Levels of carbon pollution (CO2) in the atmosphere are higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years.

Scientists have been warning for decades that rising global temperatures, driven by rising carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, will have very harmful, and perhaps catastrophic, consequences for humanity.

In response, governments the world over have agreed to keep global temperature rise to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial. While 2°C may not sound like much, it is a very substantial change to the Earth System and will have serious impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people world-wide.

Here in Australia, we're already experiencing the impacts of climate change from less than 1C increase in average temperature. Extreme events like bushfires and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense.

If we are to have any chance of meeting this 2°C target, we need to rapidly reduce our carbon emissions and transition towards a decarbonised society. This is the critical decade to get emissions tracking downwards and to move investment away from fossil fuels.

Get the full story in our report on Unburnable Carbon

read more: http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/the-world-s-carbon-pollution-is-skyrocketing-off-the-charts-1

We learnt last Monday, 4 May 2015, in Part 1 of the ABC’s Australian Story that Tarwyn Park has been, very reluctantly, sold to a Korean-owned open cut coal mining venture so it can be dug up for the coal that underlies the valley. It would be hard to find a more apt metaphor for the blind stupidity of Australia’s ruling class.

Productive agricultural land is to be sacrificed. The beloved and iconic family property, the living scientific experiment, is so much overburden, to be scraped off to reach the dollars below.

Across the country farmland, communities, nature reserves and ecosystems are under assault from miners, frackers, and developers. They rabbit on about the billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, but the dollars will buy stranded assets, most of the profit will flow overseas, and they wildly exaggerate the number of jobs, which won’t last that long anyway. 

They talk of “rehabilitating” land, but in rank ignorance of the complex hydrological, ecological and human systems they have disrupted. Once the groundwater is contaminated, it can’t be cleaned. You can’t just plant a few trees and shrubs and expect the land to heal. You can displace whole communities, but lives are changed forever.

It would be crazy enough if it were just the greed, but the coal frenzy currently gripping Australia is a death warrant for our global industrial system. The world’s coal-burning infrastructure is close to the point where it will push global warming above 2°C if it is allowed to burn for its projected lifespan.

2°C of warming is supposed to be the limit under which our politicians are aiming to keep us. That number never had a clear scientific basis, and there is increasing evidence it is too high. Already, at 0.8°C, the huge Antarctic ice sheet is showing disturbing signs of being destabilised, and many other symptoms of global warming are occurring sooner than expected. Anything above 1.5°C, or even 1°C, may pass tipping points into irreversible catastrophic warming.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/to-make-a-living-we-must-wreck-our-home,7700

IDIOTIC mercantilism is easy... Understanding the real values of the planet demands more intelligence than being a cunning profiteer or a banker......

Note according to Gus' calculations done over a bottle of Shiraz back in 1994, the tipping point for irreversible catastrophic warming is set for the 10th of June 2032... I thought you wanted to know.

Public health experts involved in the response to the Ebola crisis have condemned what they described as a ludicrous, insulting and opportunistic attempt to exploit the disease for corporate gain by the world’s largest privately-held coal company.

As part of a PR offensive to rebrand coal as a “21st-century fuel” that can help solve global poverty, it has emerged that at the height of Ebola’s impact in Africa, Peabody Energy promoted its product as an answer to Africa’s devastating public health crisis.

Greg Boyce, the chief executive of Peabody, a US-based multinational with mining interests around the world, included a slide on Ebola and energy in a presentation to a coal industry conference in September last year. The slide suggested that more energy would have spurred the distribution of a hypothetical Ebola vaccine – citing as supporting evidence a University of Pennsylvania infectious disease expert.

The World Health Organisation believes nearly 27,000 people contracted Ebola in an outbreak of the virus in West Africa last year, and more than 11,000 died – although the international agency believes that is probably an underestimate.

Public health experts who were involved in fighting the spread of Ebola were outraged at Peabody’s suggestion that expanding energy access with coal generation could have hindered the spread of Ebola and helped with the distribution of a vaccine – especially as there is no approved vaccine against the disease.

Meanwhile, the medical expert cited by Peabody to support its claims told the Guardian he had never heard of the company – and that it had got his name wrong.

“There is no apparent merit or evidence to support such a thesis,” said Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University’s National Centre for Disaster Preparedness, and an advisor to the White House on the US response to Ebola. “Peabody has very specific and explicit corporate goals. I think this is a pretty far fetched leap from a global crisis to try to justify the existence of a company that is interested in producing and selling coal.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/19/peabody-energy-exploited-ebola-crisis-for-corporate-gain-say-health-experts