Any move by the Australian government to subsidise coal-fired power would be “crazy” and providing funding for infrastructure to support the Adani coal mine is “just nuts,” former US vice president and climate change campaigner Al Gore has said.

“Globally, the world is moving rapidly away from subsidies to fossil fuels,” he said. “It would be odd if Australia went in the opposite direction and subsidised coal. It’s impolitic of me to say it, but it would be crazy.”

The Adani Group’s proposed $16bn Carmichael coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin, which is yet to get finance but has been promised $1bn from the Australian government to build a rail line to port, was particularly unwise, Gore said.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/12/al-gore-australian-gover...

In today's Sunday Crapograph (16/7/17), Miranda Devine, la Catholicus ignoramus, is asking the question: "why does anybody listen to this fossil?" in relation to Al Gore. Yep, scaremongering is what Al Gore does best... "and fossil fuels are here to stay" finishes La Devine, enamoured with "Le-Donald-il-est-charmant"... 

Well for starters, Devine's Pope, Francis numero uno, is a follower of Al Gore in his own ways, having published an encyclical letter on the subject of global warming. "Will you care for our common home?"

You are allowed to disagree with your Pope in order to support the priests of the COALition, but eventually, you will see ... No, you won't see anything... You will deny the scientific proofs until you die, even if global warming burns your arse...

 

Also appalling is the opinion of Annika Smethurst who is "in love" with idiot Craig Kelly's ideas, a Liberal KONservative who has no understanding of global warming but is in charge of making political butter out of it.

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

 

Meanwhile the Piers Akerman of the day, tells us about Turdbull's cheesy submarines... But who cares? 

The NAIF was set up to allow the Coalition Government to pump billions of dollars of public money into Adani’s Galilee Basin coal mine and other coal mining projects, writes former public servant Mark Zanker.

THE Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) was set up ostensibly is to fund the states and territories to carry out infrastructure works to assist economic growth and increased population in northern Australia. However, a close look at the bill, and the people and circumstances surrounding it, suggests that it is, in fact, a tiny fig leaf behind which the Federal Government seeks to hide its desire to shovel billions of dollars of taxpayers money into Adani’s Galilee Basin coal mine project.

The legislation precludes the appointment to the board the representatives of traditional owners, pastoralists, scientists, environmentalists, the tourism industry and historians. These groups also have significant expertise in northern Australia — pastoral, cultural, spiritual, historical and scientific. Pastoralism, aquaculture, tourism –including conventional, cultural and ecological tourism – are very important industries in northern Australia, but none of them have a seat at the table here.

With the possible exception of Innisfail Mayor Bill Shannon, the board members of the NAIF all have strong links to the mining industry. Chair Sharon Warburton was a board member of Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group and previously worked at Rio Tinto, as well as other resources companies.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/northern-aust...

Skyrocketing heating costs have nothing to do with renewables and everything to do with the Coalition's ineffectual energy policies, says John Passant.

MALCOLM TURNBULL is a legend in his own lunchtime.  

A few weeks ago he was telling us he would be prime minister for a very long time.

The polls tell a very different story. If an election were held now, Labor would romp it in. Turnbull would be in the dustbin of history, where he deserves to be.  

It is not only the polls that tell that story. His party doesn’t fully support him. Indeed, Abbott and his dwindling cohort of supporters want to finish Turnbull offnow. No amount of appeals by Turnbull to Menzies as a "liberal" will change the path to destruction the warring illiberal factions – conservatives on the one hand and reactionaries on the other – are on.

It has been the same sorry story in the polls consistently for the Turnbull Government since almost the first week after the election on 2 July last year, when "all that glitters" Turnbull ended up with a one seat majority. And no wonder.

Turnbull’s grovelling before the Queen captures his predicament and his tortured political reality. The other day this "republican" for the wealthy proclaimed that we are all Elizabethans.

Not me, mate. Thankfully I am not alone, although I am sure not too many, at the moment, share my vision for a democratic workers’ republic to clean out the shit of ages from the Augean stables.  

Which brings me to Liberal MP Craig Kelly, one of the "geniuses" who keep Turnbull, or whoever his replacement will be, in power. He is also, unbelievably, chairman of the Coalition's backbench energy and environment committee.

Last week, Kelly told us in all seriousness that "people will die" this winter because renewable energy is ratcheting up the price of winter heating.

To be fair, he is right about one thing. People will die because energy prices jumped by up to 20% on July 1 in the eastern States. That means around an extra $400-$500 in the cold months for heating.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/mr-kelly-and-...

 

It’s not often that an article about climate change becomes one of the most hotly debated issues on the internet — especially in the midst of a controversial G20 summit.

But that exact thing happened following the publication of a lengthy essay in New York Magazine titled, 'The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: what climate change could wreak — sooner than you think'.

In the course of 7,200 words, author David Wallace-Wells chronicled the possible impacts of catastrophic climate change if current emissions trends are maintained, including, but certainly not limited to: mass permafrost melt and methane leaks, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and food insecurity, diseases and viruses, “rolling death smog”, global conflict and war, economic collapse and ocean acidification.

Slate political writer Jamelle Bouie described the essay on Twitter as "something that will haunt your nightmares”.

If you are tired of thinking about Trump, here's something that will haunt your nightmares. https://t.co/5rUlyp1ZAq

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) July 10, 2017

It’s a fair assessment. Reading it feels like a series of punches in the gut, triggering emotions like despair, hopelessness and resignation.

But here’s the thing: many climate psychologists and communicators consider those feelings to be the very opposite of what will compel people to action.

Per Espen Stoknes, Norwegian psychologist and author of What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action, in an interview with DeSmog Canada said:

“Based on my research on climate communications, this article is exactly what we don’t need. It only serves to further alarm the already alarmed segment of people.”

Climate psychologists recommend "positivity ratio" of 3:1

Let’s get one thing out of the way.

Critics of the New York Magazine article – and other instances of doomsday journalism – are not anti-science. These are all people who firmly recognise the severity of catastrophic climate change and are certainly not petitioning for a bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach, shielding the public from the potential horrors.

Rather, they suggest that most people will only process such facts about climate change if it’s framed in an appropriate way that acknowledges how individuals and societies respond to potentially traumatic threats.

Says Kari Marie Norgaard, associate professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon and author of Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life, in an interview with DeSmog Canada:

“It’s really important to understand that it’s not just about facts and numbers, but having a way for people to interpret them and know there’s something they can do.” 

Stoknes notes there’s a well-known “positivity ratio” for optimal engagement of a 3:1 ratio of opportunities to threats. He says the New York Magazine piece was around nine threats to every one proposed solution.

In other words, a tripling of the ratio in the wrong direction.

Article sticks to hard science, ignoring role of social sciences

The author of the New York Magazine article has already responded to a series of criticisms on Twitter, including on the scientific merit of some of his claims.

A rather revealing moment was when Wallace-Wells replied to a critique from renowned futurist Alex Steffen – who had described the article as “one long council of despair” – by suggesting that:

'My own feeling is that ignorance about what's at stake is a much bigger problem.'

It was interesting how many said the same in my reporting. My own feeling is that ignorance about what's at stake is a much bigger problem.https://t.co/EXmDw89UG8

— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) July 10, 2017

The clear implication is that Wallace-Wells assumes a confronting of ignorance about scientific facts could help compel people to action and avoid the most dangerous manifestations of climate change.

But Daniel Aldana Cohen – assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the response piece in Jacobin titled, 'New York Mag’s Climate Disaster Porn Gets It Painfully Wrong' – suggests in an interview with DeSmog Canada that Wallace-Well’s approach indicates a failure to engage with any questions about broader socio-political systems.

“I think in the politics of climate change, a narrow idea of climate science is fetishized”, says Cohen, adding that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change largely fails to include social sciences in working group reports.

He continues:

It feels like the most realistic, the most unvarnished truth is what the science predicts. But the thing is that in some way, climate science registers the impact of human activity, but it’s not actually an integrated account of the dynamic feedback between social and political activities and physical events in the atmosphere.

In other words, Wallace-Wells’ article sketches out a narrative of catastrophic climate change that assumes people don’t act on the knowledge of the situation.

But in a cruel twist, by only focussing on the science without any attempt to contextualise it in society or political systems, it could well have the reverse effect by making readers feel even more powerless.

This isn’t a new problem: Stoknes notes that as identified by James Painter of Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, about 80 per cent of media coverage on the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeassessment report used “catastrophe framing", with less than ten per cent using “opportunity framing”.

Norgaard says:

“It’s not just about pointing your fingers at the climate sceptics and saying that’s the problem. Of course, it’s a major problem. But the apathy or acquiescence of the majority of people who are aware and do care is a larger problem. It’s about how we mobilise those people.”

AUSTRALIAN scientists have said a hugely controversial article that predicts a climate change driven apocalypse... https://t.co/PuVKJR2a8i

— Skeptical Science (@skepticscience) July 17, 2017If framed correctly, idea of apocalypse can help people imagine alternatives

Stoknes argues that thinking about such a sobering subject as apocalypse or death, if done correctly, can actually help people conceptualise new ways of thinking and being.

He says:

This psychological approach to the apocalypse is very important, and I found it completely absent in the article. It is not about predicting a certain year in the future of linear tim when everything will be collapsing. Maybe this notion is more like a call in the here and now, calling attention to the urgent need for a deep rethink of where we are and letting go of some cherished Western notions that we’ve been stuck in over the last century.

Such a sentiment is echoed by climate psychologist Renee Lertzman and author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement, who emphasises in an interview with DeSmog Canada that predictable fault lines have formed in the wake of the New York Magazine piece.

A key factor for her is how humans actually process information that may be challenging and bring up difficult feelings. She says the consensus is that we can become “cognitively impaired” when the brain’s limbic system becomes activated, resulting in reduced capacity to have functions for strategy, foresight, collaboration and tolerance.

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/the-uni...

 

At this point in time whether the planet suffers irreparable damage in 2100 or 2200 is irrelevant. The planet will suffer "irreparable " damage nonetheless. We have been harping on this subject since the inception of this site and I, Gus, is not going to pull back. In the early days, I was touting up to 9 degrees Celsius increase on 1990s temperature with the EXTRA CO2 already released in the atmosphere by human activity, and I am still confident about these calculations. 

The main ingredient that is fogging up our idiots like Malcolm Turnbull are not so much the desire to help their friend the coal miners, but that global warming is quite slow in human lifetime, but amazingly fast in geological time. What makes global warming appear "slow"? A : Feedback mechanisms. 

The main feedback mechanism is the cooling effect of areas brought on by the warming of ice. I have called it the ice in the whisky syndrome. As the ice warms up, the whisky cools down... At all time, the temperature total of the ice-whisky combo is RISING. If you do not understand this, shoot yourself in the foot. 

Please read also: 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

 

As I say "irreparable" damage, I mean that the situation will be very difficult for life's survival. The planet has been there before and to a great extend it is resilient. When the sea levels were 75 metres above present and there was no ice caps on the poles, the planet had life thriving on it. But a nine degrees increase above 1990s temperature means a 20 degrees increase at the poles, a 9 degrees Celsius increase in temperate regions and a 4 to 6 degrees Celsius increase around the equator. At this level, one should expect a 20 to 30 metres rise in sea level... Humans might have found their match and forced to go and live in Nordic regions or on the edge of Antarctica. Burn more coal and the situation will further deteriorate.

So what's wrong with telling people to panic? Nothing. It should push people to start protesting more and more and more and more against the king coal idiots. And Malcolm is one of them.