Climate change and the link to Australia’s record-breaking winter warmth
Australia’s record-breaking winter warmth linked to climate change https://theconversation.com/australias-record-breaking-winter-warmth-linked-to-climate-change-83304 Climate Extremes Research Fellow, University of Melbourne, September 1, 2017 On the first day of spring, it’s time to take stock of the winter that was. It may have felt cold, but Australia’s winter had the highest average daytime temperatures on record. It was also the driest in 15 years.Back at the start of winter the Bureau of Meteorology forecast a warm, dry season. That proved accurate, as winter has turned out both warmer and drier than average.
While we haven’t seen anything close to the weather extremes experienced in other parts of the world, including devastating rainfalls in Niger, the southern US and the Indian subcontinent all in the past week, we have seen a few interesting weather extremes over the past few months across Australia.
Drier weather than normal has led to warmer days and cooler nights, resulting in some extreme temperatures. These include night-time lows falling below -10℃ in the Victorian Alps and -8℃ in Canberra (the coldest nights for those locations since 1974 and 1971, respectively), alongside daytime highs of above 32℃ in Coffs Harbour and 30℃ on the Sunshine Coast.
During the early part of the winter the southern part of the country remained dry as record high pressure over the continent kept cold fronts at bay. Since then we’ve seen more wet weather for our southern capitals and some impressive snow totals for the ski fields, even if the snow was late to arrive.
This warm, dry winter is laying the groundwork for dangerous fire conditions in spring and summer. We have already had early-season fireson the east coast and there are likely to be more to come.
Climate change and record warmth Continue reading
Tony Abbott to join Britain’s Nigel Lawson in climate denial lecturing in Britain
Tony Abbott to lecture leading climate-change sceptic think tank, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/tony-abbott-to-lecture-leading-climatechange-sceptic-think-tank/news-story/ce897ce09992d942256245dd08edf0fd, GRAHAM LLOYD, 1 Sept 17, Former prime minister Tony Abbott will give the annual lecture to one of the world’s leading climate change sceptic think tanks, the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London.
The title of Mr Abbott’s address will be “Daring to doubt”.
The invitation-only lecture will be held at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Birdcage Walk, London, on October 9. Mr Abbott will follow John Howard who addressed the foundation’s lecture in 2013 with a speech “One religion is enough”.
The foundation is chaired by former Thatcher government treasurer Lord Nigel Lawson.
The foundation is one of the world’s most active groups promoting debate about the state of climate change science.
It republishes articles and material both supportive and against the mainstream science view and commissions research on climate change-related issues.
The foundation is funded by private donations and does not accept gifts from energy companies or anyone with a significant interest in an energy company.
Mr Abbott’s spokeswoman said the trip would be privately funded by the foundation
Australian government watering down the climate recommendations of the Finkel energy report
Coalition watering down Finkel review climate ambitions, leaked document reveals
Draft implementation plan lacks electricity emissions trajectory, Paris agreement alignment and low-income subsidies, Guardian, Michael Slezak 31 Aug 17, The climate ambitions of the Finkel review appear to be being watered down by the government as it is implemented, according to a draft Coag Energy Council implementation strategy obtained by the Guardian.
The draft implementation plan removes a key recommendation for an agreed emissions trajectory for the electricity system, alignment with the Paris agreement and subsidised solar and batteries for low-income houses.
Sources tell the Guardian the document was prepared by the federal government and distributed to state and territory representatives on the morning of the meeting, leaving little time for state representatives to analyse it…..
At a teleconference on Friday last week, state and territory energy ministers were presented with a draft implementation plan for discussion.
That document, obtained by the Guardian, appears to water down those recommendations in relation to climate change, and removes some altogether.
One key recommendation in the Finkel review that has been severely weakened in the draft implementation document is a change that would force the electricity market to align efforts to meet government emissions reduction commitments made as part of the Paris agreement.
But the draft implementation document removes the reference to international emissions reduction commitments, instead saying merely that the agreement will “reaffirm Australian governments’ commitment to the [national electricity market] and a national, integrated approach to energy and emissions reduction policy”.
Among Finkel’s key recommendation for an “orderly transition”, he called for three things: the clean energy target; a three-year notice of closure for existing large generators; and “an agreed emissions reduction trajectory”. All three moves were part of one recommendation, numbered 3.2.
The Coalition has not agreed to adopt the clean energy target but it has agreed to the three-year notice-of-closure rule, which appears in the implementation plan. However, the plan does not contain any mention of an agreed emissions reduction trajectory…….
Another Finkel recommendation calls for low-income households to be given subsidised access to “energy efficient appliances, rooftop solar photovoltaic and battery storage systems”.
Explicit references to renewable energy has been removed in the draft implementation plan and replaced with “energy efficiency and demand management technologies”.
Sources say representatives of the ACT raised the question of the trajectory being removed, and asked for it to be included. Representatives of Queensland and Victoria also apparently raised concerns about some of the other changes.
Sources said the document, which was prepared by the federal government, was circulated to state energy ministers only hours before the meeting was held, leaving little time for proper scrutiny.
The document is expected to be finalised and sent to heads of government today. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/31/coalition-watering-down-finkel-review-climate-ambitions
The Finkel clean eneergy target will not meet Australia’s goals in Paris climate agreement
Finkel clean energy target too weak for Paris climate goal, 
analysis shows Target will transfer pressure to other sectors of the economy to reduce their emissions, research shows, Research commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation on the clean energy target says the trajectory of emissions reduction is not strong enough. Guardian, Katharine Murphy, 29 Aug 17
The clean energy target recommended by Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, won’t deliver Australia’s obligations under the Paris agreement and will only transfer pressure to other sectors of the economy to reduce their emissions, according to new analysis.
The new research comes as the Coalition’s difficult internal deliberations over the Finkel review are set to resume, with a report due from the Australian Energy Market Operator about the dispatchable power requirements of the electricity grid after the closure of two ageing coal-fired power stations.
And it comes as the prime minister will on Wednesday hold a second meeting with Australia’s major energy retailers in an attempt to make it easier for consumers to switch their power provider – a response to acute political pressure over rising electricity bills.
Discussions between the government and the companies in the lead up to Wednesday’s talks have centred on whether energy companies can offer monthly billing to try and prevent bill shock, and whether more can be done to communicate with hardship customers to ensure they aren’t locked in to inflated power contracts.
The new research on the clean energy target has been commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation.
The modelling says the Finkel trajectory would see Australia’s electricity emissions being phased out between 2095-2101 – a timeframe that is inconsistent with the Paris goal of limiting warming to two degrees, and of reaching carbon neutrality by mid-century.
It also points out that if the electricity sector does comparatively less of the heavy lifting on emissions reductions, the burden will fall more heavily on other sectors, with the largest reductions then falling on high emissions growth sectors, rather than the sectors with the largest share of total national emissions……..https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/30/finkel-clean-energy-target-too-weak-for-paris-climate-goal-analysis-shows
Australian govt -‘no plans’ to build or fund coal power, says PM Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Turnbull says Government has ‘no plans’ to build or fund coal power, ABC 28 Aug 17 By political reporter Henry Belot ,
Key points:
- The Coalition has accepted 49 of the 50 recommendations from the Finkel Report
- Barnaby Joyce, Tony Abbott among MPs wanting the CET to allow more coal power plants
- PM Malcolm Turnbull says his Government has funded green energy “to a large degree”
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says his Government has no plans to build a new coal-fired power station, and he wants to resolve a fractious debate over a clean energy target (CET) by the end of the year.
What is to be done about Climate Change? – theme for August 17
Frogs are smarter than we are? We insult frogs when we say that they would stay in a pot of water, to die, as it was slowly heated to boiling point. Dr. Victor Hutchison, at the University of Oklahoma, dispelled that myth when he studied frogs’ reaction to temperature changes in water. He followed the procedure outlined for a proper frog-boiling; put a frog in cold water, and gradually warmed the water up. (He stopped well before the boiling point.) The frogs most definitely did jump out when the water got too warm for them.
So – the message to human society surely should be – act like a frog – and don’t let global warming keep on creeping up on us!
Current approaches to the climate change crisis:
- Some climate scientists now warn that it is probably too late.
- Some advocate geoengineering solutions.
- Climate scientists are in agreement that actions must be taken to adapt to climate change.
- Drastic reduction in greenhouse gases is necessary, whatever other actions are taken.
Al Gore’s controversial new film carries a powerful message of hope.I hope that he’ s right.
Meanwhile the tragic main point of climate change is that it is affecting those who least deserve this. Rural populations in India, China and Africa , who have contributed very little to the cause of climate change are already afflicted with unusual heat, and drought. Pacific islanders, and South Asian coastal communities are already experiencing sea surges, as sea levels rise.
The challenge for this 21st century is surely for environmental justice – for meeting the plight of environmental refugees with help and compassion, rather than with barriers and conflict.
The image below is by courtesy of the arti
st Ricardo Levins Morales www.RLMArtStudio.com
Australia’s coastal communities already vulnerable to climate change
Flooding proved how vulnerable Coast is to climate change, Sunshine Coast Daily, Bill Hoffman | 26th Aug 2017 THE Sunshine Coast received a taste Monday night of the future normal for low-lying coastal communities everywhere when, in the middle of a drought-like winter, water flooded through storm water outlets and over the top of revetment walls and onto key streets across the region.
The cause wasn’t an intense east coast low, a cyclone or intense rain event normally associated with flooding of low-lying areas across the region. If it had occurred during daylight, particularly at peak hour, Mooloolaba would have been left grid-locked and Bradman Avenue, Maroochydore, reduced to one-lane along the river.
Twin Waters residents would have seen water up into the parks and footpaths along Twin Waters Drive and the river spilling into bushland for more than 100 metres along Nojoor Road.
At Caloundra the vulnerability of Tay and Maloja Avenues at Bulcock Beach would have been fully exposed.
What occurred required no more than a couple of days of strong southerly winds blowing up the NSW and Victorian coasts to set off the Ekman Transport Effect which lifted the Highest Astronomical Tide for the season at Mooloolaba from 2.03metres by additional 0.4 of a metre.
While for many the resulting impact of that degree of sea level rise went largely unnoticed, scientists at the University of the Sunshine Coast and hydrologists took note.
They are in agreement that Monday night’s short-term increase in sea levels afforded a glimpse of the future impact of the best-case 0.8 metre permanent rise now locked in by 2100 because of climate change.
The Ekman Transport Effect refers to the shift leftward that occurs when sustained winds blow in a consistent direction over the ocean moving the top 30m layer of water. The resultant upwelling is most likely to occur along New South Wales, south-east Queensland and the Bonney Coast (South Australia) coastlines.
Professor Tim Smith, director of the University of the Sunshine Coast Sustainability Research Centre, says the region has received a wake-up call in terms of what it needs to prepare for. “We are pretty lucky it was not combined with other things to intensify the situation like a low-pressure system or a high-intensity rainfall event or it would have been a much more devastating outcome,” Prof Smith said.
“We have to think about the design and placement of infrastructure and assets. We can’t continually defend and protect ad finitum. “Alternative adaptation strategies will be needed.”
He says the options are limited. The first is to try to protect assets without changing their location. Professor Smith said the approach was the emphasis of local authorities across Australia who don’t want to change but preferred to protect investments made in calm weather 40 years ago.He said the problem was that the environment was not static and could not be controlled.
The second strategy was to accept there were going to be impacts and to retrofit existing settlement and infrastructure to experience less damage. “You could raise houses to protect from periodic impacts if you were willing to live with them,” Prof Smith said.
The other option was to retreat in the process relocating settlement and assets out of harm’s way. “That’s a taboo subject, he said. “People don’t want to talk about it but eventually we will need to have a serious discussion.”
Hilo in Hawaii, Grantham in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley and Twin Rivers in New Zealand all provide limited examples of communities that have bitten the bullet and shifted their communities out of harm’s way.
“We can’t keep building walls higher and higher,” Prof Smith said. “The longer we leave it the more difficult it will become. The sooner we act the better.” He says the danger of protecting assets is that the protection gives confidence to put more in harm’s way, doubling the risk.
He takes issue with the failure of governments to be explicit about the planning time horizons of capital spending. If it’s 20 years it doesn’t matter. Longer than that may become problematic. What won’t cut it is a piecemeal response to climate change…… https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/how-flooding-provided-a-window-to-the-future/3216185/
Bundaberg MP insists that coastal communities must prepare for climate change.
MP says preparing for climate change is vital for the Bundaberg region https://www.news-mail.com.au/news/mp-says-preparing-for-climate-change-is-vital-for-/3216829/, Jim Alouat | 26th Aug 2017 LOWER house insurance premiums could be on the cards if Bundaberg home owners take steps to embrace climate and weather-resilient designs.
Preparing for climate change is important for communities like Bundaberg where flooding is already a significant threat, says Bundaberg MP Leanne Donaldson.
According to the Queensland Climate Adaptation Strategy report, Queensland already experiences climate extremes such as floods, droughts, heatwaves and bushfires and climate change is likely to exacerbate the frequency and/or severity of these events.
Ms Donaldson said the government was having ongoing discussions with the insurance industry to see how actions to reduce exposure to climate hazards could reduce insurance premiums.
“However, the Queensland Climate Adaptation Strategy identifies the need to improve access to information on insurance options as a method to manage climate risk, and to investigate how we can improve access to finance for priority activities that improve our readiness and resilience to climate change,” she said.
Ms Donaldson said the suggestion of building ground floors that were ready for floods, was raised as just one example of many innovative solutions the sector might consider when adapting to changed weather patterns and greater climate risk.
“Whether it’s finding innovative solutions to make homes more flood resistant, or choosing to build in locations that are less prone to flooding, it is important that these risks are considered when planning our infrastructure,” Ms Donaldson said.
“There is a lot of work going into this area at the moment, particularly on how these climate risks can be better incorporated into planning guidelines.
“It’s also important to note that flooding is just one of many climate hazards identified in the sector adaptation plan that need to be considered when planning for changes in the climate.”
Ms Donaldson said the Built Environment and Infrastructure Sector Adaptation Plan will not affect the 10-year Flood Action Plan for the Bundaberg region.
“However, adapting to climate change is complimentary to building resilience and fulfilling the actions included in the Burnett River Floodplain,” she said.
A band of right-wing religious politicians are stopping climate action in Australia
The fact is that the great majority of religious leaders – from the Pope to the Dalai Lama – share Pickard’s views about the urgency of addressing climate change.
Yet in this country the resistance to any meaningful action to ameliorate climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is led to a substantial degree by those politicians who claim Christian faith.
Last year 350.org released a list of the most implacable opponents to climate change action. At or near the top of the list were the following names: Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Kevin Andrews, Cory Bernardi, Eric Abetz, George Christensen and Zed Seselja. These politicians are bound together by their strong and frequently touted religious belief.
How the religious right stall climate action, While most religious leaders accept climate change, the Christian right in Australia and the US make scepticism a tenet of their politics. Saturday Paper, By Mike Seccombe. 26 Aug 17 It has been more than three years now since Stephen Pickard penned his letter to the religious believers among our federal parliamentarians, arguing the case for action on climate change. Continue reading
As climate change intensifies, Australia’s farmers will be hard hit
Climate change will hit our farmers harder and hotter https://www.qt.com.au/news/climate-change-will-hit-our-farmers-harder-and-hot/3216205/ Geoff Egan | 25th Aug 2017 A LEADING commodity trader has warned increasingly common extreme and volatile weather conditions will cause havoc for Queensland’s agricultural producers.
Commodities trader Jonathan Barratt has warned record wet and dry periods will become more common as climate change intensifies and will dramatically impact primary producers.
Mr Barratt said July 2017 was the driest July in 118 years – and as a result of climate change similar records were being set more often.
“The volatility we have experienced in the climate in the last three years has been unprecedented. I have been predicting that climate change will shift regional weather patterns and that adverse events not only occur but be more frequent. Now it’s happening,” he said.
“The combined deficits of rain and higher than normal temperatures in some areas this season have sapped what moisture profiles farmers had and, as some growers close the chequebook on crops, others are contemplating if it is worth adding another layer of costs to an already thirsty crop.”
Mr Barratt’s warning comes just days after University of NSW research found farmland would get drier and cities flood more often under climate change.
The research paper found as global temperatures rise more evaporation would occur from moist soils in farming lands, drying them out quickly. In contrast, urban areas with more limited exposed expanses of soil would retain the moisture and become vulnerable to intense rain events.
UNSW researcher Conrad Wasko said the change was a “double whammy”.
“People are increasingly migrating to cities, where flooding is getting worse. At the same time, we need adequate flows in rural areas to sustain the agriculture to supply these burgeoning urban populations,” he said.
Australia’s religious leaders unite to oppose Adani coal mine expansion
The Adani coalmine will hasten a climate catastrophe. As faith leaders, we must act
A Buddhist leader has told environment minister Josh Frydenberg he would stand in front of machinery if digging started. All people of faith should join him, Guardian, Jonathan Keren-Black and Tejopala Rawls, 23 Aug 17
Earlier in August, six faith leaders met Australia’s environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg. Our group included Bishop Philip Huggins, the president of the National Council of Churches, a Uniting Church reverend, a rabbi, a Catholic nun and an ordained Buddhist. This is not the start of a joke, but a polite and serious exchange.
It might seem that religion has little to do with the environment or energy. Yet each of us at the meeting wanted to raise a matter that, when we consider the deepest values of our respective traditions, is of grave moral concern: the proposed Adani coalmine. We were there to ask the minister to revoke its environmental licence.
The delegation reminded the minister that a number of faith leaders from across Australia wrote him an open letter about it on 5 May, to which he had not yet replied.
Around the world a great many people of faith are deeply concerned about the climate crisis. Continue reading
Coal in decline: an industry on life support. Where does this leave Adani project?
Australia now exports about 200m tonnes. Adani project is, by any measure, a massive expansion that could push the world measurably closer to breaching the goals of the Paris climate agreement……
“The [Adani Carmichael coal] project is not on the radar, not expected to happen, immaterial for India’s energy plans given the progressive move away from imported thermal coal and just unbankable for Indian banks given excessive Adani group debt.”
Coal in decline: Adani in question and Australia out of step Special report: India and China are shifting away from coal imports and coal-fired power while a mega-mine is planned for Queensland. Where does this leave coal in Australia?
Coal in decline: an industry on life support, Guardian, by Adam Morton , 24 Aug 17, The Paris-based International Energy Agency ……suggested investment in new coal power across the globe has peaked and is on the verge of a steep decline. In a coinciding media briefing, the IEA chief economist, Laszlo Varro, declared the “century of coal” that started in 2000 – evident in the extraordinary wave of investment by emerging Asian nations – may already be over.
Dryness of vegetation in Sydney area adds risk to coming bushfire season
Dry winter primes Sydney Basin for early start of bushfire season The Conversation, Matthias Boer, Associate Professor, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Technology Sydney. Professor, Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, University of Wollongong, August 21, 2017 It might feel like the depths of winter, but Australian fire services are preparing for an early start to the bushfire season. Sydney has been covered with smoke from hazard reduction burns, and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service has forecast a “horrific” season.
Predicting the severity of a bushfire season isn’t easy, and – much like the near-annual announcements of the “worst flu season on record” – repeated warnings can diminish their urgency.
However, new modelling that combines Bureau of Meteorology data with NASA satellite imaging has found that record-setting July warmth and low rainfall have created conditions very similar to 2013, when highly destructive bushfires burned across NSW and Victoria.
Crucially, this research has found we’re approaching a crucial dryness threshold, past which fires are historically far more dangerous……..https://theconversation.com/dry-winter-primes-sydney-basin-for-early-start-of-bushfire-season-82641?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2021%202017%20-%2081136562&utm_content=Latest%
Australia failing in migration and humanitarian help for Pacific Islanders in their drowning islands
Pacific Islanders forced to leave, The Saturday Paper, Chris Woods 18 Aug 17, “Last month,” Ursula Rakova says, “when I returned home just to visit family and talk to the islanders about the situation, it was really, really hard to see a lot of the land being lost to the sea.”
Rakova is from the Carteret Islands, commonly known as Tulun, the horseshoe-shaped scattering of low-lying coral atolls 86 kilometres north-east of Bougainville. “More and more, palm trees are falling, the scarcity of food is becoming a real issue, and the schools close, and close for long periods,” she says.
With an indigenous population of 2700 on seven small islands with a maximum elevation of just 1.5 metres above sea level, there are few other places on Earth where the injustice of global warming is more apparent than on the Carteret Islands.
The Carterets have been on the front line of climate change for decades: one of the islands, Huene, was cut in half by shoreline erosion about 1984. While seawalls and mangroves had been holding the ocean back until this period, further seawater inundation and storm surges over the past few decades had salinated crops and water supplies, intermittently shut down the island’s five schools due to childhood malnutrition, and destroyed homes.
Part of the reason the area is so vulnerable is that, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported a global sea level rise of about three millimetres per year from 1993 to 2012, the fact that water expands exponentially as heat is applied means that bodies of water that are already hot rise more swiftly. For the western Pacific Ocean, this has meant an increase of about eight to 10 millimetres a year.
“The western Pacific is a lot hotter than the water is in the eastern Pacific – hotter by about five or six degrees – and where the islands are is amongst the hottest ocean water in the world,” says Ian Simmonds, professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne. “Hence a warming of one degree there gives you just so much more of a sea level rise.”
Simmonds notes that the same is true for the severity of storms in the region: a warmer planet means more moisture, and, therefore, stronger and more frequent storms.
In response to increasingly severe events, Carteret elders initiated a voluntary relocation program in 2006, named Tulele Peisa, or “Sailing the Waves on Our Own” – outwardly a response to failed talks with neighbouring governments dating back to 2001. The group contacted Ursula Rakova, a Huene expatriate who had gone on to direct a Bougainville-based non-government organisation, to lead the initiative. After unsuccessfully applying for land through official channels, she was given four different locations by the Catholic Church in 2007, and relocation to the first of the abandoned plantation sites started that year.
Now, after more than a decade of leading the first recorded example of forced displacement due to global warming, Rakova has almost completed housing for the first group of 10 families. She has successfully established food gardens and a mini food forest, rehabilitated plantations and begun selling crops of cocoa. New education and management facilities have been set up, and both funding and food relief arranged to be sent back to the Carterets.
But the plight of the Carterets is not unique. Three other atolls within the Bougainville area are facing similar challenges with rising sea levels, and extreme weather events have caused internal displacement everywhere from Bangladesh to Syria to Australia.
The Australian government does not, broadly speaking, have the greatest track record on the issue. Not only did then prime minister Tony Abbott refuse to meet a call from Pacific Island leaders in 2015 to reduce emissions – indirectly resulting in Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s infamous “water lapping at their doors” quip – but the current budget offers the lowest foreign aid in eight years, at $3.82 billion over 2016-17.
Yet Australia has offered a range of targeted, if less publicised, initiatives in the region, largely funnelled through the Autonomous Bougainville Government, in consultation with Papua New Guinea……..
Australia was also a member of the Nansen Initiative, a program launched in 2012 by Switzerland and Norway intended to strengthen the protection of people displaced across borders by disasters and the effects of climate change. Along with 108 other countries, Australia endorsed its Protection Agenda in 2015, leading to a range of partnerships between policymakers, practitioners and researchers as part of the follow-up Platform on Disaster Displacement.
The director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, Jane McAdam, has worked with Nansen and similar initiatives for more than a decade, and advocates Nansen’s “toolbox approach”. Solutions range from better supporting disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, to developing humanitarian visas in the immediate aftermath of disasters and offering new migration opportunities such as “labour visas, educational visas, bilateral free movements agreements”.
While forced climate migrants are often incorrectly referred to as “climate refugees” – a term that would require persecution – the issues are distinct in a legal sense. The first person to seek asylum on the grounds of climate change, Ioane Teitiota, of Kiribati, lost his New Zealand application in 2015.
McAdam says there is no political appetite to change the United Nations’ refugee convention definition. While there is scope to expand the definition of refoulement, governments are better suited to developing new migration opportunities.
“It’s interesting that both the Lowy Institute and the Menzies Research Centre – two think tanks, one more conservative, the other less conservative – along with the World Bank, all in the last six months or so, have each recommended that Australia enhance migration opportunities from the Pacific,” she says.
“They say this would really make a huge difference to development and assistance generally, livelihoods generally, than would humanitarian assistance – it would cost us a lot less, and it would yield a lot more.”
While Labor offered more overt leadership on the issue while in opposition in 2006, specifically in terms of training islanders for skilled migration programs, neither Coalition nor Labor governments have since restructured our migration system to the extent McAdam recommends……..
Despite Rakova’s work, which led to a Pride of PNG award in 2008, the Carteret group is struggling to fund homes for the final two families, who are sharing houses, let alone start resettling the remaining 1700 volunteers meant to migrate over the next five years. She says the delay, exacerbated by intercultural challenges and the emotional toll of abandoning ancestral homes, is causing anxiety……..https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/immigration/2017/08/19/pacific-islanders-forced-leave/15030648005088
Climate Denial in Australia and USA: the Differences
The Madhouse Effect: this is how climate denial in Australia and the US compares, The Conversation, Professor of Environmental Politics and Co-Director Sydney Environment Institute, University, August 14, 2017 Michael Mann is well known for his classic “hockey stick” work on global warming, for the attacks he has long endured from climate denialists, and for the good fight of communicating the environmental and political realities of climate change.
Mann’s work, including his recent book The Madhouse Effect, has helped me, as a dual US-Australian citizen, think about the similarities and differences between the US and Australia as we respond to what has been called the climate change denial machine.
In both countries, the denialists and distortionists have undermined public knowledge, public policy, new economic development opportunities, and the very value of the environment. Climate policy is being built upon alternative facts, fake news, outright lies, PR spin and industry-written talking points.
From the carbon industry capture of the two major parties, to the Abbott-Turnbull government parroting industry talking points, to coal industry lobbyists as government energy advisers, to the outright idiotic conspiracy pronouncements of senators funded and advised by the US- based denial machine, the Madhouse Effect is in full force in Australia.
How we can expose and counter this denialist machine? To partly lay out the task, I will discuss three points of contrast between the US and Australia.
Political culture
There is a key difference between the two countries’ political cultures. As much as the denialists have determined Australian energy and climate policy, they have not been as successful, yet, at undermining deep-seeded respect in Australian culture for the common good, for science, for expertise and knowledge…….
Last year, when the government fired climate scientists at CSIRO, there was another huge public backlash. The government had to step back a bit, both on the actual science to be done and the radical agenda change away from science for the public good.
And again, when the government wanted to support the dubious work of Bjorn Lomborg, that caused an outcry from both the university sector and the public. Even though the government wound up paying more than A$600,000 on what The Australian called his “vanity book project”, they couldn’t import him and plant him at any Australian university.
As Mann says, the main issue in implementing good, sound climate policy is no longer simply the science. The main issue is the cultural understanding of, and respect for the role of science in informing political decisions.
That’s not to say there are no attacks on science – clearly, these continue (such as the recent challenges to normal Bureau of Meteorology practices). But, overall, climate denialists and their enablers are outnumbered outliers in Australia, rather the norm.
The power of the carbon industry
My second point of comparison is not quite as positive.
The problem in Australia is less a culture turning against the Enlightenment, and more the direct political power and influence of the carbon industry. ……
even here I think there is some hope. We have seen, over the last few years, an incredible coalition grow – one focused on the end of carbon mining, on protecting communities, on creating real jobs, and on supporting renewables.
Once-unthinkable coalitions of farmers and Aboriginal communities are fighting new mines, new attacks on sacred and fertile land and water.
We have intensive household investment in rooftop solar – and as the feed-in tariffs are undermined, those folks will increasingly invest in battery storage. And we’re finally seeing states move in this direction, with increasing development of utility-scale renewable and storage projects. As hard as the federal government and its allies resist, renewables are growing and the public supports this – even conservative voters. https://theconversation.com/the-madhouse-effect-this-is-how-climate-denial-in-australia-and-the-us-compares-81822
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