If you don’t fully appreciate the complexity of rural communities, farmer Peter Schmidt is not the sort of bloke you would be expecting in the Mulga Lands. His place is 21,000 hectares – 52,000 acres in the old money – and his family have been there since his grandfather selected blocks in the 1890s. The closest town is Wyandra, a blip on the highway on the way to Cunnamulla from Charleville – a drive that reveals the disused fences of smaller blocks long abandoned as unsustainable.

Schmidt though is still at his homestead at Alawoona, its sheds and outbuildings surrounded by a metre-high levee, standing like a bad joke in their sixth year of drought. He put it in after the 2012 flood, which washed a foot of water through his house. Problem is, that flood heralded the start of the dry and it pretty much hasn’t rained since. He jokes with station hand Joe that he cursed the place and might have to break the levee to bring on the rain. But far from being a man of superstition, Schmidt is a rural scientist, with two masters degrees – one each in rural education and cattle behaviour. He has a softly spoken manner and a sense of humour born in the Mulga.

“We’re mad here, we are in the most unreliable area, the most unreliable climate in the most unreliable continent,” he says.

“Well, it’s unreliably reliable,” says his partner, Kathryn.

‘Dry eight years in a row’

Schmidt first started thinking about climate change after seeing a program on the astronaut Neil Armstrong who, before he went to space, thought the earth’s atmosphere was like the peel of an orange. In the pictures of space, Schmidt could see that the thickness of the atmosphere was more like an onion skin, and it stayed with him.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/this-drought-is-diff...

As the idiots clear more land:

New official data shows clearing of forests near and along the Great Barrier Reef continued despite Australian government pledges to protect the natural wonder, with at least 152,000 hectares felled in 2016-17 alone.

Forests covering 770,000ha – an area about three times the size of the Australian Capital Territory – in the reef catchment zone have been bulldozed over the past five years. The area cleared last year was larger in size than that covered by new re-growth.

Jessica Panegyres, a nature campaigner with the Wilderness Society, said it showed Australia should be considered a global deforestation hotspot on a par with the Amazon and Indonesia.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/great-barrier-reef-f...

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The consensus is that Scomo-the-one-longish-line-zealot idiot is starting to make Shorten look better than ever before... Shorten is not the best off-the-cuff zingerman, but he has a far better intellect than the combined full list of COALition idiots running the full-blown idocracy in Kanbra. If I was not cynical, I would feel sorry for poor Trumble having had to lead such a bunch of idiot, like ScoMo, Frydenbutt, Duttonia, that devious former Belgian and all the others idiots who deserted Trumble. The list at:

Josh Frydenberg has played down the need for a significant shift in the Morrison government’s stance on climate change before the next federal election after the strong protest vote in the seat of Wentworth.

The treasurer and former energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg told Sky News on Sunday people in Sydney’s eastern suburbs were concerned about climate change, but he said the government did not intend to “reduce emissions at the expense of people’s power bills”.

He said the backlash in Wentworth was driven more by the anger of local voters about Malcolm Turnbull’s removal from office two months ago than about frustration with a lack of climate action.

Frydenberg said the government had met previous emissions reduction targets and declared Australia would “beat our future targets” – despite official government figures on emissions suggesting Australia will not meet the Paris target on current projections, and the lack of a settled policy roadmap to curb pollution.

Read more about the idiots in government:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/21/wentworth-wont-pr...

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Despite the government stupidity on this issue, the targets might be independently met by worried citizens who work twice as hard to reduce emissions.

As four of the world’s largest oil and gas producers blocked UN climate talks from “welcoming” a key scientific report on global warming, Australia’s silence during a key debate is being viewed as tacit support for the four oil allies: the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait.

The end of the first week of the UN climate talks – known as COP24 – in Katowice, Poland, has been mired by protracted debate over whether the should “welcome” or “note” a key report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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Australia did not speak during the at-times heated debate, a silence noted by many countries on the floor of the conference, Dr Bill Hare, the managing director of Climate Analytics and a lead author on previous IPCC reports, told Guardian Australia.

“Australia’s silence in the face of this attack yesterday shocked many countries and is widely seen as de facto support for the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait’s refusal to welcome the IPCC report,” Hare said.

Richie Merzian, climate and energy program director at the Australia Institute, said widespread goodwill across the Katowice talks was being undermined by “a handful of countries” trying to disconnect the science and urgency from the implementation of the Paris agreement.

“It is disappointing but not surprising that Australia kept its head down during the debate … by remaining silent and not putting a position forward, Australia has tacitly supported the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia’s rejection of the latest science on climate change.”

Merzian said Australia’s regional neighbours, including New Zealand and Pacific islands, had voiced strong support for the IPCC’s report, which was a key outcome of the Paris agreement.

“A number of delegates privately shared their frustration that countries like Australia stood on the sidelines while Trump’s, Putin’s and King Salman’s representatives laid waste to the fundamental climate science.”

Hare said the interests of the fossil fuel industry were seeking to thwart the conference’s drive towards larger emissions cuts.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/australias-silence-d...

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