Australia’s politicians and media downplay climate change
that pattern is exactly what we would expect from climate change due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”…Despite this, mainstream politicians and media outlets have sought to deny or downplay the connection…….
Floods: Climate link can’t be denied, Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2011 Climate change was a big factor in the devastating floods that swept through Queensland and other states in January. For decades, scientists have warned that carbon pollution will lead to more frequent weather disasters.
The floods are yet more evidence that we must quickly phase out fossil fuels and embrace 100% renewable energy.
As the flood crisis began to emerge, University of Melbourne climate scientist David Karoly told ABC News on December 31 that the extreme weather was not so unexpected.
He said: “What we are seeing over the last 50 years and over the last 100 years is a change in this pattern of extremes with more hot and more wet extremes in northern Australia and more hot and more dry extremes in southern Australia and that pattern is exactly what we would expect from climate change due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
Professor Matthew England, joint director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, told AAP on January 13: “Climate change has seen a warming of waters globally, and the waters north of Australia are an important part of the climate system for Australia’s monsoon rains.
“They are at their warmest ever measured and we cannot exclude climate change from contributing to this warmth.”
Despite this, mainstream politicians and media outlets have sought to deny or downplay the connection…….
Greens leader Bob Brown is right to demand the coal industry be taxed to “help pay the cost of the predicted more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming decades”.
Like the tobacco companies before them, big coal should be made to pay compensation to Australians for the damage it has wreaked and the lives it has destroyed………..
While the programs were not remotely sufficient to actually reduce emissions, by cutting them and rejecting Brown’s call for the coal industry to be taxed, Gillard indicated her government still prioritises coal industry profits over stopping climate change.
Tragically, this will mean more floods and more bushfires, which make the prime minister’s words of solidarity and compassion for the victims of the latest catastrophe ring rather hollow…….
No comments yet.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
Leave a comment