Climate of fear; fear of climate

We all know climate is changing and it's a big political issue and it's been denied by many in our political classes for matters of mates' interests or dumb culture wars.  We hear of the lost weekends and the utes for the tradies and the rest.  No mention of the alternative, the tipping points or the unliveable temperatures or the melted polar ice or the lost ocean circulations or the not-so-permafrost.   And the recent fears of even faster than predicted change.  Here are a few graphs that have floored me in recent days but there are others, of course.  As Scott Morrison would probably say, God help us all.  I say take this in and tremble then take some action. And PS, I trust these sources will willingly share these pics for the cause.

Sources:
1. Emission trajectories: challenging.  Image: Supplied Source: IPCC 2023 IN The COP and climate change: a spent force / Jeremy Webb, Pearls and Irritations, 21 Feb 2024 (https://johnmenadue.com/the-cop-and-climate-change-a-spent-forcegraphs-inbox/, Viewed 7 Mar 2024)
2. Past, Current and Future Extents of the Sahara. Image: Supplied IN Towards an unliveable planet: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis / David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, Pearls and Irritations, 26 Jan 2024 (https://johnmenadue.com/part-2-towards-an-unliveable-planet-climates-2023-annus-horribilis/, Viewed 7 Mar 2024)
3. Ocean temperatures highest on record.  Image: Supplied. IN Climate chaos: world overheats while Europe faces a new Ice Age / Julian Cribb, Pearls and Irritations, 13 Feb 2024 (https://johnmenadue.com/climate-chaos-world-overheats-while-europe-faces-a-new-ice-age/, Viewed 7 Mar 2024)
4. [Timeline of COPs vs CO2 levels] IN The Timeline of the COP Conferences Leading to COP27 / Jennifer L, carboncredits.com, 1 Nov 2022 (https://carboncredits.com/the-timeline-of-the-cop-conferences-leading-to-cop-27/, Viewed 7 Mar 2024)

sky vs weather

The Pots flies again with album no.7.  This time with another diatribe about climate based on lyrics drafted early one morning while navigating Drake's Passage with about 125 hardy souls.  Have a listen to hear of COP27 and various actors in this drama; about our opportunity, perhaps obligation, to talk to those we disagree with; to hear the words of featured artist, ChatGPT (with some help from Greta and me); to compare our planet with our lifeless neighbour, Mars; to ponder various curves, not least the famed hockey stick.  And to hear a glorious final Crucifixus a 8 by Antonio Lotti.  Have a look at the ePea page for album notes and lyrics.  Have a listen on YouTube Music and most other streaming sites (although missing from Spotify at present).  Or you may prefer Bandcamp.

Bassist EP has released his seventh home studio album, sky vs weather / The Pots.  You can hear it on all major streaming services (except Spotify at the moment for whatever obscure reason).

The Pots on Bandcamp

Album notes

Another hero

Australia has found another hero courtesy of governments closing down climate action.  It's a sad story and a real concern for our Human Rights record.  But  the show must go on, at least until it won't anymore.  And that's not too far off, given floods and fires and incessant new mines.   Deanna 'Violet' Coco is in jail for at least 8 months, perhaps 15, with no bail while she lodges an appeal.  It's scary.  Her action was a big one and notable, closing a lane of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but the subject of her non-violent protest was immeasurably more significant, the end of civilisation, no less.  And it's not as if we are succeeding in our actions on climate.  Just see the graph above and despair.   And now we read a report that an uncle is a NSW pollie and agrees with the decision.   Even family ties don't seem to bring a pause on this issue and this largest of all industries, energy.   We are in peril.  Youth sees it and they will suffer it while power does the little it must.  Read up on this case and despair.  Here are a few references.

Pollie opinion no.1

Pollie opinion no.2

Overview

Comment

Violet's statement

Violet as the Pram Lady

To finish, my climate warning of 2014 remains true.  Here's my summary that I sent to PMs, pollies, editors, etc,  I still think it's a good summary.  To me, the "tipping points" are the killer, but you don't hear so much of them these days.  Maybe they are trying avoid widespread despair? 

All you really need to know about climate change. We're one big civilisation and climate is changing fast given a sudden imbalance of carbon since the industrial revolution. The mechanism of greenhouse gasses has been known to science for 150 years or so and we're at 400ppm and adding another couple each year, and 2 degrees warming (guessed to come at 450ppm) is a rough, perhaps optimistic, estimate of where runaway climate change could happen given various feedback loops (the ubiquitous "tipping points") and it looks to me like we've got Buckley's chance of staying within 2 degrees. With business as usual, IPCC estimates 3-6 degrees rise by 2100. That's just 86 years. Scientists provide the proof of all this for honest readers. To me it looks like game over and sooner than we think. I just hope I'm wrong because nobody wins an argument with physics.

BTW, here's the current CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa:  Oct 2022 = 415.31 ppm  (https://www.co2.earth/).  It's rising ~2ppm pa.  One ray of hope: it was rising ~2.5ppm a few years ago.

Deanna 'Violet' Coco joins Greta Thunberg as an authentic CJ Climate hero.  For her commitment and bravery in the face of political and social intransigence.

PS.  David Ritter says it beautifully.  From The Guardian News Live 7 Dec 2022 15:57AEDT. 

David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the right to peaceful protest is fundamental to democracy, and the laws were “rushed through in a chilling and knee-jerk response to ongoing peaceful protests”:

[They] are the latest in a suite of increasingly draconian measures introduced in Australia, designed to curtail peaceful public dissent.

What these laws fail to acknowledge is that climate activism does not exist in a vacuum. People are feeling compelled to take a stand only because of the fossil fuel industry’s wanton and knowing destruction of our right to a safe climate over the past 50 years.

While tactics and approaches to climate advocacy may differ, and there are legitimate differences of opinion on what forms of advocacy are most effective for winning hearts and minds, the fact remains that the inconvenience caused by the climate crisis – catastrophic floods, fires and storms destroying homes, livelihoods, and entire communities – staggeringly outweighs the inconvenience of one climate protester blocking one lane of traffic for 25 minutes.

What we must remember is that climate change isn’t happening to us, it’s being done to us. It’s being done to us by the executives of the fossil fuel corporations, and they know it. Just as Ms Coco knew that her act of protest would disrupt one lane of traffic, these executives know that their relentless pursuit of profit is disrupting the lives of billions of people and every species of life on our entire planet.

Kids out

There have been few demos during Covid time but I was hopeful about SS4C returning for a pre-election run.  Doubly so with the clarity of floods and GBR bleaching and +30/+40degC temperatures in Ant-Actic-a.  But it was not to be.  This event was at Kambri at ANU and there were as many enjoying the sun and eating pleasant lunchies while Grace railed and swore over the dangers of climate and the irresponsibilities of our woeful Federal Government.  Two reliable elders presented, both admirable and frequent speakers, Mark Howden, Director of ANU Inst for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, IPCC author and more, and Tim Hollo, Greens Candidate.  They both gave short but strong speeches.  Grace returned with chants that I found too screechy.  Oh, well, it's civilisational collapse after all, not comfy and well deserving of anger even if it hurt my damaged ears.  But then, not concerning enough for many, young and old.  In fact, there may have been more retirees present than students.  This is often the way of demos these days.  We have seen demos ignored over recent times which goes some way to explain a lack of faith in community action.  '60s/'70s Moratoria had influence and thus a generation of marchers persist, but seeing the results of Bridge marches and more, I can understand youth taking a different path.  I just hope they are taking some path, rather than just mental anguish, which is so widely reported as growing.  As for the pollies, Labor is not perfect but they are not "all the same".  That's a myth that suits the Right.  Think Gillard-era climate policies then dismantled by Abbott, or even the Greens convinced not to support Rudd in his attempt.   I just can't understand Right intransigence on climate.  State capture, corruption, influence and the rest, yes, but this is big and quicker than we'd expected and will effect our own kids and, well, it's an end.  Apocalyptic religiosity, perhaps?  Surely not.  It should be criminal - it is acting against humanity - but the law isn't quite so clear cut.  As laws often are not.  So, I didn't manage so long at the SS4C event.  I had an afternoon tea to run to: the way of a foolish Australia with blinkers and none but today's worries. 

SS4C (School Strike for Climate) was held at Kambri at ANU.  Mark Howden, Tim Hollo, Grace ... and others spoke.  The next is the Election Climate Strike, Parliament House Lawns, 11am Fri 29 April.  That should be bigger.

Existence

I was taken aback by a story told by a fellow at a course yesterday.  He'd taken a brochure from our local Council or the Human Future (CHF) and distributed it to acquaintances, perhaps friends, here in worldly, internationally-aware, educated Canberra and he'd struck "overwhelming resistance".  He reported only 2 in 10 gave support.  Now, I thought anyone with some awareness and intellect and recognition of science had accepted the essence of climate change and the raft of related existential risks, but no.  The science says one thing, but our comfort or social media or MSM or political misinformation or industrially-promoted confusion has had its effect.  This happened at a U3A class on Mega Threats run by CHF member Bob Douglas in the context of a talk by fellow CHF member Julian Cribb.  CHF is our local incarnation of a body to study and warn of the risks of civilisational and perhaps human species collapse, and is one of several, as in Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere.  The leading members are John Hewson, Bob Douglas, Robyn Alders and Julian Cribb with the body much influenced by the  many influential writings of Julian Cribb.

The CHF identifies ten risks in three groups:

• Existential risks: Global overheating; Global Poisoning; Weapons of mass destruction
• Resource Crisis: Resource scarcity; Food insecurity; Ecological breakdown and extinction
• Human Impacts: Pandemic disease; Overpopulation; Uncontrollable technologies; Mass delusion

Visit the CHF site to understand better each of these concepts.  The ideas are big and broad and the encapsulating titles can be baffling.  I remember Limits to growth from the 1970s and how they were ridiculed when they argued for collapse after 50years: it's looking increasingly prescient.

But my interest here is Julian's talk and his list of corresponding actions to respond to these risks.  Not sure I caught them all or summarised them precisely here, but this was my take.  And it intrigued me that this is much bigger than just CO2 measurements and dates.  This is all-encompassing change.  He had them as a neat 10 actions.  Again, not sure that my list is so organised.  He'll have a book out soon with the neat list.

Actions:

• Outlaw all nuclear weapons
• Ban all fossil fuels by 2030 including by-products (plastics, insecticides, etc)
• Return forests to 50% of Earth's land area (incl. Amazon, Congo, Australia) "Let's let the trees do the work"
• Convert entire global economy to a circular economy (to deal with the resource crisis in water, soils, minerals, etc)
• Rethink the food system (regenerative, urban farming, etc)
• Reduce population
• Reform the economic system of the Earth.  [Economics is only a human construct, after all]

And some suggested mechanisms:

• "Clean up the Earth Alliance"
• "Earth Standard Currency"  that responds to real limits of the Earth system
• "Global Waste Platform"  (not sure I caught this one...)

So how much time have we got?  Not much!  10 years?  Again I'll quote Gramsci: "Optimism of the will; pessimism of the intellect".  The alternative is despair.

Some factoids of note mentioned by Julian:

• 4b people already live with acute water crisis
• Delhi, a city of 26m people, will be out of water in 2 years
• Droughts are now double in frequency compared to 30 (?) years ago
• It's estimated that the Earth can sustain 2b people; we are now 8b and will reach ~10b before growth turns down
• Average IQ is dropping!  [References I found suggest -7 IQ points per generation for post-1975 birth cohort in wealthy countries]

Interestingly, the CHF is developing an Index of Survivability around these existential risks.  It will be illuminating. 

Julian Cribb spoke on actions required to respond to existential threats.

Council for the Human Future

The pic is Four Horsemen of Apocalypse / Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1887) from WikiCommons

Handing over

Given the science and the dire implications, I reckon climate change denial and the presumably corrupt climate-related actions of governments should be tried as crimes against humanity.  Them and media.  That they are not is a product of a slowly reacting politico/legal system.  Thus we treat our kids.  There's lots of identity politics in this: any self-respecting radical righty must call out the doctor's wives and latte sippers and take the side of coal, or now gas.  Even those who reluctantly recognise climate dangers must set their goals to avoid economic harm, as they see it, in a short-sighted sense meaning harm to their current mates and influences and media despite immense costs just decades away.  The sensible view is to determine the science as best we can and work to its limits.  Given our delays, net-zero CO2 by 2050 is now inadequate.  Certainly for 1.5degC.  We are currently at 419ppm and we added 2.98ppm in one Covid year May 2020-2021 (https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2).  We once talked of 450ppm for the onset of tipping points.  This is immensely threatening, given fires and droughts and floods, but a topic of derision or evasion by some pollies and some media.  Open a new gas plant, perhaps, to run 9 days per annum at immense real cost.  Who benefits?  Not business because they wouldn't do it.  All costs and no benefits, despite rhetoric, other than perhaps a by-election victory.  But it's the way for Subs and NBN and Robodebt and refugees and more, so non unexpected.  This is what we are leaving our kids.  It will be interesting to watch Australia avoid being in the spotlights at Glasgow COP26.  I can only hope that we are desiccated in the heat: it's already late, perhaps too late given tipping points, but any further delay is catastrophic and confirmatory.  But we've twisted out of our responsibilities before; think Howard and Kyoto.  In the meantime our kids are out, at least some of our kids, and I can only support them along with many others of our earlier generations.  Suffice to say, there were notable numbers of grey hairs on the march and a good few parents.  Not enough, but plenty.  So what happened?  We got together in Glebe Park after many, many email reminders.  We were a moderate number: the news said 300, the organisers 1,000; either way it's not enough.  Marches have little impact these days anyway: think Reconciliation and Iraq war.  There was a band, Post Irony, that played groove and improv with alto, effected bass and drums.  I liked it: school kids from Dickson College.  Extinction Rebellion turned up to lead a Discobedience session to the music of Staying alive.  It started with six dancers, then the kids started up in the audience, then rushed the stage and it was a danceathon.  Great fun.  There was a march to Garema Place and back.  There were some posters but not too many.  One I liked was carried by some girls "The world is getting hotter than Kurt Cobain".  That worked for me; the same line with Harry Styles didn't.  I left feeling happy although desperate.  These numbers won't influence stubborn, ideological, corrupted pollies and media.  Thus we hand over to our kids, with the threat of +2-4degC by the end of the century.  That's just 79 years away: one lifetime.  And just for kicks, they can have overpriced subs, declined industries, obsolete fossil fuel businesses, a slow and expensive NBN, EV-incapable infrastructure, impossible housing prices, tax benefits for various lurks and the rest.  They claim the saving grace is the military goods industries.  God help us.

School Strike 4 Climate marches around Australia and in Glebe Park here in Canberra.  Extinction Rebellion gyrated.  Post Irony performed, comprising Jai Malik (alto), Shivi Vachaspati (bass) and Luca Stevens (drums).

The Pots

Many of the locals and quite a few visitors will know of my recordings on location. They are just live stereo recordings with a good mic and some decent mastering and they work quite well. But in recent months I've been playing with home studio recording, so multiple tracks, midi and the like. Lots of time spent viewing YouTube videos, especially of one very good source on mixing techniques, Musician on a Mission. Here be secrets: The Pots. The Pots is a home studio project of "Bassist EP of Canberra" (sound familiar?). Here's the first album with the theme of climate. Now available on all the streaming services, and even as a signed CD if you particularly wish. It's about time is described as "a mix of electronics, double bass, minimalism and spoken words of despair about climate and more". Mmm, sounds about right and suits the times.

Have a listen to It's about time / The Pots at Youtube Music, Spotify, TripleJ unearthed and more.

For Greta

I'd known Andrew Glikson for some time but I hadn't realised he's an authority on asteroid collisions. I found this out when he was introduced. It's relevant to his current theme of climate change and tipping points given historical strikes and related climate change. Asteroid collisions are a branch of geology, so Andrew has that understanding of time that is non-human, so changes that we see in a lifetime are instantaneous. In fact changes over hundreds of years or thousands are still instantaneous to a geologist (given Earth's age of 4.5b years). It's relevant to climate, for the changes we are now seeing are instantaneous and, when compared to various events in our planet's past, the K-T boundary or PETM 1 or 2, the changes are not just fast but immense. He showed us estimates of rates of change of CO2 in the atmosphere: K-T +0.18ppm pa or PETM 1 +0.1 and PETM 2 +0.12. Now it's 1750-2018 was +0.48ppm pa (ave.) and still quickening: +2.69ppm CO2 pa (2018-29) (gasp!). I wrote something just a few years back and we had just reached 400ppm. We are now at 413.4ppm. It was then commonly estimated that we'd hit tipping points (non-linear, out of human control) at 450ppm (~+2degC). At +2.69ppm pa that's 14 years, ~2033. Mmm. That's with no change, essentially like LNP's Australia. So time to worry? Past it, I reckon. Andrew's a scientist so he's wary of claims and aware of the literature and evidence, and he still said things like: "so fast, now an abrupt event" and "rate of change ... [is] virtually instantaneous"; although there's still uncertainty of tipping points (there are many and they tip at different temperatures and temperatures vary over the globe) "[some] tipping points are already triggered". He also introduced topics like extreme weather as an amplifying feedback and weakened boundaries and migration of climate zones (eg, Jet Stream and the intense cold experienced in recent years in North America) and Stadial cold, where temporary cold spells (in geological time) follow quick temperature rises from CO2 levels. He provided charts showing sunspots matching global temperatures, at least until our Anthropocene, when they diverge, and another chart of used, known and possible (?) reserves of fossil fuels and the implications if they are burnt. It's not something to ponder and avoid despair, but suffice to say, there's enough to promote Venusian temperatures (+10s of degrees C). Apparently we are already committed to +10m sea level rise (from evidence of sea levels in the Eamian era at +1degC) and the emergence of the next ice age is delayed by 50K years with a possible 750ppm CO2 level before then. Andrew noted that the Holocene has been good for us, but we are the one species that has mastered fire and look what it's got us (not all bad, but all now threatened). Then some questions on civilisation, abrupt events and the Methane time bomb, possibilities of returning CO2 to the earth (big job, there!), individual and government responses. Hopefully, my understandings here are correct, but, regardless, the message was clear. And a final dedication to Greta Thunberg. I can only share that. Good luck to us all.

Andrew Glikson (geologist, climate research, ANU) spoke at ANU on "Beyond tipping points : Fire and the changing face of Planet Earth".

Smokey day out

Not sure why they decided on four full days of demonstration, dubbed the People's Climate Assembly, because you're unlikely to get too many there most of the time, but they did. I just got to Climate Emergency Rally, just a few hours at lunchtime with some speakers. There were plenty of people but not masses: nothing to match the urgency and seriousness of the issue. I missed the Penguins "On the steps" but they were maybe aiming at pollie arrivals. I heard Dr Karl as host. He gave snippets of relevant science and argued for the effectiveness of protest by listing successful actions (while I was thinking of several that were ignored). Several Aboriginals including Bruce Shillingsworth with words on actions on Adani (good on them) and more. Sue Wareham spoke of climate and one other existential risk, conflict and nuclear armaments. [There's certainly no longer any time for a decent war before climate hits! / ed.] Bob Brown spoke but I wonder if his argument, for direct action, that we lock ourselves and place ourselves under bull dozers and the rest, would be particularly effective. I may be wrong, but actions like that often get nicely twisted by the noisy shock jocks and their media mates. His recent anti-Adani Convoy didn't turn out too well. Not at all the actions of the quiet Aussies, eh? I read a report just today about surveys that showed a very poor understanding of climate change, even if increased wish to do something, but also a propensity to defer judgment while there's so much political argument. Blame that on the deniers (they are not skeptics - that's the label for scientists) and a highly politicised response that bodes poorly. Even immense fire and Canberra smoke doesn't do here, although it seems to be seen as a portent overseas. Australia is no longer the forward-looking polity of the past. Someone mentioned legal action. I've pondered that preventing/avoiding action on climate should be a crime against humanity, but I doubt it fits the definition. Others have other approaches. But any denialist and corrupted government deserves nothing less. Pollies manage their speech so more reliable is that wise old motto: Know them by their actions. And as for a mass of voters who are so easily conned. Well, that's educmacation and diversion for ya.

The Climate Emergency Rally was held outside Parliament House for the return of Parliament for 2020.

PS, it seems First Dog was in town for the Assembly

The kids are alright

At least most of the kids. They get it and they will take the brunt of it. I only managed an early visit to the SS4C sit down in front of Parliament House. Too early; they were just getting set up. I passed by a few hours later, not too much later I thought, but there was little happening. As I write this, I have yet to see any reports. I hope for the best. Inside Parliament, they were making battle, to close down Unions and over Angus Taylor's latest indiscretions. It's indicative. The kids get it; the adults battle. The Taylor incident may be trivial, but it's indicative of the culture wars and corruption that we have come to expect. I once had some respect for Government, even when I didn't agree. I argued pollies entered to do good, even if they got waylaid. But now? With Adani going ahead and the Daily Telegraph informed of changed and unlikely numbers and the PM just innocently checking up with his Chief of Police mate in this context. And no Corruption Commission. And unions targeted while Westpac is found with 25m (now 29m?) errors with money-laundering implications. And remembering back to Indigenous walks across the Bridge and massed demos against Iraq when there were no WMDs and when this was transparently clear at the time and yet we went to war. I can understand desperation and mental illness and tired resignation in these circumstances. What I don't understand is the ethics of those who can carry all this out. I find it hard to believe intelligent people believing the cherrypicking and rare denier academics and echo chambers and the rest. And ignoring follow-the-money path around the world's biggest industry. (Although I do despair that truth is increasingly hard to determine. That's a parallel argument of our time but climate is clear enough). Here's my letter once written seeking to understand climate denial:

I'm intrigued by the psychology of denial. Is it a deep internal conflict that expresses itself in phrases like "I don't question the science, but..."? Or in claims of "technology neutrality" associated with demands for coal, or attacks on the "ideology" of others while ignoring or twisting the science. Or worse, maybe they are just lying through their teeth, or have sold their souls. Remember, we're talking end of civilisation here. Not trivial. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

It got in the paper without the final sentence (Letters, Canberra Times 16 Jun 2017) and I was attacked for calling names and not seeking proof (joke!) and amazingly chided on "the difference between science and faith". Amusing. I had previously written my concise summary of climate change and sent it to papers and pollies and, despite the CO2 figures requiring updating, I still stand by it. As I hear of 153 fires in NSW on the news just an hour ago, after a bushfire season that started in winter in the middle of a drought that has country and now city water supplies dangerously dropping.

All you really need to know about climate change. We're one big civilisation and climate is changing fast given a sudden imbalance of carbon since the industrial revolution. The mechanism of greenhouse gasses has been known to science for 150 years or so and we're at 400ppm and adding another couple each year, and 2 degrees warming (guessed to come at 450ppm) is a rough, perhaps optimistic, estimate of where runaway climate change could happen given various feedback loops (the ubiquitous "tipping points") and it looks to me like we've got Buckley's chance of staying within 2 degrees. With business as usual, IPCC estimates 3-6 degrees rise by 2100. That's just 86 years. Scientists provide the proof of all this for honest readers. To me it looks like game over and sooner than we think. I just hope I'm wrong because nobody wins an argument with physics.

I sent this one to Letters, The Australian, Dec 2014 but it wasn't published. We are now at CO2 ~408ppm and rising 2/3 ppm each year. (Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2 : October 2019: 408.53 ppm / October 2018: 406.00 ppm / Last updated: November 5, 2019 [https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/, viewed 29 Nov 2019]). In that context, I will lead a short discussion session on Climate soon. Here are our preparatory readings.

It's such a big topic but my thinking was thus: 11,000 scientists warning ( > Paris gaps > Specific countries > Tipping points > Possible futures ). I suggest we just peruse the 11,000 scientists warning, then the rest can be happy reading over our Christmas break.

11,000 scientists warning
Article > https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/05/climate-crisis-11000-scientists-warn-of-untold-suffering
Paper > https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806

UNEP Gap Audit 2019
Article > https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/26/united-nations-global-effort-cut-emissions-stop-climate-chaos-2030
Paper > https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30797/EGR2019.pdf

Country contributions
Article > https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions

Climate tipping points
Article > https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/27/climate-emergency-world-may-have-crossed-tipping-points
Paper > https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0

Possible futures - Implications of +1 degC, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ...
Article > http://www.globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm

So there you go. The whimper is all around us; the bang is coming. I wish the kids the best. They get it.

The School Strike for Climate (SS4C) staged a sit down strike outside Parliament House.

Here’s for Greta

We’ve all been watching Greta Thunberg for months now. I jokingly say she’s my hero, but I seriously have immense respect for her clarity of thought and her speaking of truths and her steely commitment. Her first quote I recall was “I don’t want you to be hopeful / I want you to panic” and her message “I don’t want you to listen to me / I want you to listen to the scientists” is simple educated respect for our core institutions despite the time off school. Yesterday’s presentation to the UN similarly rang true: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth”. But I worried for her. She’s young and on a big podium and she looked very stressed. We all need to stress for the position some politicians are putting us in, they being foolish or ignorant or corrupt. Increasingly, I think corrupt. As for Australia, the election speaks much of us. In that context, I am sad to have missed the recent climate marches. I was in Milan when the Paris march was held (20 Sep) and will be in Paris when the Milan march is to be held (27 Sep). That would be amusing if the issue weren’t so serious. Good on Greta and go the movement. He’s not the first to have expressed the sentiment, but as Gramsci said, what we require at this already late stage is “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”.

Thanks to Anders Hellberg who photographed Greta Thunberg outside the Swedish Parliament on 31 Aug 2018 and made his excellent pic available through Wikicommons

Bob's battlers

It's election time and even if the current government won't recognise climate change for the emergency it is, some will. The Home of all Parliaments, for one, which has declared a "climate emergency" as have the informed types who turned out for Bob Brown's gathering on the lawn in front of Parliament House to join the anti-Adani convoy, if only in spirit. We just caught the end of it, hearing Bob's voice over a PA as we walked to the venue but we were there in spirit. We, the conservatives, who respect our enlightenment institutions, like science and informed citizenry. Who disavow the slinky maths and managed agreements that have us meeting Paris targets "in a canter". Misinformation, perhaps lies. The election will be a test. Are Australians sensible or dumb or misinformed or just plain self-interested. Does civilisation have a future past a century or two? Do our own grandchildren have to deal with +4degC and runaway temperatures? How often can we lose fish in the Darling or have floods that kill 1/2 million cattle or bushfires that sweep states and continue with our known world. Time to panic with Greta.

The Anti-Adani convoy rallied with supporters outside Parliament House.

CSIRO Greenhouse gas data

The kids are alright

They are alright and they are right. We are in the midst of an election campaign and the silence is deafening on climate. There are attempts otherwise, claims of "the climate election", high costings for anything Labor attempts and shrill negativity but climate response runs in the slow lane. At least a few kids did their Greta-thing and took some time off school for a climate demo. There was some light rain which I'm sure we'll remember fondly in our hot and dry future and numbers were down. The idea was cute, to form a human chain between the offices of Andrew Leigh (Labor) and Zed Saselja (Liberal) but I missed that. Perhaps the meeting at Gunghalin had numbers down, being at one end of town. At least attendees could travel there by tram. I came across a friend who'd taken a visiting sister for a ride on the tram and run into the demo. The visitor was from the Greens, so a happy coincidence. Lots of kids spoke: tellingly they were all girls. Not surprising at this age: girls are known to mature earlier. There were plenty of boomers, too, in support, but quiet given this will be their kids' crisis. Overnight, the British Parliament had declared a "climate emergency" and that was mentioned but not central. Andrew Leigh spoke and got a hard time on Adani and more. Tim Hollo (Greens) spoke well and was well received. I was thinking, the best can be the enemy of the good. Zed was not expected, probably not invited (certainly LNP deserve no invitation on climate). I set off back on the tram, somewhat lightened by the community but disappointed by the turnout and desperate for the purpose. Think canaries and coal mines: it's almost too late. Too late? Think this. I have been running CJ (est.2005) for longer than scientists say we have to reduce carbon emissions by 50%, ie, 11 years, by 2030. The mother of all parliaments is right but will we act?


The latest School Strike for Climate Change (SS4CC) rally was held at Gunghalin about three weeks before Federal election day.

Mouths of babes

There was a better quote but I can't recall it and they were no tiny tots but leaders. To my eyes, more purposeful leadership there than in the COALition (cute concurrence there!). And given their response of the science of it all, more education. Plenty of posters wittily saying just that, too. We went to Canberra's School Strike 4 Climate. It was a successful affair, led by kids. We greyhairs supported from the back. Happily I encountered several friends. Our generation isn't all a source of despair. Our pollies are failures though. I had this discussion with someone and I reckon it's from a string of reasons: a limited, ideological media; sadly pugnacious politics; influence and money and secrecy about it all; perhaps straight out corruption; bubble-thinking; influenced and self-serving advice; perhaps more reasons. We'll see if Labor will make changes required, but LNP's history of Abbott's Carbon Tax crusade, ScoMo's lump of coal in Parliament, Taylor's "underwritten" coal power, the Nationals' Qld latest coal fired power station call, let alone the Darling and irrigation and the rest, renders them unworthy of election in my book. Very much wrong side of history on an issue of existential importance. Has the routing of the moderates left the LNP on the road to oblivion? Are they doomed by the next generation of voters? I wonder. But it was a good march, the kids are OK and they done good. We need some hope in climate. A skerrick. As McKellar's drought and flooding rains intensify. I wish the kids well.

The Canberra School Strike for Climate was held in Civic. And thanks to Greta Thunberg who started it all: telling it like it is

Greta Thurberg telling it like it is

Disappointments

It's unfair to the ANU and its excellent gatherings concerning Climate change but I was disappointed. They run a range of events. This one was entitled "Australia's prospects for a credible energy and climate change policy?" Note the question mark. It's a measure of our lack of success over the years, back since Keating. It's become a culture war issue so I hear the ABC (another culture war issue) can't even get the Federal Environment Minister to speak from the major international forum (Katowice Climate Change Conference, Dec 2018). But the LNP has problems with cc and she's ex-coal industry. So much for Katowice and the future of humanity. I guess I would just be ridiculed after such a statement (I was just recently) but I'm conservative enough to accept our Enlightenment institutions, like science. It's the deniers who are off with the fairies and into conspiracies. But despite the ANU convening this event, I was disappointed because that very issue of survival of civilisation, of the future, was absent. Admittedly, it was a discussion elsewhere, of the possibilities of a deranged politics, but only on the last question did someone ask about the cost of doing nothing, or too little. It is immense, of course, but the economist - again ANU and impressive - could only come at mechanics, as necessary as that is, without the balance of short- and long-term costs. They must be there, they are there, but I didn't hear them. And the woman from the BCA who was all pro-market, pro-cc-response, but forgetful of their quite recent history. Weren't they with Abbott against Gillard and carbon costs? The one who did impress with some expression of urgency and awareness of the existential menace of it all and its earlier-than-expected arrival, was Tony Wood of the Grattan Institute. The GI had arranged the event with ANU. Suitably, the moderator, ANU Energy Change Institute Director Ken Baldwin, also displayed some of this awareness, or perhaps we should read "fear". As in "approaching the climate change point of no return" / Jerzy Duszyński, President, Polish Academy of Sciences, or "When it comes to climate change, we're faced with a physical, moral, and philosophical crisis" / Patricia Espinosa, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, or "Avoiding the worst impacts of climate change will require rapid and deep decarbonization in all sectors, within a very short timeframe" / Laurence Tubiana, CEO, European Climate Foundation, or "the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon" / David Attenborough, or the Parties’ commitments under the Paris Agreement represent “one third of what is needed", and further, "We are running out of time. To waste this opportunity would compromise our last best chance to stop runaway climate change. It would not only be immoral, it would be suicidal." / Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General. There's more of course. Australia as 55th in 58 (Climate Change Performance Index**) countries for responding to cc; Trump as questioning the science because the weather was chilly that week. So what did our presenters discuss? CC at heart a political challenge ("we're not short of policies"); this mess has many parents; cc as a surrogate for politics in the LNP; what have Labor/Greens/business learned; where to go now ... await the election. Discussions on targets, business support, pricing carbon, narratives by pollies to the public, equity, "profit through confusion", technology as a rescue. I could only sit stunned as AMP was offered as an example of success in a discussion on carbon financialisation (think Banking Royal Commission). But oddly there was expressed some optimism "despite ... the childish silliness of the last 10 years". I'll believe it when I see it.

Australia’s prospects for a credible energy and climate change policy? was convened by the Grattan Institute at the National Library with moderator Ken Baldwin (ANU) and speakers Tony Wood (Grattan Institute), Jessica Wilson (BCA) and Warwick McKibbin (ANU).

**Climate Change Performance Index

Canute gets a bad rap

King Canute was misunderstood at this latest Climate Rally but it's a common misconception. Canute actually wanted to show he couldn't stop the tide. So he wasn't the denier but the man of science. Denialists and self-servers might win in politics but they don't win in physics and he was just demonstrating it. But because of that politics, we'll just all lose even if some get short term benefits. This was my second climate rally in three days. It was a nice outing, sunny, clear, well intentioned, but pretty much as disappointing as the last. I got an email from AYCC (Australian Youth Climate Coalition) about it, but most of the hair I saw was grey or at least greying. Greenpeace was there on their flagpoles but it all seemed predictable. IPA was there with a bus with anti-tax slogans. I'm still uncertain as to why they were there: in opposition to the climate gathering or perhaps just promoting tax cuts for the opening of Parliament. I saw the permission form to park the bus and was about to photograph it but the driver said no, and a cop concurred saying it was for their eyes and had names. The driver promptly hid it away out of prying sight. So much for approval by the People's House that allowed his bus to be parked there. There was also a young-lib-type guy in a suit with a busy tie, obviously running cover for IPA. So be it, I guess. He has work to do but I did wish he would question his conscience in the light of the science. After all, climate is starting to have effect and it's his kids who will suffer. But I don't know where he gets his info from - perhaps not NASA, BOM, ANU, US EPA, IPCC, etc *. The speeches were admirable, two by farmers, one by an Aboriginal elder as welcome to country, one by an ANU academic in climate (interestingly about wildfires and the involvement of upper atmosphere and the first of this type in Peru), another, as I arrived, by a woman, I think from AYCC. The vibe was good; the demands were good; the likelihood of Scomo man-of-coal listening was infinitesimal. It's a nice opportunity to meet with people of like mind but the numbers at these events are trivial and success remains distant, at least in Australia. It's better to be on the side of history and science than to be in delusional, but while the deniers or non-actors hold power there's little for which to be hopeful. Oh, and one other thing that annoyed me. There's an ongoing attempt to show non-partisanship in climate and more, to claim a pox on both their houses, but it was Labor/Gillard who put a price on carbon and LNP/Abbott who removed it.

The Break the Drought on Climate Action rally was organised by Farmers for Climate Action with involvement by AYCC and Greenpeace. IPA was also present.

*http://www.opr.ca.gov/facts/list-of-scientific-organizations.html [A starter list of] Scientific organizations that hold the position that Climate Change has been caused by human action