The Liberal senator Ian Macdonald has said children are being “brainwashed” by education campaigns urging Australians to take action on climate change, describing the political debate about how to tackle it as “puerile”.

“The children of Australia have been brainwashed into thinking if you turn off a light in Australia, somehow that is going to stop climate change,” the Queensland senator told parliament on Wednesday.

“This is a puerile debate in its extreme. We have to bring some sense into the debate.”

Because Australia emits less than 1.2% of the world’s carbon, considering an emissions trading scheme was “nonsensical,” he said, adding that “few serious countries” outside of the EU were implementing such schemes.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics places the country’s emissions as closer to 1.5%. According to the Climate Institute, Australia is the largest per capita emitter in the industrialised world. 

Macdonald said he did not deny the climate was changing. “As I repeatedly say, Australia was once covered in ice,” he said. “Of course the climate changes.”

But he challenged the theory that humans were contributing to this. “This new theory, I refer to it often as a fad or a farce or a hoax, that suddenly since man started the industrial age, a change of climate has happened is just farcical and fanciful.”

He added that “stupid proposals” for a carbon tax would lead to jobs being sent offshore, accusing the Greens of “denigrating and belittling” people with alternative views.

Macdonald has frequently questioned taking action of climate change before other countries moved to do the same, and in 2013 said too many research grants were being allocated towards climate research.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/16/liberal-senator-ian-macdonald-says-children-brainwashed-on-climate-change

 

As WE SHOULD KNOW the theory of global warming is not new. It has been well defined by Arrhenius about 120 years ago. His calculations on CO2 (which he calls carbolic acid) are astonishingly accurate compared to the rabble by present loony politicians who never looked at a scientific paper. People like Ian Macdonald are politicians created through the ranks of lawyers. They are good at arguing anything, especially against common scientific sense. They are learned idiots who think they can get away with crap because they have been elected to their position by a majority of ignorant people.

We NEED TO LIFT THE INFORMATION outside this delusive denialist debate. GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL and not as pleasant as Arrhenius would have us to think because the increase of human population is far more what he could have expected...

Note: The increase of Extra CO2 by industrialisation is expressed in the analysis document above as PER ANNUM (25 times that of 1895). Since Arrhenius made his analysis, the TOTAL increase of CO2 in the atmosphere due to human activity has been about 200 times that of what Arrhenius observed since the start of the industrial revolution.

It's time to be serious and panic...

 

 

Severe storms on the New South Wales Central Coast have left a thick blanket of hail covering roads and cause power disruptions to hundreds of homes.

The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) received more than 100 requests for help across the Central Coast and Hunter regions, including six flood rescues.

A Central Coast resident said there was enough hail to bring out the snow gear.

"I reckon it's about four inches thick," he said.

"It's just madness. In all the years I've lived on the Central Coast I've never seen anything like it before.

"You could nearly snowboard down [the street]."

Another said it was like going to the snowfields.

"This is something you'd see in Tumut or down in the Snowys," he said.

SES spokeswoman Jennifer Finlay said Maitland and Wyong were among the areas worst hit.

"[The SES is] currently still responding to a lot of jobs that have come in from those thunderstorms that passed over the north coast between Grafton and the Central Coast," she said.

"They were quite severe and we did have some large hail, heavy rain, flash flooding and some damaging winds."

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-17/central-coast-covered-in-blanket-of-hail/6783528

-------------------------

Don't be fooled by the idiot senators (see at top). Such strange and powerful storms are getting more frequent. So far this year there has been more than three devastating hail storms in the Sydney region. In "normal" circumstances, there would be one very ten years. And they are getting more severe as well.

ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL and adds more energy in the atmosphere.

Read the information at top carefully...

An audacious and radical plan to overhaul the Canadian economy authored by some of the world's most respected thinkers, including Naomi Klein and David Suzuki, has gained support from 2015 election frontrunner, the National Democratic Party. Will this change everything, asks Alfred van Amelsvoort and could it change Australia?

THOSE REPRESENTATIVES with a selfless interest in job security voted for Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, and the mainstream media is performing its role of purveyor of bullshit as always. Ultimately the same slanging match continues as if nothing has changed. Nothing has changed at the practical level to excite Australians.

There is no one in Canberra with a vision for Australia — only half-baked sound bites for the evening news.

Well, there is another way: A model manifesto for Australia based on Canada's The Leap Manifesto. The Leap Manifesto was initiated in the spring of 2015 at a two-day meeting in Toronto and signed up to by more than 100 actors, musicians, labour unions, Indigenous rights leaders, environmentalists and religious leaders.

The overarching aim of this "People's Agenda" is to wean the next federal Canadian government off fossil fuels by 2050 with a radical overhaul of the Canadian economy. Significantly, many of the National Democratic Party (currently leading in the polls for next month's federal election) number amongst the manifesto's highest profile supporters. 

#LeapManifesto backed by prominent NDP supporters calls for overhaul of capitalist economy http://t.co/RQJH2g1nFm pic.twitter.com/kqSTVsII6D

— EpiphanyOnWallStreet (@NineInchBride) September 15, 2015

Award-winning journalist and author of 'This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate', Naomi Klein, launched the manifesto, saying:

We live in an historic moment, one that demands audacity, ambition and courage."

The Leap Manifesto calls for a Canada remade as

 "a country powered entirely by renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in which the opportunities of this transition are designed to eliminate racial and gender inequality."

The #LeapManifesto has an uncanny resemblance to our platform. See for yourself! http://t.co/CLfZ3XyCkT pic.twitter.com/GqaIk0f36l

— Green Party Canada (@CanadianGreens) September 15, 2015

The Manifesto's authors are a who's who of Canadian scientists, artists and activists. Apart from Naomi Klein, they include luminaries such as scientist and environmental activist, David Suzuki, singer, songwriter, poet Leonard Cohen and Canadian actor, Donald Sutherland.

They have a simple program for getting there:

"An end to fossil-fuel subsidies and financial transaction taxes

Increased resource royalties

Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people

A progressive carbon tax

Cuts to military spending."

A lot of heavy hitters united for one cause. #LeapManifesto announcement in #toronto today. @CityNews pic.twitter.com/U7tR0xZZUE

— Avery Haines (@CityAvery) September 15, 2015

And it starts with honouring the primacy and land-claims of Canada's First Nations.

It's an amazing, audacious and urgent vision for a country whose successive governments have transformed it from a beacon of good governance, empathy and peacekeeping into a world-leading polluter, where selfishness is elevated to virtue and science-denial is the official doctrine.

Here is an abridged version of the actual Manifesto:

As an alternative to the profit-gouging of private companies and the remote bureaucracy of some centralized state ones, we can create innovative ownership structures: democratically run, paying living wages and keeping much-needed revenue in communities. And Indigenous Peoples should be first to receive public support for their own clean energy projects. So should communities currently dealing with heavy health impacts of polluting industrial activity.

Power generated this way will not merely light our homes but redistribute wealth, deepen our democracy, strengthen our economy and start to heal the wounds that date back to this country’s founding.

A leap to a non-polluting economy creates countless openings for similar multiple “wins.” We want a universal program to build energy efficient homes, and retrofit existing housing, ensuring that the lowest income communities and neighbourhoods will benefit first and receive job training and opportunities that reduce poverty over the long term. We want training and other resources for workers in carbon-intensive jobs, ensuring they are fully able to take part in the clean energy economy. This transition should involve the democratic participation of workers themselves. High-speed rail powered by just renewables and affordable public transit can unite every community in this country — in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that endanger and divide us.

And since we know this leap is beginning late, we need to invest in our decaying public infrastructure so that it can withstand increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

Moving to a far more localized and ecologically-based agricultural system would reduce reliance on fossil fuels, capture carbon in the soil, and absorb sudden shocks in the global supply — as well as produce healthier and more affordable food for everyone.

We call for an end to all trade deals that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive projects. Rebalancing the scales of justice, we should ensure immigration status and full protection for all workers. Recognizing Canada’s contributions to military conflicts and climate change — primary drivers of the global refugee crisis — we must welcome refugees and migrants seeking safety and a better life.

Shifting to an economy in balance with the earth’s limits also means expanding the sectors of our economy that are already low carbon: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and public-interest media. Following on Quebec’s lead, a national childcare program is long past due. All this work, much of it performed by women, is the glue that builds humane, resilient communities — and we will need our communities to be as strong as possible in the face of the rocky future we have already locked in.

Since so much of the labour of caretaking – whether of people or the planet – is currently unpaid, we call for a vigorous debate about the introduction of a universal basic annual income. Pioneered in Manitoba in the 1970’s, this sturdy safety net could help ensure that no one is forced to take work that threatens their children’s tomorrow, just to feed those children today.

We declare that “austerity” – which has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and healthcare, while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy privatizations – is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth.

Across the U.K., U.S. and now Canada, the disenfranchised public has grown weary of neoliberal ideology, calling for a radical overhaul of the capitalist economy which delivered the GFC and a warming planet. Our newly-led Turnbull Government would do well to listen. 

see more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/canadas-leap-manifesto-will-this-change-everything,8171

 

... we were all sad to see David Letterman leave late-night TV this spring. Fortunately, he's not gone forever: The National Geographic Channel announced yesterday that Letterman will appear as a special correspondent on the second season of Years of Living Dangerously, the Emmy-winning documentary series about climate change. 

From the LA Times:

The upcoming season of the series will focus on "solutions that individuals, communities, companies and even governments can use to address worldwide climate change," said [National Geographic Channels CEO Courtney] Bach in a statement...

Other Hollywood names attached to Season 2 include Joshua Jackson ("The Affair"), Jack Black ("The Brink"), Ty Burrell ("Modern Family") and Cecily Strong ("Saturday Night Live").

The season will air next October, just before the presidential election.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/09/david-letterman-just-got-new-gig

--------------

 

Any film that opens with Harrison Ford buckling into a fighter jet for the sake of science can't be all bad. Especially when that's followed by Don Cheadle tromping through Texas cow country, followed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman strapping on a flak jacket and pushing into the heart of Syria's civil war. It's almost enough to make you forget you're watching a show about climate change.

But in fact, the new Showtime series Years of Living Dangerously is about just that, traversing the warming globe alongside an A-List cast that, as the season progresses, will include Matt Damon, Jessica Alba, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The show premieres Sunday (but the first episode, above, is already online), and counts Hollywood kingmakers Jerry Weintraub and James Cameron as executive producers, and Climate Progress founding editor Joe Romm and Climate Central scientist Heidi Cullen as science advisors.

If you already follow climate change, many of the stories here won't be new—deforestation in Indonesia, drought in Texas, conflict in Syria. But Years is a rare, big-budget effort to put the issue squarely in front of an audience more accustomed to Dexter and Homeland, and it does so with spectacular cinematography and compelling, interwoven plot lines that help to propel you through the basics of climate science to arrive at... aw, don't listen to me, just watch the thing.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/04/heres-first-years-living-dangerously-episode

-----

 

In the images at top I had made silly mistakes... I have now adjusted some words and figures. I am still struggling from time to time with English chemistry terms and should know better than mix carbonic acid or "dissolved" CO2  ({CH2O} + O2(aq) « CO2 (aq) + H2O) and carbolic acid (phenol)...

 

As well I have placed the entire figure (more than 200 times) of increase of EXTRA CO2 since Arrhenius' days.

 

 

 

Interview with David Suzuki

Do you have a favoured method on how to reduce emissions? An emissions trading scheme, for example?

What we’d call cap and trade is an inefficient system – a simple tax on carbon is the way to go. It’s fair and simple, and it works.

Our prime minister has said for 10 years that a carbon tax will destroy the economy. Oh really, what about Sweden? In 1991 it introduced a carbon tax and it’s at $133 a tonne. We have a carbon tax of $30 a tonne in British Columbia and it works.

Sweden recently raised the tax. Between 1991 and 2008, their emissions dropped 40% and in the same period their economy grew by 44% so what the hell is this bullshit that a carbon tax will destroy the economy? These guys are full of bullshit, they just don’t believe in information.

Are you hopeful that the demise of Abbott is a positive signal in the global effort to tackle climate change?

I’m delighted to see it happen and I hope it does signal a change. Most of the industrialised world is dealing with this, even in [the] US with its completely fractured government. I mean, look at the Republicans, half of them should be in a loony bin for goodness sake.

Obama went to Alaska, an oil state and said we need to do something. Canada’s prime minister went to the Arctic and never mentioned climate change – the contrast is amazing.

So how is Australia doing?

When you’ve got nine out of 10 solar panels made in China, you have to ask what the hell is wrong with Australia, you’ve got the solar resource, you are crazy. Canadians would kill for that sunshine, you have the CSIRO, some of the top scientists in the world and you’re not taking solar seriously, what’s wrong with you?

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/24/environmental-activist-david-suzuki-on-tony-abbott-solar-panels-and-his-book

 

 

Former prime minister Tony Abbott's own department discussed setting up an investigation into the Bureau of Meteorology amid media claims it was exaggerating estimates of global warming, Freedom of Information documents have revealed.

Key points:

• The Australian published reports suggesting BOM was "wilfully ignoring evidence"
• Weeks after the articles were published, Mr Abbott's department canvassed taskforce investigation, FOI documents reveal
• Environment Minister Greg Hunt argued against investigation
• Review found no evidence BOM had been adjusting figures

In August and September 2014, The Australian newspaper published reports questioning the Bureau of Meteorology's (BoM) methodology for analysing temperatures, reporting claims BoM was "wilfully ignoring evidence that contradicts its own propaganda".

With seven of Australia's 10 warmest years on record being in the last 13 years and warnings climate change will bring disastrous impacts for Australia, the accuracy and integrity of temperature information is crucial.

The BoM strongly rejected assertions it was altering climate records to exaggerate estimates of global warming.

Nevertheless, documents obtained by the ABC under Freedom of Information show just weeks after the articles were published, Mr Abbott's own department canvassed using a taskforce to carry out "due diligence" on the BoM's climate records.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-24/government-discussed-bom-investigation-over-climate-change/6799628

Chart Shows Why 'CO2 is Good' For Climate Science Denial Groups Funded By Exxon and Kochs

By Graham Readfearn • Monday, January 11, 2016 - 12:51

That difference does influential corporate cash make to the arguments that climate science denial groups make in public?

This was a question that Yale University’s Dr Justin Farrell tried to answer in an exhaustive piece of research published late last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Farrell’s paper - Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change – contained this remarkable chart, which I missed at the time but reckon it deserves a bit more daylight.

read more: http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/01/11/chart-shows-why-co2-good-climate-science-denial-groups-funded-exxon-and-kochs

Even Arrhenius in 1897 thought more CO2 in the atmosphere was good (see image at top)... It would provide more heat in the land of the northern hemisphere. By his own calculation, since the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1850 (started in 1750), there would be enough EXTRA CO2 by the early 1900s to do just that. But we did not stop. Now we've added 200 times more CO2 since Arrhenius days. Arrhenius would freak out. He would know there is enough energy in this extra CO2 to drive the planet temperature beyond an extra 10 degrees Celsius within a couple of centuries... And this without counting all the other warming gases such as methane...

AND WE ARE ADDING MORE CO2. We are nuts... Exxon and the Koch Brothers are completely nuts.