A photographer pays tribute to those who delayed Japan’s #nuclear restart
A Photo Tribute: to the people who kept Japan nuclear-free for nearly 2 years DiaNuke. Compiled by Keito Hirabayashi, 13 Aug 15
photos by Teppei Sato and others “……..While the restart of Sendai NPP will be hugely disappointing for protestors, we must also acknowledge how much has been achieved. And use this strength to continue the fight. These photos show that it was ordinary people who got out on the streets, many for the first time in their lives, to voice their opposition to nuclear power. It was these ordinary people who managed, despite all odds, to hold off reactor restarts all this time. And it is these ordinary people who will continue to fight for a safe future for their children…….http://www.dianuke.org/a-photo-tribute-to-the-people-who-kept-japan-nuclear-free-for-nearly-2-years/
How the media can distort news in a pro nuclear direction #NuclearCommissionSAust
The spectre of the new nuclear renaissance
Al’Khalili then went on to give every impression that high level nuclear waste can be safely stored using the process of ‘vitrification’, that is, turning it in glass, and so binding the waste safely into a permanent, impermeable matrix.
What he failed to mention is that the glass is by no means permanent and durable storage medium for “thousands of generations” as the glass is liable to break down – and that the problem of long term disposal of these wastes remains unsolved. For example, asR C Ewing and colleagues wrote in 1995 in the journal Progress in Nuclear Energy,
“the post-disposal radiation damage to waste form glasses and crystalline ceramics is significant. The cumulative α-decay doses which are projected for nuclear waste glasses … are well within the range for which important changes in the physical and chemical properties may occur, e.g. the transition from the crystalline-to-aperiodic state in ceramics.”
theecologist.org/reviews/2984689/inside_sellafield_and_military_plutonium_the_bbcs_nuclear_lies_of_omission.html Dr David Lowry 12th August 2015
For one of these programmes the BBC commissioned Baghdad-born Professor Jameel ‘Jim’ Al-Khalili, theoretical physicist and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science from the University of Surrey, to research and present one programme called ‘Britain’s Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield‘.
As a regular BBC broadcaster, hosting the long-running The Life Scientific on Radio 4, and maker of several science television programmes on television, including on quantum physics and the history of electricity, he was eminently qualified to make this programme.
However the programme was highly misleading thanks to major omissions, concealing the severity of accidents, and how the UK’s entire ‘civilian’ nuclear programme was subverted into producing military plutonium that fed into the Sellafield bomb factory. Continue reading
Australia will have to improve on its inadequate greenhouse gas emission pledge
UN climate expert warns Australia’s emissions target should not be final offer, The Age, August 13, 2015 Nicole Hasham Environment and immigration correspondent Australia should not attend global talks in Paris refusing to budge on its greenhouse gas emission pledge, the UN’s scientific body on climate change has said, ahead of expected international pressure on the Abbott government to do better……….
In Canberra on Wednesday, Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the December talks in Paris were negotiations.
“No country can go to negotiations knowing or thinking, really, that the [emissions target] numbers cannot be touched,” he said. Professor van Ypersele said targets from each nation would be collated and assessed, adding the collective efforts may not be enough to keep warming below 2 degrees. That would lead to “a discussion on how to increase the level of ambition and who needs to increase it first”, he said.
While pledges from nations may not be formally negotiated at Paris, leaders will probably be urged to increase their ambitions, either during the conference or afterwards……….
On Wednesday Labor leader Bill Shorten said he would attend the Paris talks.
The Marshall Islands, a Pacific nation highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, has decried Australia’s pledge as a “weak target” that erodes our international reputation.
Mr Abbott said the Minerals Council of Australia, which represents the mining industry, called the target is “ambitious”.
The target has been interpreted as an effort to placate climate sceptics in the community and the government, while doing the minimum needed to meet Australia’s international obligations.
Climate Institute deputy chief executive Erwin Jackson said Australia’s target was “not the end of the story”. “Countries in Paris will be under pressure to lift their ambitions,” he said.
“Both diplomatic and economic pressure is [also] going to build through time after Paris for countries to get in line with where the world needs to go, which is towards net zero emissions.” http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/un-climate-expert-warns-australias-emissions-target-should-not-be-final-offer-20150812-gixa98.html#ixzz3ijcqRmdX
Conservative British Lord ‘staggered’ at Tony Abbott’s hubris on climate change
“If the rest of the world followed Australia’s lead, the Great Barrier Reef would disappear”
‘Tony Abbott’s hubris is staggering’: UK’s climate adviser on emissions target, Guardian, Oliver Milman, 12 Aug 15 Lord Deben, head of the British government’s climate change advisory body, says Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target puts it among the ‘don’t cares’ Australia’s “pathetic” 2030 emissions reduction target shows the country has opted out of the global effort to limit warming, according to the head of the British government’s climate change advisory body.
Lord Deben, previously a minister in the government of Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, said Australia’s 26% to 28% reduction in emissions by 2030, based on 2005 levels was “simply not enough”.
“Australia is fundamentally out of step and this decision puts Australia among the ‘don’t cares’ of the international community,” said Deben, who is the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change.
“Global warming won’t wait for Mr Abbott and his government. Mr Abbott’s hubris is staggering.” Continue reading
New Matilda explains Abbott’s 3 big lies on climate change
Three Ways Abbott And Hunt Misled The Public Over Their Climate Change ‘Plan’, New Matilda, 12 Aug 15 – From straight up fibs to heinous misrepresentations, you can expect to see these talking points wheeled out again and again. Thom Mitchell takes a hatchet to the half-truths.
Okay, so here’s the rub.
…..1) Tony Abbott: “This [target] is fairly and squarely in the middle of comparable economies”
No. It’s not. It’s just not, and that’s the most important point.
The Climate Institute think tank has crunched the numbers — which is actually so much harder to do than you’d think, and much more so than the government wants you to think — to show how we compare to other economies in real terms. Continue reading
AGL Energy chief Andy Vesey: carbon tax axing cost millions
Gas and electricity group AGL Energy lost $800 million of revenue and $189m of profit because of the abolition of the carbon tax last year, and has warned the federal government it still has to find ways to encourage the removal of high carbon emission power and make way for renewable energy. …..(subscribers only) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/agl-energy-chief-andy-vesey-carbon-tax-axing-cost-millions/story-e6frg9df-1227481052155
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 