Coalition slammed over ‘misleading’ Adani billboard
Worse than GetUp’: Coalition slammed over ‘misleading’ Adani billboard, SMH, By Dana McCauley. April 25, 2019 The Morrison government has been accused of misleading Queensland voters in a seat set to benefit most from the controversial Adani coal mine, with a billboard that appears to show Labor leader Bill Shorten participating in a campaign to stop it.
Critics have condemned the billboard as a misuse of political advertising after Liberal National senator for Queensland Matt Canavan posted a photograph of it on social media, boasting it had “just gone up in Rockhampton to remind everyone – including Bill – what he actually said”.
“Labor just can’t be trusted,” Senator Canavan, who is federal Resources Minister, wrote.
The billboard is in the ultra-marginal electorate of Capricornia, held by Liberal National MP Michelle Landry, which would house the proposed mine.
It will be a key battleground at the federal election along with fellow north Queensland coal seats Dawson, Herbert and Flynn, as jobs, energy and environment policy firm up as key concerns for voters heading into the May 18 federal election.
Political advertising is covered by electoral rules that make it illegal to mislead citizens about how to cast their votes, such as in how-to-vote cards.
Progressive lobby group GetUp was forced to pull a satirical campaign advertisement depicting Tony Abbott as a lifeguard ignoring pleas to help someone drowning after a barrage of criticism.
Mr Shorten, who has previously said he did not support the Adani mine, repeatedly refused to explicity rule out a review of the project’s federal approval this week before firming up his position not to do so on Wednesday, saying: “We are not going to review Adani, full stop.”
The issue has caused ructions within the Labor Party and the unions that are bankrolling a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to install Mr Shorten as prime minister, with those in north Queensland campaigning for mining development in the Galilee basin.
The Queensland branch of the powerful Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union is demanding that all candidates sign a pledge outlining their support for coal jobs, while more than 30 unions have endorsed strikes by school students demanding that the Adani mine be stopped.
Labor candidates campaigning in marginal seats in Queensland have expressed support for coal mining, while those in Sydney and Melbourne have opposed it.
The Coalition campaign has been approached for comment. https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/worse-than-getup-coalition-slammed-over-misleading-adani-billboard-20190425-p51h51.html
Extinction Rebellion skillfully used civil disobedience to sound the alarm on the climate emergency
The Greta Thunberg effect: her visit to London in 2 minutes
Why the climate protests that disrupted London were different, Extinction Rebellion skillfully used civil disobedience to sound the alarm on the climate emergency., VOX By Thousands of activists unleashed strategic disorder in London for 10 days to draw attention to the accelerating climate crisis. In costume and in tents, they barricaded roads and bridges at major city landmarks, with more than 1,000 peacefully submitting to arrest.
The coordinated direct actions across the city were organized by Extinction Rebellion, a movement founded last year to demand a more aggressive climate target from the British government: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
With a core message that climate change is an “emergency” that threatens the survival of the human species, Extinction Rebellion sounded a shriller alarm than past climate protests. Members also deployed ostentatious, nonviolent tactics — such as gluing themselves to the Waterloo Bridge — at a scale that “has never been done before,” according to Alanna Byrne, a press coordinator with Extinction Rebellion.
“We know we have disrupted your lives,” the group said Wednesday in a statement. “We do not do this lightly. We only do this because this is an emergency.”
Extinction Rebellion’s urgency and energy on climate change is aligned with a wave of youth climate activism bubbling up in Europe, the United States, and beyond — including a series of student strikes, led by the riveting Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden……..
not all Londoners were unhappy with the disruption, and many tweeted about how much they enjoyed the opportunity to participate.
Extinction Rebellion protesters in London have three key demands
The protestors want three things from the UK government:
- For climate change to be treated as an emergency
- A commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025
- The creation of a citizen assembly for climate action
“We don’t want to be doom and gloom, but we also think it’s really, really important to use emergency messaging,” said XR’s Byrne. “One of the major problems that we have is that so many people are not aware of the crisis we’re in and we want the government to be talking about it.”
While the UK government is already mired in Brexit negotiations that have continued to drag on, protestors argue that climate change poses an even bigger threat to the long-term health and security of the country and deserves the same, if not more, political attention.
Extinction Rebellion protesters in London have three key demands
The protestors want three things from the UK government:
- For climate change to be treated as an emergency
- A commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025
- The creation of a citizen assembly for climate action
“We don’t want to be doom and gloom, but we also think it’s really, really important to use emergency messaging,” said XR’s Byrne. “One of the major problems that we have is that so many people are not aware of the crisis we’re in and we want the government to be talking about it.”
While the UK government is already mired in Brexit negotiations that have continued to drag on, protestors argue that climate change poses an even bigger threat to the long-term health and security of the country and deserves the same, if not more, political attention.
………in this moment of crisis, young leaders will keep reminding us of how resourceful humans can be in the face of a challenge. “Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfill something, we can do anything,” Thunberg said. “And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: We can still fix this.”
Can the UK fix it to the tune of net-zero emissions by 2025? Why not try? https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/24/18511491/climate-change-protests-london-extinction-rebellion
Government’s approval of Yeetlirrie uranium mine is bad news for the Liberal Coalition
Yeelirrie uranium mine approval all pain no gain for Coalition THE AUSTRALIAN, Nick Evans, 26 Apr 19,
Environment Minister Melissa Price’s last-minute approval of a major West Australian uranium mine has bought the federal government a world of political pain over a mine that is unlikely to be built in the next decade….. (subscribers only)
A Gripping History of the Nuclear Disaster at Chernobyl
 In “Midnight in Chernobyl,” Adam Higginbotham offers a thorough and readable account of one awful night in the Ukraine and its consequences. UnDark, 04.26.2019 / BY Henry Fountain, WHEN A REACTOR at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and burned 33 years ago, it generated a radioactive cloud that contaminated parts of the Soviet Union and Europe before dissipating. But the accident also created a fog of misunderstanding and confusion — in large part the result of a deliberate coverup by Soviet authorities — that has been slower to lift. Even three decades later, thorough authoritative accounts of the world’s worst atomic-power disaster are few and far between .
A new book offers perhaps the clearest, and fullest, look at the catastrophe yet. Adam Higginbotham’s “Midnight in Chernobyl,” is a compelling and comprehensive account of one awful night in Ukraine and the consequences that were felt worldwide. Higginbotham’s observations, and his writing, are so sharp there is no need to overdo anything for dramatic effect. Told so clearly and in such detail, the story is dramatic — and horrific — enough. ….
Over the years, a few chronicles of the disaster by Soviet writers have reached Western readers, most notably “The Truth About Chernobyl,” by Grigori Medvedev, a former engineer at the plant, published in 1991. ……
That began to change last year when Serhii Plokhy, a Harvard historian, weighed in with “Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe.” But Plokhy’s work focused more on the political aftermath, including the downfall of the Soviet Union that followed just five years later, than on the details of the accident. Higginbotham, a British journalist, takes account of the political fallout as well, but the bulk of his book is about the accident and the response and cleanup — primarily the first seven months, which culminated with the rushed completion of the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus that entombed the remains of Unit 4. The author clearly has been captivated by the disaster for years. His interviews for the book began more than a decade ago, and include some of the key surviving characters. He was also aided by the recent declassification of much archival material, especially the deliberations of the various government tribunals that managed (or, more accurately, mismanaged) the response. Higginbotham introduces us to a few people who have never received much notice. Chief among these is Maria Protsenko, the architect of Pripyat, the city of nearly 50,000 that was built for the Chernobyl workers. Like most of the Soviet Union’s privileged atomic cities, Pripyat was a clean, comfortable place, a glorious testament to the Soviet system, and Protsenko’s job for seven years had been to make it even more glorious. Her world changed in an instant when the reactor exploded. Pripyat, just a few miles away, was heavily contaminated immediately, though it took the authorities a day and a half to order an evacuation. (This was just one of many examples of Soviet officialdom’s callousness and irresponsibility in handling the disaster. Another was telling the evacuees to plan to be away for a few days; in reality they would be gone forever.) It’s hard not to feel sorry for Protsenko, who in the space of 36 hours went from proudly planning Pripyat’s expansion to calculating how many buses would be needed to get its residents to safety. (Precisely 1,225, as it turned out.) Ever the dutiful technocrat, she rode the last one, zig-zagging across the ghost city to pick up stragglers. It’s this kind of detail that makes Higginbotham’s book so gripping. His accounts of the “liquidators,” or clean-up workers, are especially riveting — including the “bio robots,” men who had to clean lethally radioactive debris off the roof of the plant by hand after mechanical robots failed, and the workers whose job was to enter the destroyed reactor building itself, hunting for the remaining uranium fuel in an effort to allays fears that another, potentially worse, explosion was possible. No aspect of the disaster and its aftermath are ignored. Higginbotham describes how members of a hunting and fishing association were enlisted to exterminate the dogs and other pets Pripyat residents were forced to leave behind. He recounts the woeful tales of plant operators and first-responding firefighters who lived their final days in a Moscow hospital, having been so heavily irradiated during the accident that they had no chance of survival. He devotes a full chapter to the unprecedented job of building the sarcophagus, which was constructed by thousands of workers, many of whom only toiled for a short time before being sent home, having reached radiation exposure limits. One task was almost suicidal: finding solid supports among the radioactive ruins for the massive roof beams that were lifted by crane operators working behind lead shields. …….. https://undark.org/article/a-gripping-history-of-the-nuclear-disaster-at-chernobyl/ |
|
Chernobyl at 33: More evidence of slow-moving ecological catastrophe
Chernobyl at 33: More evidence of slow-moving ecological catastrophe, Beyond Nuclear , 26 Apr 19 Chernobyl, the biggest nuclear plant disaster in history, marks 33rd anniversary
|
Gallery: Chernobyl, the biggest nuclear plant disaster in history, marks 33rd anniversary EuroNews, Natalia Liubchenkova 26/04/2019 -Ukraine marks the 33rd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the biggest one in the history of nuclear energy.
|
|
|
Mass extinction of species is underway – new UN report
|
A million species face extinction due to humans, UN report finds https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17592216.a-million-species-face-extinction-due-to-humans-un-report-finds/ Arts Correspondent, 24 Apr 19, UP to a million species face extinction due to the actions of humanity, a new UN report finds.
|
|
|
The $70 trillion climate impact predicted as result of the melting of Arctic permafrost
Melting permafrost in Arctic will have $70tn climate impact – study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/melting-permafrost-in-arctic-will-have-70tn-climate-impact-study Jonathan Watts, Global environment editor
Study shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen man-made problem The release of methane and carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming and add up to $70tn (£54tn) to the world’s climate bill, according to the most advanced study yet of the economic consequences of a melting Arctic.
If countries fail to improve on their Paris agreement commitments, this feedback mechanism, combined with a loss of heat-deflecting white ice, will cause a near 5% amplification of global warming and its associated costs, says the paper, which was published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.
The authors say their study is the first to calculate the economic impact of permafrost melt and reduced albedo – a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed – based on the most advanced computer models of what is likely to happen in the Arctic as temperatures rise. It shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen the problem caused by man-made emissions, making it more difficult and expensive to solve.
They assessed known stocks of frozen organic matter in the ground up to 3 metres deep at multiple points across the Arctic. These were run through the world’s most advanced simulation software in the US and at the UK Met Office to predict how much gas will be released at different levels of warming. Even with supercomputers, the number crunching took weeks because the vast geography and complex climate interactions of the Arctic throw up multiple variables. The researchers then applied previous economic impact models to assess the likely costs.
The authors say their study is the first to calculate the economic impact of permafrost melt and reduced albedo – a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed – based on the most advanced computer models of what is likely to happen in the Arctic as temperatures rise. It shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen the problem caused by man-made emissions, making it more difficult and expensive to solve.
They assessed known stocks of frozen organic matter in the ground up to 3 metres deep at multiple points across the Arctic. These were run through the world’s most advanced simulation software in the US and at the UK Met Office to predict how much gas will be released at different levels of warming. Even with supercomputers, the number crunching took weeks because the vast geography and complex climate interactions of the Arctic throw up multiple variables. The researchers then applied previous economic impact models to assess the likely costs.
It would also add to global inequalitybecause most of the economic burden – equivalent to almost the entire world’s current annual GDP – is likely to be borne by countries in warmer poorer regions such as India and Africa, which are most vulnerable to a rise in temperatures.
It would also add to global inequalitybecause most of the economic burden – equivalent to almost the entire world’s current annual GDP – is likely to be borne by countries in warmer poorer regions such as India and Africa, which are most vulnerable to a rise in temperatures.
USA lawmakers increasingly worried about climate change causing flooding of nuclear plants
Flooding linked to climate change puts beaches, nuclear plants at risk https://www.axios.com/climate-change-flooding-waikiki-beach-nuclear-plants-f2c4da7b-0155-4749-a47d-2e606066ee52.html 22 Apr 19, An increasing risk of flooding across the U.S. from climate change has caused lawmakers — from Hawaii to the East Coast — to consider new measures to protect at-risk areas.
The big picture: The risks span from the nation’s natural jewels to some of its most important infrastructure. Rising sea levels mean that Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach could be underwater within the next 15 to 20 years — and an increasing number of U.S. nuclear plants were never designed to handle the flood risk from climate change.
- State lawmakers are considering spending millions for a coastline protection program aimed at defending the city from regular tidal inundations, AP reports.
- 54 of the 60 nuclear plants in the U.S. aren’t prepared for the flood risks expected due to climate change “Nineteen face three or more threats that they weren’t designed to handle,” Bloomberg reports.
Climate feedback loops already are making climate change worse
It’s already begun’: Feedback loops will make climate change even worse, scientists say
David Knowles, Editor, Yahoo News, April 22, 2019
When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its dire report in October warning of humanity’s fast-approaching reckoning with global warming, one factor adding to the urgency was a new estimate about how much additional carbon dioxide was being added to the atmosphere as a result of the warming of Arctic permafrost.
With rising Arctic temperatures setting free a vast amount of carbon previously locked beneath permafrost, the additional greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere would speed up warming, the report concluded — and that, in turn, would further melt the permafrost.
It is “feedback loops” like that one that make climate change unpredictable and represent a threat of global warming spiraling out of control.
“It’s already begun,” Thomas Crowther, professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science of ETH Zurich, told Yahoo News. “The feedback is in process.”
Crowther estimates that carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing soils are “accelerating climate change about 12 to 15 percent at the moment,” and said past IPCC reports that left out the feedback “were way more optimistic than they should have been.”
Almost every scientist studying the effects of climate change is worried about the extent to which feedback loops will hasten global warming. One of the most serious concerns is the “albedo effect,” the amount of the sun’s radiation the planet reflects back into space, mostly from the polar ice sheets. The warming that has already occurred has begun melting the ice caps, leaving the relatively dark ocean and land exposed to absorb solar radiation — further warming the planet and leading to more ice melt.
“The impact that it has on making the earth darker by removing all the snow and ice is estimated by some to be 25 to 40 percent of the warming that we’ve experienced,” Jennifer Francis, research professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, told Yahoo News. “In other words, global warming is that much worse. There’s a lot of ways these things are totaled all together.”
Feedback loops are not a root cause of the climate change problem, but they make the problem that much worse. When climatologists began seriously studying global warming in the 1970s, there was some doubt about how the feedback loops would operate. Scientists theorized there might also be negative feedback loops, which would slow global warming — for instance, by increasing cloud cover. But so far it has all gone in the opposite — wrong — direction.
“I’m not optimistic. It’s not just because of those feedbacks, it’s because we’ve already put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that carbon dioxide lasts a very long time,” Francis said. “A molecule of carbon dioxide, on average, lasts about 100 years in the atmosphere. So, we haven’t yet felt the impacts of the carbon dioxide that we’ve already put in the atmosphere. Even not thinking about feedbacks, we’re already got a lot more climate change built into the system just because it takes awhile for the climate system to adjust itself to this new level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. All the feedback that [happens is] just making that response even bigger than it would be otherwise.”
Francis has been researching how rising Arctic temperatures have been weakening the jet stream, causing shifts in weather and ocean current patterns that, in yet another feedback loop, warm the earth and further destabilize the jet stream.
“What we’re seeing is that the Arctic is warming much faster than the planet is farther south, making that north-south temperature difference much smaller and so there’s less of that fuel driving the jet stream wind,” Francis said. “That should cause the jet stream to take more of these big north-south swings. And the reason that’s important is because those waves in the jet stream are actually what create high- and low-pressure systems that we see on a weather map on TV and when you get those really big waves in the jet stream, they tend to move much more slowly, so those highs and lows we see on a weather map also tend to move much more slowly and so the weather conditions we see on the surface associated with those weather systems are much more persistent.”
Persistent weather patterns, such as periods of rain or drought lasting months, can have potentially devastating consequences, Francis said.
Harold Wanless, director of the University of Miami’s geological sciences department and a leading expert on sea level rise, has studied the rate at which the oceans have risen and retreated over millennia. He fears that a variety of feedback loops will contribute to a dramatic increase in sea level in the coming decades……
To Wanless, the evidence is clear that we’ve already reached a tipping point when it comes to the cascading impacts of climate change on sea level rise.
Once you start adding up these different feedbacks, because that’s the only thing we have to go on in the modern era, well, there are all these things that are speeding up ice melt, some of which we’re just becoming aware of, like the collapse of the high ice sheets. We’re just trying to figure out how fast and how dramatic that will be,” Wanless says. “A lot of them work together. The warm water getting in under the outlet fjords of Greenland and Antarctica that ends up detaching the ice from the substrate and once that happens, you can have this sort of automatic fracturing of the detached ice like a stack of books starting to splay out off a table.”
It’s sobering to realize the extent to which the planet’s ecosystem is interconnected. For years, relatively little was known about the vital role the Arctic played in keeping the world stable. As the permafrost has begun to thaw, however, the global ramifications have become unavoidable…….. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/its-already-begun-feedback-loops-will-make-climate-change-even-worse-scientists-say-090000011.html
In Ratnagiri’s Jaitapur, Fishermen Vehemently Opposed to Nuclear Power Plant
In Ratnagiri’s Jaitapur, Fishermen Vehemently Oppose Nuclear Plant. The Wire, 22 Apr 19
In Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri, the Sadak se Sansad team finds out why farmers are opposing the world’s largest nuclear power plant. In this special story from the Ratnagiri Lok Sabha constituency in Maharashtra, we speak to fishermen who have been protesting against the Jaitapur nuclear power project for over a decade. They say that the project will adversely affect their ecology and threaten their livelihoods. If completed, the plant will be the largest nuclear power generating station in the world. https://thewire.in/video/watch-in-ratnagiris-jaitapur-fishermen-vehemently-oppose-nuclear-plant
UK Business Leaders support Extinction Rebellion climate activists, and will work with them
Times 22nd April 2019 Business leaders have voiced their support for Extinction Rebellion, theenvironmental protest group that shut down parts of London last week,
calling for an “urgent redesign” of global industry in a letter to The
Times.
January, is one of 21 executives who have written in support of the
activists’ call to action on climate change. The group also includes Dale
Vince, founder of Ecotricity, the green energy provider, and Chris Davis,
director of corporate social responsibility at The Body Shop.
imposed on business are regrettable, as is the inconvenience to
Londoners,” the group write. “But future costs imposed on our economies
by the climate emergency will be many orders of magnitude greater.”
Business is being launched. Bosses, investors and corporate advisers will
meet activists to discuss how companies can counter climate change.
Electric cars to be cheaper to buy than petrol and diesel much sooner than expected.
Express 21st April 2019 One of the barriers preventing a lot of motorists from making theswitch from petrol and diesel to electric is the higher upfront cost.
However, by 2022 the cost of electric cars is set to top below that of
internal combustion engined (ICE) cars, claims new analysis from Bloomberg
New Energy Finance.
A FLOOD OF DANGEROUS NEW SCIENCE – PAUL BECKWITH
In the past 3 months, I brought you the science of climate change direct from specialists publishing top papers. To draw it together, we need a generalist with climate expertise. We need Paul Beckwith. Paul has two Masters degrees. He often teaches climate science at the University of Ottawa. But his tireless effort to teach extends to the Internet. On You tube, Paul Beckwith is by far the biggest teacher of climate science to the world via You tube.
KEY INDICATORS OF ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE
We have a new paper, published April 8th by scientists in Alaska and Denmark. The title is “Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017”. Lead author Jason Box said “The Arctic system is trending away from its 20th century state and into an unprecedented state, with implications not only within but beyond the Arctic.”
Those scientists seemed surprised that temperature was the “smoking gun” for all the changes in the Arctic. (That seems obvious to me, what about you?) On the other hand, the fastest moving ice body on Greenland, The Jakobshavn glacier, has not only slowed down but is gaining ice mass. Paul says that is a temporary phenomenon, and who knows – maybe the glacier as it moved got snagged on some land way down below.
THE LINGERING COLD BLOB IN EASTERN NORTH AMERICA
Could that slowdown in part of Greenland be connected to the long-lasting cold and snow in the North East, including in Paul’s hometown in Ottawa? Paul says he had “a glacier” of ice remaining in his front yard, and we talk about the cold blob of air hovering over eastern North America, punctuated by storms. Here’s his video on that.
Chat on Persistent Cold Blob over North America
The public is so focused on global warming, it is pretty hard to convince people that a depressing cold winter could also be influenced by climate change. Nobody wants to go protest in the cold, but when it’s hot, they want to go outside and enjoy themselves. So far, there doesn’t seem to be a good time to protest. Were there climate school strikes in Ottawa or in Quebec?
Some people think Paul is a radical climate scientist. But really the whole upper echelon of climate research institutes are now radical about climate change. They are practically screaming out warnings of disaster, and we talk about some of those in this interview. But despite Paul’s efforts and mine, the public still isn’t engaged. People fly all over the place, and dream about their next pickup truck with a big gas engine. It is an addictive dream. Do you expect a rapid awakening, or more years of deadly greenhouse gas emissions?
We just had another freak April storm where the temperature was expected to drop 60 degrees in Denver, going from 70 or 80 Fahrenheit to blizzards. Yet another very heavy snow storm hit Montana and Nebraska in April. They are calling it a “bomb cyclone“.
Then we had flooding in the mid-west of the U.S., right in key food production areas. I think that was a major event with long-lasting consequences. Mainstream the media forgot that story already. Of course, Paul Beckwith has a new video about that.
Why is weather in the Northern Hemisphere so weird?
SIMULTANEOUS HEAT WAVES – NEW INTERVIEW COMING UP!
I want to tell listeners about brand new science, still awaiting publication. It announces a new phenomenon in the world: simultaneous heat waves across the planet. Martha Vogel, a climate researcher from ETH Zurich, just presented the findings at a European Geosciences Union press conference in Vienna in the first week of April. Studying heat waves from 1958 to 2018, they discovered that only since 2010 has modern planet Earth experienced multiple extreme heat waves at the same time. For example extreme heat in the Mediterranean might also strike in the Arctic and Russia or North America at the same time. Transcontinental heat: that has terrible implications for food production and a lot more.
My interview with scientist Martha Vogel should be next week on Radio Ecoshock
THE NEW 2018 CLIMATE REPORT FROM THE WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION (WMO)
Paul discusses this report in two videos, starting with this one State of the Climate: NOT Good at All
You can read that full report “WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018” as a .pdf online here.
According to the WMO, in 2018 the heat content of the upper levels of the ocean were the highest ever recorded. That is so dangerous!
People get confused about the difference between ocean HEAT absorption (which is 93%) to greenhouse gas absorption by the sea, (which is 25%). Since 93% of our excess heat goes into the ocean, that means only 7% is causing the disruption we are feeling now! If the ocean takes less carbon dioxide, as scientists predict, then not only will there be more greenhouse gases, but those gases will remain longer, and become a larger share of our actual emissions in the atmosphere. If so, we have to cut off fossil fuels and other greenhouse sources pretty well immediately. Strange to say, but our industrial culture may depend on ocean chemistry and ocean physics.
In a BBC article about the World Meteorological Report for 2018, Australian climate scientist and Professor Samantha Hepburn said:
“We know that if the current trajectory for greenhouse gas concentrations continues, temperatures may increase by 3 – 5 degrees C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and we have already reached 1 degree.”
Three to five degrees C of warming is utter disaster!
SEA ICE AT BOTH POLES DECLINING
Paul Beckwith says Sea ice may be in that critical slowing down of phase-state before a collapse of sea ice. And for our southern listeners, there has been a huge fall in Antarctic sea ice. Just a few years ago it was still expanding…. https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/04/the-burning-question.html
Britain’s Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) notes that over 70 Welsh councils formally reject hosting nuclear waste dump
NFLA 18th April 2019 The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) notes that over 70 Welsh unitary, county, city, town and community councils have passed resolutions formally opposing taking any interest in hosting a deep underground radioactive waste repository.
The figure was noted at a joint meeting in Menai Bridge organised by the NFLA Welsh Forum in conjunction with the groups PAWB, CADNO and CND Cymru. At a presentation provided by the NFLA Secretary, he noted that there had been real anger and frustration raised across Welsh and Northern Irish Councils in particular to the request made by the UK
Government for considering hosting a large deep underground repository to store over 60 years of higher activity radioactive waste, as well as possibly additional waste should new nuclear power stations ever be built.
Even in England, a number of nuclear site Councils have indicated their public opposition to hosting a repository. NFLA have noted some of these issues in its response to RWM regarding its consultation on how any proposed sites will be evaluated.
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 