels in the form of gas and oil. Here from the BP Energy Outlook, 2019 in a nutshell is the story:
Continue reading BP sees coal demand continuing, even more so oil and gas
On Monday the NSW opposition leader, Michael Daley, announced that if elected on 23 March, Labor would deliver seven gigawatts of extra renewable energy by 2030.
A myth has been vigorously stoked by Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg that an irrational frolic with renewables has made the electricity grid unreliable, as demonstrated conclusively by the state blackout in South Australia in 2016. This is now being taken into actual policy by Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison with “big stick” penalties and government intervention to produce “fair dinkum 24/7” power.
This myth has now been thoroughly debunked by a Grattan Institute report Keep calm and carry on: Managing electricity reliability. Blaming renewables for reliability issues is “wrong and dangerous”. Continue reading Blackouts are not increasing, keep calm and carry on!
When I logged on Tuesday there was an alert from John Davidson of a lead article at RenewEconomy Coalition energy plan “unworkable”, as Taylor charges into coal. It sent shivers up my spine.
There is PM Scott Morrison, shallow, ignorant and complacent, when first asked about climate change he admitted he’d never really thought about it.
There is Angus Taylor, bull-headed, supremely confident, and just plain wrong.
While Taylor’s “big stick” Treasury Laws Amendment (Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct) Bill 2018 is the subject of Senate Standing Committee on Economics hearings (see submissions here) he is pressing on with establishing tenders for “24/7” reliable power in what appears to be a mad rush to lock in contracts before the expected “caretaker” period begins in mid April, ahead of the anticipated mid-May poll. Continue reading Angus Taylor is trying to steal the electricity system
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you will know that there has been a horrible fish kill on the Darling River near Menindie in central west NSW. Actually there was one before Christmas, a big one on 6-7 January, and now a third, “worse than last time”. Continue reading The Murray-Darling in crisis
This is a long post, around 5,000 words, wherein I go down many rabbit holes. Perhaps at the end, though, there is a little pot of genuine climate gold.
At any given time there are more than half a million people in the sky, a veritable city about 11 kilometres up, strapped into seats in pressurised tubes atop gigantic flying tanks of kerosene. Looking forward, numbers of air travellers are increasing by 5% each year. Continue reading Too good to be true? Is green flying really possible?
