Bob Baldwin – another climate sceptic joins Abbott’s anti environment team
Tony Abbott appoints climate skeptic to “help” on environment REneweconomy By Giles Parkinson on 22 December 2014 Bob Baldwin, a man who once compared the impact of Australia’s man-made greenhouse gas emissions to that of a single strand of human hair on a 1km bridge, has been appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment. The announcement was made as part of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s ministerial reshuffle. Baldwin will assist Greg Hunt, after previously being assistant to the Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane. It comes just a few weeks after Abbott sent Trade Minister Andrew Robb,another climate skeptic, to chaperone foreign minister Julie Bishop at the Lima climate talks.
In a speech in China in 2010, at the APEC SME summit, Baldwin said that the climate had been changing for millions of years – a favourite meme of the climate denier community – and even praised Rupert Murdoch as “the starting point for green innovation”………..
another speech in parliament gives no doubt about Baldwin’s skepticism, if not outright denial. Quoting climate-denying Queensland shock-jock Michael Smith, Baldwin compared the impact of any Australian efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions to that of a human hair on a 1km bridge………..
o, that’s settled then. Hunt, who says the Abbott government does accept the science of climate change, and describes its emissions reductions to date as Australia’s great “gift to the world”, will have carriage of Australia’s domestic climate policy, while the international stuff is assumed by Bishop, after checking in with Robb.
Hunt, however, also has carriage over approvals to coal mines. The Newcastle Herald, Baldwin’s local paper, reported in August that Baldwin may be asked why the NSW anti corruption watchdog to explain why he wrote to ‘‘implore’’ the NSW Coalition government to support Nathan Tinkler’s proposed coal-loader.
The paper said documents with the Independent Commission Against Corruption show Baldwin drafted a letter to then-state ministers Chris Hartcher, Mike Gallacher and Duncan Gay in April 2011 urging in-principle support to the $1 billion coal-loader. “I implore the New South Wales government to do everything it can to see this project come to fruition,” he wrote……….http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/tony-abbott-appoints-climate-skeptic-to-help-on-environment-57657
The deadly effects of lingering hole in the ozone layer
Australian scientists have now found the radiation is having much wider effects. “Ecosystem impacts documented so far include changes to growth rates of South American and New Zealand trees, decreased growth of Antarctic mosses and changing biodiversity in Antarctic lakes,” say Sharon Robinson, of Wollongong University in NSW, and David Erickson, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Because it is no longer absorbing UV light, the stratosphere has cooled, which is reducing air pressure over the South Pole and sucking the southern jetstream southwards, along with its associated weather systems.
That has helped cool the Antarctic and direct more extreme weather towards Australia.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-ozone-hole-is-rewriting-earths-ecosystems/story-fnb64oi6-1227163700598
Victory for science and public health in removal of Waubra Foundation’s health charity status
Removal of anti-windfarm group’s charity status is a ‘victory for science’, Shalailah Medhora, Guardian 19 Dec 14 Greens say decision by regulator to remove Waubra Foundation’s tax-deductible status is ‘a victory for science and a victory for public health’……..“The Waubra foundation should never have been granted status as health promotion charity, and the fact that it has now lost that status is a victory for science and a victory for public health,” Greens senator Richard di Natale said.“I’m glad that we will no longer be lending legitimacy to an organisation that may be harming people in an effort to undermine an important source of clean and renewable energy.”……..
Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at Sydney University, said the foundation had “made it their business” to spread fear and mistrust of wind turbines……..
The Waubra foundation is named after the Victorian town of Waubra, which has become a hub for wind-powered energy, with 128 turbines in the area.
Many of the town’s inhabitants have distanced themselves from the group, and called on it to remove the town’s name from its title…….http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/19/removal-of-anti-windfarm-groups-charity-status-is-a-victory-for-science
Waubra Foundation no longer gets charity tax subsidy for anti wind farm activities
Waubra Foundation, prominent anti-wind farm lobby, stripped of health promotion charity status ABC News By environment and science reporter Jake Sturmer 18 Dec 2014, Government regulators have stripped a prominent anti-wind farm lobby of its health promotion charity status.
The status allowed the Waubra Foundation to receive tax deductible donations, concessions the Greens described as “enormous public subsidies”.
A year ago the ABC revealed the Greens made a complaint to the Taxation Office and Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission (ACNC), claiming there was no credible evidence to suggest a direct link between wind turbines and health problems.
University of Sydney Professor of Public Health Simon Chapman supports that view.
“There’s very, very poor evidence of any direct effect – in fact there have been 22 published reviews since 2003 which have all reached that conclusion,” Professor Chapman said.
“So in other words there’s nothing intrinsic that’s emitted from wind farms – sound etcetera – which in itself can cause human health problems.”
Four months after the Greens made the complaint, the Commission sent a show cause notice to the Foundation.
“It is not possible for me to find that the Foundation’s principal activity promotes the prevention or control of disease in human beings,” Assistant Commissioner David Locke said in February.
“My current view is there is that there is insufficient evidence that ‘wind turbine syndrome’ or ‘vibroacoustic disease’ caused by proximity to wind turbines are recognised as human diseases or that the health problems that have been perceived by the complainants as being associated with living or working close to wind turbines are a disease.”……….. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-19/waubra-foundation-stripped-of-health-promotion-charity-status/5977530
Jim Green busts the pro nuclear spin of some conservation scientists
Endorsing the wishful thinking and misinformation presented in the Brook-Bradshaw journal article is no substitute for an honest acknowledgement of the proliferation problems associated with nuclear power, coupled with serious, sustained efforts to solve those problems.
‘Wishful thinking and misinformation’: An open letter to nuclear lobbyists http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/12/18/energy-markets/wishful-thinking-and-misinformation-open-letter-nuclear-lobbyists
JIM GREEN 18 DEC, A group of conservation scientists has published an open letter urging environmentalists to reconsider their opposition to nuclear power. The letter is an initiative of Australian academics Barry Brook and Corey Bradshaw.Get a load of the pro nuclear tripe from nutty Senator David Leyonhjelm
Get real on nuclear benefits, says David Leyonhjelm
Writing in The Australian today, Senator Leyonhjelm says the environmental problems associated with nuclear power are “greatly exaggerated”.
He says it is true that the clean-up of the Fukushima site in Japan, which was badly damaged by a tsunami in 2011, would be costly, but “No one at Fukushima was exposed to enough radiation to get so much as a runny nose’’.
Senator Leyonhjelm says renewable energy such as solar and wind farms routinely occupy huge swaths of land for relatively small returns.
“You need to have drunk a particularly strong ideological kool-aid to believe a technology that covers the landscape in metal is good for the environment,’’ he says. “The volume of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power is smaller than most people are led to believe, it can be safely stored, and is likely to become re-usable as technology develops.”
Australia’s subsidies to fossil fuel industries – $47 billion!
Australian fossil fuel subsidies put at $47bn, as RET wrestle continues, REneweconomy, By Sophie Vorrath on 18 December 2014 In an budget forecast punctuated by fiscal belt tightening, Australia’s fossil fuel sector is set to receive a whopping $47 billion in federal government subsidies over the next four years, a new report has found.
The analysis, released on Thursday by the Australian Conservation Foundation, uses federal budget data confirmed by this week’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) to identify and tally government handouts for the production and use of fossil fuels. Among the biggest are the Fuel Tax Credit scheme ($27.9 billion over four years), concessional rate of excise on aviation fuel ($5.5 billion), accelerated depreciation rules ($1.5 billion) and the removal of the carbon price ($12.5 billion).
Meanwhile, the renewable energy industry remains under a cloud of uncertainty, with renewed federal government attacks on the Renewable Energy Target (RET) coming just a week after Foreign Minister Julie Bishop used it to bolster Australia’s climate credentials in Lima.
According to figures released by the Labor Party today, investment in renewables in Australia has fallen by 70 per cent since the Coalition came to power………
This glaring divide between Australia’s renewables sector – which is languishing in political limbo – and its fossil fuels sector – which is being given multi-billion-dollar incentives to keep polluting – is part of the Abbott government’s “nonsensical approach” to energy, says ACF President Geoff Cousins.
“With one hand the Government encourages pollution by giving the Fuel Tax Credit diesel subsidy to the mining industry and others, then with the other hand it gives out money through so called ‘Direct Action’, which subsidises businesses to reduce emissions,” Cousins said.
“Unfortunately the $47 billion incentive to pollute is much stronger than Direct Action’s $1 billion incentive to reduce pollution.
Cousins points to the Fuel Tax Credit scheme – which allows corporations like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton to pay virtually no tax on the diesel they use – as the most perverse of the subsidies, given car drivers and small businesses pay nearly 39c in tax for every litre of fuel they buy.
Figures released in this week’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) show that of the $4.2 billion extra the government will raise through the indexation of fuel excise, $1.9 billion will be refunded to eligible businesses via the Fuel Tax Credit scheme.
“For a Government that desperately needs to find some Budget savings, cutting fossil fuel handouts that encourage pollution should be obvious,” Cousins said.http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/australian-fossil-fuel-subsidies-put-at-47bn-as-ret-wrestle-continues-58572
Zambia’s Green Party strongly opposing Australian uranium mining project
the uranium mining issue a symptom of an extremely serious malaise affecting Zambia.
ZEMA and Zambia are woefully unqualified to deal with the environmental effects of the proposed uranium mining upstream of the Park and the management of the radiation and its very serious genetic impacts on people.
The Green Party of Zambia and the Lower Zambezi National Park Preserving the Zambezi ecosystem Ian Manning 16 Dec 14,The leader of the Green Party of Zambia, Peter Sinkamba, has set out their platform for the Presidential elections of 20 January 2015: to cancel the mining licence issued to Australia’s Zambezi Resources Limited for the Lower Zambezi National Park. Reading this, the electorate will wonder what could possibly be so important about the proposed mining of a National Park. And why do the Greens consider it the single most important issue facing Zambia today?
Australian governments force Aborigines off their remote lands
Cheap in the deep sense: the sorry business of Indigenous affairs The Conversation Alison Holland Senior Lecturer in Australian History at Macquarie University 16 December 2014,“……..It might be said that the Abbott government’s decision two months on to stop funding essential services in remote communities was one of the first real policy deliveries since that visit. This would be potentially disastrous for these communities, forcing them off country, escalating dislocation and exacerbating problems of health and well-being in communities already under significant threat.It also has a flow-on effect as without Commonwealth financial support, the states would have to close the communities.
This is not only cheap policy, but it is deeply grounded in history. It rehearses a profoundly entrenched view in some channels of government that these communities cannot continue and are unviable in the long-term. In this sense, pouring in money is wasting resources better spent elsewhere. In an otherwise fraught policy landscape, cheapness has been one of the cold hard facts of Indigenous affairs………….
Commonwealth expenditure in Aboriginal affairs has historically been very poor when compared to the states and when compared to governments around the world who are similarly placed, like those of North America. The lowest levels of expenditure for much of the 20th century was by governments with the largest nomadic populations – that is, remote communities……….
The discussion at that 1937 conference was quite explicit in relation to the remaining “full-blood” people who, at that stage, were still the majority Indigenous population. The very strong inference was that we couldn’t afford them.
The direction of policy after the Second World War was to concentrate on assimilating those classified as “half-caste”. Most of the bureaucrats held the view that, if left to themselves, the “full-blood” Aborigines would simply die out……….
a history of extraordinary parsimony in this policy arena, particularly for remote communities. It also puts the Closing the Gap initiatives of the former Labor government into perspective. In 2008, the Labor government invested A$3.4 billion in Indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory across ten years to address chronic underfunding. Much of this was directed to remote communities.
Since the change of government, and despite being part of COAG’s national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health plan, the Coalition government has reduced fundingsignificantly. It has rationalised 150 programs to five……….
If he really wants to avoid the failures of his predecessors and of being cheap in the deep sense, Abbott will need to restore funding and respect to remote communities. When in Gulkula in September, he was sitting with representatives of one of the oldest living cultures on earth. In the long-term, ensuring its health and survival might well be less expensive – for us all.https://theconversation.com/cheap-in-the-deep-sense-the-sorry-business-of-indigenous-affairs-34591
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane calls for volunteers to host radioactive trash dump
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says bidding for nuclear waste dump to begin in March ZACH HOPE NT NEWS DECEMBER 14, 2014 BIDDING to host Australia’s nuclear waste dump will begin in March, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has said. It comes after Northern Territory land councils lost exclusive nomination rights because they failed to meet two deadlines of September 30 and November 10 to offer a site.Landowners, pastoralists and indigenous groups across the country will now have the opportunity to submit a tender…………..
New technology will double savings for solar panel owners in Canberra
“Unlike traditional generators, consumers who become prosumers can can flip, so when electricity prices are low they will be consumers, when prices are high they will be generators.
Reposit Power’s GridCredit technology a game changer for energy market, Canberra Times, December 14, 2014 – John Thistleton Solar panel owners will more than double their savings with new technology being launched today. Owners of solar panels in Canberra will be offered new technology from Monday, which will more than double their savings on electricity prices.
A group of investors and electricity industry specialists are investing almost $100,000 to commercial the system, which they believe will be a game changer for the energy market.
Our goal is to get their bill as low as possible. Luke Osborne
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency will announce $445,000 funding for Canberra technology company Reposit Power to trial the solar storage and trading system, ahead of a national roll-out next year.
Reposit director Luke Osborne says for the first time solar customers can store their renewable energy and sell it back to the grid for a profit. Continue reading
Pope Francis and Bishop Saunders on Australia’s inhumane Aboriginal policies
“Severing the ties of Aboriginal people from their land and thus their culture, spirituality and very foundation of their being, is unethical, immoral, un-Christian and heartless.”
Australia’s human rights record shambolic according to Pope Francis and Bishop Saunders http://thestringer.com.au/australias-human-rights-record-shambolic-according-to-pope-francis-and-bishop-saunders-9207#.VI8joNLF8nk by The StringerDecember 14th, 2014 Chairman of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, Bishop Christopher Saunders says Australia’s human rights record is being undermined by inhumane policies. Bishop Saunders pointed to the asylum seeker asylum policies which deny refugees sanctuary and the push by the Western Australian Government to close up to 150 of the State’s 274 homeland (remote) communities. He is also concerned that the South Australian Government may follow Western Australia’s lead and close as many as 100 communities. Continue reading
Community opposition to Yeelirrie uranium mining should influence EPA’s assessment of Cameco’s plans
Conservation council highlights opposition to Yeelirrie uranium mine bid http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-10/conservation-council-highlights-opposition-to/5957632
The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) is currently assessing the company’s plans to mine uranium at Yeelirrie, an open pit mine site 70 kilometres south-west of Wiluna.
The EPA approved a similar proposal for the same project submitted by BHP Billiton in 2010, before it was sold to Cameco in 2012.
The council’s Mia Pepper said a public inquiry into the project was needed.
She said traditional owners and locals in the area had opposed uranium mining at Yeelirrie for 40 years.
“Yeelirrie in the traditional language means place of death which is a strong indication about local knowledge and there’s also white communities there that have opposed the project for over 40 years,” she said.
Abbott government’s lack of international credibility in Lima Climate Summit
The speed at which Australia has lost the respect of the international community on global warming policy is truly embarrassing.
This decision to raid the foreign aid budget instead of committing new funds will cause a lot of pain in aid circles, coming as it does on the $7.6 billion cut in the budget, and it may not achieve Australia’s aim of buying back credibility.
While the rest of the world has declared ‘game on’ for the 2015 climate summit in Paris, Captain Abbott is doing as little as possible in the field, because he’s not playing to win for people or the planet, he’s using tactics to fix the game in favour of the fossil fuel industries at the big end of town.
Abbott’s attempt to buy relevance at climate change talks in Lima http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/12/11/4146692.htm CHRISTINE MILNE Tony Abbott has tried to buy his way into relevance at the international climate change conference in Lima. But it may not work.
THE ABBOTT GOVERNMENT has finally caved in to international pressure and begrudgingly committed money to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to help developing nations deal with the impacts of global warming.
The announcement has come only days after Foreign Minister Julie Bishop echoed Prime Minister Tony Abbott in declaring Australia would not support the GCF.
I am glad they have. But why they did so is the issue.
It is clear that they have realised that they are so far on the outer that they will have no influence in the negotiations and will not be able to weaken rules or edit texts unless they contributed in some way. Continue reading
Ukrainian President revs up cold war talk: Russia warns of doubtful security of Ukraine’s nuclear industry
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warns new Cold War is looming The Age December 12, 2014 – David Wroe National security correspondent Visiting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has warned Europe is sliding towards a new Cold War and urged the world to stand up to Russia for the sake of global law and order.
Speaking in Sydney during a three-day tour as part of closer relations with Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the wake of the MH17 disaster, Mr Poroshenko also vowed that any Australian uranium sold to his country under a possible deal would be safely used.
But Russia – whose dominance of energy exports to Ukraine would be undermined by any deal between Canberra and Kiev – has already raised doubts about the prospect of Australian uranium sales, which Mr Abbott and Mr Poroshenko flagged on Thursday.
A spokesman for Moscow’s embassy in Canberra branded talk of a uranium deal a “political statement” and warned that given the conflict in eastern Ukraine, nuclear material could “fall into the wrong hands” – though Kiev’s adversaries in the conflict are rebels backed by Russia itself……….
Russian embassy spokesman Alexander Odoevskiy said Australia should bear in mind that eastern Ukraine was “a conflict zone”.
“Given Ukraine’s current geopolitical situation, can it provide enough security for this nuclear industry and safeguards so [uranium] doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? I’m not sure about whether the government institutions in Ukraine are capable of providing these stringent controls.”http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ukrainian-president-petro-poroshenko-warns-new-cold-war-is-looming-20141212-12636m.html
1 This month.
20 September –National Day of Action in Melbourne on the International Day of Peace
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 
The co-signatories “support the broad conclusions drawn in the article ‘Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation’, published in Conservation Biology.” The open letter states: “Brook and Bradshaw argue that the full gamut of electricity-generation sources − including nuclear power − must be deployed to replace the burning of fossil fuels, if we are to have any chance of mitigating severe climate change.”
So, here’s my open letter in response to the open letter initiated by Brook and Bradshaw:
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Dear conservation scientists, Continue reading →