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oh what a tangled web they weave, when first they practise to deceive...
Last week, environment minister Melissa Price and energy minister Angus Taylor once again hit the airwaves, lying to the public on Australia’s carbon emissions, claiming that emissions are falling.
“Seasonally adjusted, weather normalised” emissions for the September 2018 quarter did fall by a little over 1%. However, this cherry-picked data point deceptively obfuscates the true message that Australia’s emissions have risen year on year since Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt gleefully despatched the carbon pricing mechanism in mid-2014 and replaced it with the emissions reduction fund (ERF) the next year.
The ERF, however, has demonstrably failed to arrest Australia’s growing emissions.
Under the ERF, large corporates have been issued credits to change fuel-oil engines for diesel, and diesel engines to gas, even when they would have done so in the normal course of business. Landfill gas generators installed to meet methane emission regulations have received millions of unnecessary credits. In one case a generator was built 13 years before the ERF. Agribusinesses have swapped clearing permits for carbon credits, a legitimate activity, but highly questionable in cases where the permits had been issued just weeks before conversion to credits. And even then, only 20% of the headline 193Mt of emissions reductions have been “delivered”.
Renewable energy — opposed for two decades by Taylor — is bringing down emissions in the electricity sector. Reported land sector emissions are down slightly. However, all this progress is being wiped out by unbounded emissions growth in other sectors, particularly the “fugitive emissions” released by our booming gas industry.
After the hottest Australian summer on record, which included bushfires in Queensland rainforests and 1,000 years old Tasmanian forests, floods and mass fish kills, and as we head into election season, our warming climate is again front of mind for many swinging voters — voters who are sick of inaction and tired of lies.
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/07/australias-energy-...
Picture at top by Gus Leonisky. Storm cloud over tangled electricity lines, Sydney suburbs, on a day when it was 37 degrees Celsius in the shade on the 5th of March 2019 (Autumn)...
- By Gus Leonisky at 7 Mar 2019 - 2:16pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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return of the angrier summer...
The Australian summer of 2018/19 marked the return of the Angry Summer with record-breaking heat and other destructive extreme weather events.
The summer was characterised by prolonged, continental-scale heatwaves, hot days, drought conditions in eastern Australia and bushfires throughout Australia, particularly in Queensland and Tasmania and parts of Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
Bushfire seasons started much earlier, lasted longer, and burned in areas that would not be expected to burn, despite there not being an El Niño event. Heavy rainfall and flooding inundated northern Queensland in late January and early February.
Read more:
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/angriest-summer/
it's time to throw scummo out...
From Lenore Taylor at The Guardian:
Over the past 30 years I have reported so many broken climate policy promises and quoted so much rhetoric that proved to be hollow, it is difficult to trace it back to the start. I think it’s a faded press release from 11 October, 1990 headed “government sets targets for reductions in greenhouse gases”.
“The government recognises the greenhouse effect as one of the major environmental concerns facing the world,” said Ros Kelly, Bob Hawke’s environment minister. “This decision puts Australia at the forefront of international action to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases.”
We knew we had to do something almost three decades ago. Children have grown to adulthood and had their own children during the time we have known, and done not very much.
We were then, apparently, going to meet our target through “no regrets” actions – things that made sense for other environmental reasons as well as climate concerns. We didn’t meet it. We haven’t ever met any of a succession of greenhouse gas reduction targets by actually reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, which continue to rise, still. No regrets? At the forefront? If only.
1990 was the year the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report made clear predictions – of higher temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns and impacts on agriculture.
They are no longer predictions. They are our reality now. We just endured the hottest summer on record. In Port Augusta the thermometer hit 49.5 degrees. Across the country more than 200 temperature records were broken. Nine of the 10 warmest years in Australia’s records have occurred since 2005.Communities have no water. Flying foxes are dropping dead from the trees. Up to a million fish have died in the parched Murray-Darling – an ongoing environmental, social and economic catastrophe. We have been warned that without urgent action, the Darling will die. The bushfire season is starting earlier and different kinds of forests are burning, one in Tasmania stands over 1,000 years old. Flooding is more frequent and rainfall patterns are changing. Our ecosystems are being driven to collapse.
For all those decades some politicians tried and failed to act, because others tried harder and succeeded in preventing it. For a brief moment we had a carbon price, and greenhouse emissions did fall, but then it was abolished, ostensibly in the name of reducing the price of groceries and services, which had never risen much in the first place, but mostly in the cynical interests of trying to win an election.
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/13/enough-scandalous-ti...
Why I headed this article by Lenore as "it's time to throw scummo out..." is simply because the Liberal (CONservative) government of Scummo is full-on denialist, paying lip service to the issue, while behind our backs (and often in front of us as well) these CONservative boffins are waving COAL as the solution to lower your electricity bill. IT'S A CON. Coal as well as renewables get subsidies — and for value into the future, COAL SHOULD BE PHASED OUT IMMEDIATELY.
Read from top.
A weird cloud... Picture by Gus Leonisky
sitting on the coal-fence...
The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, says the Morrison government should not be in the business of building coal-fired power stations, and has put a question mark over whether taxpayers should support upgrades to existing plants.
Dutton on Thursday faced a testy Ray Hadley for a weekly radio interview. The 2GB host is a strong advocate of coal, and during the interview he said Dutton was “toeing the company line” and was too scared to say Australia needed more power stations.
The Queensland conservative attempted to counter the agitation of his host by saying the government was intent on pursuing a “sensible debate” in relation to energy.
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/14/peter-dutton-clas...
Most likely this "conversation" was a set-up to show that Dutton is a "reasonable" man... It's bullshit plus. As soon as elected, he would change his mind on the subject to make sure the coal lobby gets its share of the government spoils. Throw him out with Scummo and that awful liar Tony (Turdy) Abbott — and all the traitors.
Read from top....
in a canter backwards...
Australia’s annual carbon emissions have reached a new high and drops in emissions from the electricity sector have been wiped out by increases from other industries, according to new data.
Ndevr Environmental, an emissions-tracking organisation that releases quarterly greenhouse gas emissions data, said on Thursday that annual emissions for the year up to December 2018 increased to 558.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. It was the highest level on record when excluding unreliable land use data. Ndevr’s data showed Australia was still not on track to meet its Paris target of a 26-28% reduction in emissions on 2005 levels and that carbon pollution was increasing across most sectors of the economy.
The Morrison government has repeatedly claimed Australia will meet its targets “in a canter” and was criticised earlier this month for falsely claiming emissions were decreasing.
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/14/australias-annual-ca...
The shit from the Scummo and his government is getting sky high...
congrats to all the kids...
congrats to all the kids who protested yesterday. Good for you, the adults and the polies and the celebs there as well.