Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Australia’s future as a renewable energy superpower

 

Australia has a real future as a renewables superpower, https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6587200/australia-has-a-real-future-as-a-renewables-superpower/?cs=14246Tristan Edis,  19 19 Jan 2020,  Amid almost daily complaints from industry about skyrocketing electricity costs, out dropped an announcement recently so counter to the dominant news flow that it seemed beyond belief. Yet there it was in the business pages: Australian software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and iron ore billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest have a plan to supply a fifth of Singapore’s electricity needs – all of it from solar power – via a 3750-kilometre underwater cable from the Northern Territory.

The proposed solar farm, near Tennant Creek, would be the world’s biggest by a comfortable margin. It would stretch as far as the eye can see, across an area equal to more than 20,000 soccer fields.Despite Cannon-Brookes’s self-deprecating description of the project as “batshit insane”, it could actually make technical and economic sense.

And it’s not the only mega-renewable energy project being pursued by credible Australian companies with the aim of powering the many hundreds of millions of people living to the north of us. Continue reading →

January 20, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, energy, politics international, solar | Leave a comment

Fire fighter’s anger at Scott Morrison, over climate change

cartoon – Reproduced with permission from Mark David and Independent Australia.

The Firefighter Whose Denunciation of Australia’s Prime Minister Made Him a Folk Hero New Yorker, By Amanda Schaffer, January 18, 2020 

Until a few days ago, Paul Parker was a volunteer firefighter in Nelligen, a small village on the coast of New South Wales, in Australia—an area that has been devastated by the bushfires currently sweeping the country. A week ago, Parker was defending homes in his community against a spreading inferno. The sky was red and burnt orange, he said. Embers were everywhere. Flames shot as high as forty feet. “I’ve fought a few bushfires in my time, but nothing like that,” Parker told me. “It’s the worst I’ve ever experienced.”
……In Parker’s community, and elsewhere, the crisis has provoked intense anger toward Morrison, who was on vacation in Hawaii when two firefighters died in December. Morrison returned to Australia, but his response to the wildfires has been widely condemned as slow and ineffective.

Since September, millions of acres of land have burned, thousands of people have lost their homes and businesses, and at least twenty-eight have perished.

Morrison’s history of skepticism toward climate change and the government’s record of inaction have infuriated Australians who understand that record-breaking heat and dryness, symptomatic of a warming planet, are fuelling the crisis. On Sunday, Morrison announced an inquiry into the country’s fire response, nodding to the role of climate change but failing to support policies to decrease fossil-fuel use or promote renewable energy……

“Then the wind changed, so the flames were fully involved across the road, and we had to drive the truck through the fire front to get ourselves out. We were driving to stop the fire from going into the village, and we saw a TV-news team down on one of the access roads. It just was a boiling point for me. I said, ‘Are you from the media? Tell the Prime Minister to go and get fucked, from Nelligen. . . . We really enjoy doing this shit.’ 

“A couple of weeks earlier, the Prime Minister commented that Rural Fire Service members enjoy going out and fighting fires. He’s just got no understanding of what it’s all about. We don’t enjoy fighting bushfires and saving people’s homes. We do it because we have to. He’s got no understanding of what real people in Australia go through. And he doesn’t care anyway. Any real man would never have left the country while his country was in turmoil…….

“Climate change is also a real thing. It’s not something that can be fixed overnight, and the government’s got to make a stand at some stage. Scott Morrison doesn’t even believe in climate change. I don’t think he even considers that we are going through climate change……. https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/the-firefighter-whose-denunciation-of-australias-prime-minister-made-him-a-folk-hero

January 20, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics | Leave a comment

Australia reMade – a primer for our climate action future

  ReMAKERS’ MEMO #1, January 2020 An Australia reMADE primer to talking about the bushfires and where to from here *V2, updated 14th Jan 2020 

 …………..Conclusion    https://www.australiaremade.org/

  Our nation has been rudely awakened to the reality that we are one of the most climate vulnerable countries on the planet. And now we have a moment where people are ready to participate in reshaping the system; ready to participate in new ways to reflect the new world. How are we enabling this?
We need to make sure we don’t get stuck just responding to the government’s narrow frame of what ‘practical action’ looks like, or worse. We’re already seeing hints of an alternative agenda, which uses this ‘New Normal’ moment as a shock doctrine opportunity to justify a different kind of agenda (imagine dams and land clearing, lucrative service delivery contracts for private contractors, increase in police powers, decrease in nature protection laws, cracking down on activism, privatising essential services, etc). Here getting out early in the public debate is key.
We need to socialise our r thinking and not wait for perfectly formed ideas and solutions or we’ll get stuck on the back foot. Australians want a future where people and nature thrive. Where the values of a free, vibrant, democratic and caring society are strengthened, not sacrificed. We want to put these values front and centre, but so often they get pushed to the periphery of the debate – whether on our airwaves or in our parliaments.

We get told that now is not the time, or we have to be ever wealthier first, before we can decide to care for people and planet. We’ve already seen the hollowness of the ‘cost of action’ argument in light of the ‘cost of inaction’ reality. Business as usual is no longer an option. Let’s name what we want, and talk about the transformation required to get there.      https://antinuclear.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/578d2-remakersmemo_1_14jan2020.pdf

January 20, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment

Liberal Party misinformation on climate change

Notorious climate denier Craig Kelly at it again,  Independent Australia, By Steve Bishop | 19 January 2020, Official figures reveal the Liberals’ foremost climate change denying MP, Craig Kelly, resorted to lies and misinformation to dispute factual evidence in his presentation to a Sky News program.Kelly and other MPs such as George Christensen, have helped sabotage the Federal Government’s climate change policy to a point where it is viewed as the worst in the world.

Just examine the absurd whoppers Kelly told in claiming most of the U.S.’s hottest years on record had occurred in the 1930s.

He used these lies to justify an even bigger lie:  Here’s a transcript of Kelly’s snake-oil claims:

……… The United States’ climate records are kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

I have searched the records, which go back to 1895, and can find no statistics to support Kelly’s claims.

The only set of figures which bear any resemblance to Kelly’s fake news are for one-off freak temperature extremes in each state……….

All Australians should be concerned by Kelly’s lies because he has the personal backing of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who intervened before the last election to ensure the climate change denier was selected as the candidate for Hughes.

This gives Kelly credibility with the ridiculous right of the party when coal-loving Morrison, as PM, has to appeal to a broad church….. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/notorious-climate-denier-craig-kelly-at-it-again,13501

January 20, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics | Leave a comment

Australia led the world in climate action, in 2012 with the Gillard Labor government

Who to Blame for Australia’s Bullshit Approach to Climate Change  https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/dygvjy/who-to-blame-for-australia-coal-mining-lobbyists-fires-bushfires-bullshit-approach-to-climate-change  

Look these coal lobbyists in the eye. Remember their names. By Royce Kurmelovs, 16 January 2020, 

As the smoke begins to clear on 10.3 million hectares of charred earth, many Australians have started asking questions. The largest natural disaster in the country’s history has left over two dozen people dead; over a billion native animals dead or dying, along with tens of thousands of livestock; and some species pushed to the point of extinction.

Now people are asking: “why?”

The answer, for many, is that we’ve begun a long and unnerving slide into a world of supercharged weather. The CO2 humanity had been pumping into the atmosphere for decades is now affecting our seasons in precisely all the ways we were warned. For Australia, that means hotter summers with less rainfall, which is exactly what 2019 delivered.

Australia just sweltered through its hottest year on record with temperatures averaging 1.52C above the 1961—1990 average, according to data from the Bureau of Meteorology. This came after an unprecedented period of drought across much of the country’s east, which unsurprisingly led to widespread fires.

But even if the science is clear, the reality seems lost on those who hold the country’s highest political offices. When confronted with the suggestion his government was not acting in a meaningful way on climate change, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has simply said he “did not accept that” and insisted, like his Minister for Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor, that Australia has been “doing its part”.

he truth is that Australia is the fourth largest coal producer in the world, and has relied on tricky accounting practices to book progress toward reducing its carbon emissions while actually doing the bare minimum.

Because of this, Australia was recently rated 57th on a list of countries for its handling of climate change—placing it just slightly above Iran with its oil-dependent national economy.

And yet just eight years ago, Australia was leading the world on climate change action. In 2012 we’d achieved what many pundits believed was a political impossibility. Australia had levied a tax on carbon that forced an almost immediate drop in the country’s CO2 emissions. That was until a new conservative government took power and repealed the carbon tax a short two years later.

January 20, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics | Leave a comment

Experienced physicist doubts the value of small modular nuclear reactors for Australia

Despite a good safety record, nuclear power is not straight forward, THE AUSTRALIAN, Leslie Cook 20 Jan 2020

As a physicist with the British Atomic Energy Authority in the 1960s, I remember the scale and complexity of the task and the breadth of expertise required in science, engineering and regulation, even if an existing design is used.

This simply does not exist in Australia. Nor does the necessary construction capacity — and the thought of the CFMEU controlling concrete pours of 18,000 cubic metres is daunting. Small modular reactors exist only on paper at present and will also require infrastructure. , https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/letters/despite-a-good-safety-record-nuclear-power-is-not-straight-forward/news-story/eb791793ea9751dc3a905a7869687e01

January 20, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, technology | Leave a comment

PM under pressure as Coalition changes tune on climate change

PM under pressure as Coalition changes tune on climate change , Daily Telegraph , 19 Jan 2020

Prime Minister Scott Morrison could be facing a cabinet revolt on climate change with the horror bushfire season sparking new calls for action from his own top-ranking MPs…. (subscribers only)

January 20, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Scott Morrison probably intransigent on climate policy

If the bushfires won’t force climate policy change, we need to circumvent Scott Morrison. Guardian,  Lenore Taylor  The cabal of Coalition denialists calling the shots are still impervious to facts. But it’s not yet time to despair @lenoretaylor, Fri 17 Jan 2020   It’s time to face a dreadful truth. If this bushfire crisis, this nation-wide trauma, can’t loosen the denialists’ grip on Coalition climate policy, then maybe nothing will.

That would mean everyone sifting through Scott Morrison’s verbiage for signs that he might really be intending to change direction is searching in vain, because he’s just trying to talk himself out of political trouble.

It would mean everyone patiently pointing out that the prime minister could quite easily “evolve” his current policies into something that actually reduced Australia’s greenhouse emissions could save their breath, because that isn’t the kind of evolution he is considering.

And it would mean there’s no point reprising the facts, that Australia’s emissions are flatlining, not falling, that we could seize an economic advantage in a low-carbon world and at the same time help the globe avoid the all too obvious costs of inaction. The Coalition cabal who apparently still call the shots thinks climate science is “voodoo”. They’re impervious to facts. They are already threatening, via anonymous quotes to the Australian, to “blow the place up”. Again. Just like they’ve been blowing up national climate action for more than a decade.

And as this week’s Guardian Essential poll showed, despite the widespread sense that the fires are a tipping point, despite global outrage at the self-defeating stupidity of our policies, despite the world’s largest fund manager ditching thermal coal, despite the wave of grief and anger from around the world – even from James Murdoch – it’s still not clear that Australian public opinion will force this government to change.

Sure, Morrison’s mishandling of this crisis has cost him. His overall approval ratings have dived but his numbers have held fairly steady in his base. The strategists – who always pay more heed to those numbers than to other benchmarks, like, say, a country in ashes – no doubt believe that, with enough confusing obfuscation about “meeting and beating” targets, enough revising of the figures, enough serious practical efforts to help burnt-out communities, and just enough rhetoric conceding the reality of global heating, all will be well in time, without promising to do anything about it. All will be well for the poll numbers that is. Not for the nation.

This is not, repeat not, an argument for abandoning the arguments in favour of climate action. It is not a counsel to cop out in despair. …………

Maybe, under the current political pressure, something will give. But we’ve been fooled before and there’s no time to be fooled again. So that means it’s time to think of ways around the federal Coalition’s intransigence, because those deniers will never be swayed, and we can’t allow them to dictate our future. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/17/if-the-bushfires-wont-force-climate-policy-change-we-need-to-circumvent-scott-morrison

January 18, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics | Leave a comment

Much of Australia might simply become too hot and dry for human habitation

January 16, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment

The prosecution of Julian Assange – a travesty of justice

January 16, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, civil liberties | Leave a comment

Australia’s fire-driven storms are pumping smoke into the stratosphere

Australia’s fire-driven storms are pumping smoke into the stratosphere,   https://www.newscientist.com/article/2230017-australias-fire-driven-storms-are-pumping-smoke-into-the-stratosphere/  15 January 2020 By Adam Vaughan  Thunderstorms generated by the Australian bushfires are very likely to have pumped as much smoke into the stratosphere as a volcanic eruption.

Blazes across the country in the past few weeks have been so intense they have generated their own weather. They create rising air mixed with ash and smoke that results in thunderstorm clouds above the fires called pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCbs).

Some of these are strong enough and rise high enough to have channelled smoke into the stratosphere, a plume of which has crossed the Atlantic Ocean in an eastward direction. NASA says this plume has now made a full circuit around the Earth. There were at least 20 pyroCbs between 28 and 31 December, and more on 4 January, some of which injected smoke into the stratosphere.

The scale of the smoke in the stratosphere has now been calculated by David Peterson at the US Naval Research Laboratory, who is presenting his preliminary findings to the American Meteorological Society at a meeting in Boston later today.

“It’s very likely on a volcanic scale,” he says. “The big thing here is really the impact that this is having on the stratosphere.” Although not of the scale of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the largest in modern history, the effect is similar to a more moderate eruption, Peterson says.

In 2017, Peterson found that Canadian wildfires put as much smoke as a volcano into the stratosphere. He is now working to apply the same technique to the Australian fires and thunderstorms. “At this point I can tell you that this event is one of the largest, it’s very near the top. I can’t say for sure if it’s the biggest,” he says, in terms of the amount of smoke injected into the stratosphere.

While it is well known that a volcanic eruption can put enough aerosols into the atmosphere to have a cooling effect, the different chemistry of pyroCbs means the impacts of the fires on global temperatures aren’t yet entirely clear.

They may have a warming or cooling effect, and it isn’t known how long the smoke will persist at heights of between around 10 and 50 kilometres high, which is roughly where the stratosphere starts and finishes. Peterson says the biggest question is what role proyCbs are playing in the climate system. Some of the smoke plumes are also getting high enough to affect the ozone layer.

We may have answers to some of these unknowns soon though, thanks to NASA flying a plane earlier this year through the upper level of a pyroCb generated by US wildfires. “It wasn’t as massive as these Australia plumes but fortunately at an altitude the aircraft could get to it,” says Peterson. The resulting direct observations of the chemistry will, along with satellite measurements, help unlock the answers.

Alan Robock at Rutgers University in New Jersey says any potential cooling effect from the bushfire smoke is unlikely to be huge at a global level, but could cause cooling of several degrees Celsius at a local level. If the Australian pyroCbs produce twice as much smoke as those from Canada in 2017, “it still would not be a large or long-lasting impact on climate,” he says.

However, the smoke can persist in the stratosphere for half a year or longer, as at such heights it can be heated by the sun and lofted even further up, prolonging its lifetime.

“This is the same process we have modelled in our studies of the climatic consequences of nuclear war in which much more smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would be lofted into the stratosphere and last for years,” says Robock. As such, analysis of the smoke from the bushfires could help improve simulations of the impact of nuclear Armageddon.

Our knowledge of pyroCbs is at an early stage. These thunderstorms and the smoke they put into the stratosphere have only been detectable via satellite instruments since the early 2000s, and previously were thought to be the result of volcanic eruptions, until analysis traced them back to wildfires.

January 16, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, reference | Leave a comment

World Economic Forum focusses on climate change, Australia snubs the Forum

January 16, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics international | Leave a comment

Australian Nuclear Technology and Science Organisation, (ANSTO), jumps on the bushfire propaganda bandwagon

Today, 15 January, there was a ’round table” meeting, (I think in Canberra) of “top scientists” on the urgent need to develop new bushfire adaptation and mitigation techniques.

And guess who’s at the top of the list in these TOP SCIENTISTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE. Why, none other than The Australian Nuclear Technology and Science Organisation, (ANSTO)

Of course, ANSTO is prominent in promoting the lie that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. They’ve put in submissions to parliamentary inquiries, You can bet that they’ve got one in now, to the Victorian Inquiry (submissions close 28 February.) One must admire the timing of the nuclear lobby’s manipulations, and the speed with which they are jumping on the bushfire-fix bandwagon.

January 15, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Christina reviews, climate change - global warming, politics | Leave a comment

New short films show the shocking impact of nuclear waste plan on the Kimba community

Kimba community members speak on nuclear debate https://www.eyretribune.com.au/story/6575440/impact-of-nuclear-debate-laid-bare/?cs=1447&fbclid=IwAR1sYioMafIAlkSpKux4TzeSUGyD6LZB2vy6jvILE2J90rN_CeWVMjS5IHc, Rachel McDonald 10 Jan 2020,

The stories of Kimba farming families and local townspeople opposed to the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in the district have had their story documented in a message to wider Australia.

Port Pirie filmmaker Kim Mavromatis has released a series of mini-documentaries over the past three months telling the stories of communities impacted by the four-year process to determine whether the facility had broad community support at Kimba or Hawker.

Mr Mavromatis said he had been following the debate around both the waste facility and the SA nuclear fuel cycle process, and he believed the communities involved were only given one side of the story throughout consultation.

“At the end of the day… the government weren’t doing the right thing by the people,” he said.

“The people that are fighting back really need to be heard.”

He said as a member of the Port Pirie community he had also been concerned that his community, which could potentially see the waste transported through their town or port, had not had the same opportunity for consultation as the Kimba and Hawker communities who late last year participated in community ballots to measure support for the proposal.

In one of Mr Mavromatis’s videos, Kimba locals and members of the No Radioactive Waste Facility for Kimba District group spoke about why they remained opposed to the proposal, and the impact the years of uncertainty and community debate has had on them personally.

Among those featured were neighbours of the proposed sites.

Secretary of the group Toni Scott said through the years they had discussed ways of getting their message out to a wider audience, and while it was difficult for many to tell their story there were still many people across the wider Eyre Peninsula and the state who needed to know what was going on as a final decision looms.

“We’re at the stage now where we really want to create as much awareness as we can,” she said.

“We’re hoping people can relate to it.”

Many of the interviewees featured are visibly emotional in the film, which Mrs Scott said was an unintentional outcome of individuals being encouraged to share their stories openly.

“Those raw emotions just came out… I think it’s important for people to see that and realise how affected members of our community actually are,” she said.

Mr Mavromatis said it was “shocking” to see first-hand the impact on the community.

“It’s their livelihood, it’s their future, it’s their kids’ future and it’s permanent,” he said.

The filmmaker has also created a documentary about the impact of the process on the Barngarla people, who in an independent ballot last year voted 0% in favour of the facility.

Mr Mavromatis said the lack of genuine engagement with the traditional owners, who are native title holders of areas neighbouring both proposed sites, was a “total disgrace.”

A rally is planned for Kimba on February 2, with Kimba community members encouraging the wider state to join them.

“We are asking people from Eyre Peninsula and SA to join us in a peaceful protest so the minister (Resources minister Matthew Canavan) can get the message that Kimba is not the right place and farming land is not the right place,” Mrs Scott said.

The video series can be found at vimeo.com/mav17557967.

January 14, 2020 Posted by | Federal nuclear waste dump, South Australia | Leave a comment

Scandalous that the Australian government plans a nuclear waste dump on our precious, scarce, agricultural land

Kim Mavromatis Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch Australia 14 Jan 2020, Why on earth would you think Agricultural farmland is a good place to dump radioactive nuclear waste ?????? ARPANSA (the regulator) don’t think so – they state in their own guidelines and Site Selection Criteria, that the proposed Radioactive Nuclear Waste Dumps should not be placed on Agricultural land, in the immediate vicinity of land with significant Natural Resources, or Outdoor Recreational use???
When you know that only 4.5% of South Australia’s land is Agricultural cropping land – why on earth does Scomo’s Federal govnt want to dump / introduce toxic radioactive nuclear waste on Agricultural Farmland near Kimba and Lake Gilles Conservation Park – which has an Export income for Kimba farmers of up to $80 million per year? And $778 million income for Eyre Peninsula farmers (18/19 RDA Whyalla and EP Report) ???????

January 14, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Federal nuclear waste dump | Leave a comment

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